a 'Playroom'

We live in a small condo in our ideal location. While we dream of moving to a house with a large playroom, a dedicated office/creative space, and a large backyard, that's not feasible for our family at this time. So for now we choose to trade square footage for our 1200 sq.ft. + small back patio abode near downtown. 

Don't get me wrong, I love our home, it's just not laid out so efficiently for life with a 15 month old. We essentially only use one level for sleeping and storage, while the other floor is where we do all of our day- to- day living. I'd love to do more playing in Augie's room, but realistically, we spend most of our time in the brighter, slightly more spacious, 'great room'. And throughout the day, we do way more playing in this space than any other activity. With this reality, we needed to figure out a more efficient way of corral-ing all of the toddler toys our son has amassed while still giving all of us room to stretch out.

 With the purchase of a larger rug, shoving our small dining table against the wall, rearranging two accessory pieces of furniture, and designating two sliding, storage baskets for smaller toys under the couch, we've created the perfect play space. Allowing us to reclaim the living space without sacrificing too much of our grown-up aesthetic. And in the event that we have friends over, we will just relocate the toys back into Augie's room, pull the table from the wall, add a couple more chairs, and we have our dining room back.

the Backyard Completed

We finally had a healthy, gorgeous, agenda free weekend, so we set out to complete our backyard project. As you will recall, Kevin constructed some new planters to surround our fountain, but we had to wait until spring to fill them. We also just needed to clean up and prune the existing space that had found itself in a bit of a state of disarray over the winter. Despite the Zilker Garden Festival taking place at the bottom of the hill, we headed over to our favorite local nursery, the Great Outdoors, to find inspiration. We came home with a various assortment of cute little ground cover greens, a small collection of herbs and peppers, a 'Red Rooster' grass-like plant for the front, and two Sweet Olive plants for the backyard boxes. Now I'm not big on scents, and only occasionally dab myself with perfume, but I seriously want to dip my entire body in a tub of Sweet Olive scent. If it's possible to describe a plant as having a beautiful scent, then I am declaring it. I guess you are just going to have to come over and take a whiff for yourself. In the meantime enjoy some photos of the newly renovated back patio area, and some photos of the process... including help from the cutest 13 month old gardener I know.

poor innocent plants

a 'working' lunch

meeting a grubworm

finished product!

A Wall Re-Imagined

We did a bit of updating to August's room this past weekend. In our first effort to transition the space from a baby room towards a toddler room, we removed the lounge chair, ottoman, and side table, and replaced them with a height chart, book shelves, and an Augie sized reading chair. It has been a while since August has let us rock him to sleep, so we figured it was time to make more room for actual playing in his nursery. 

The leopard print lantern was left in place from when the space was originally used for sitting. I thrifted the miniature school chair along with two other school chairs a few weeks ago from a local consignment store. I found this amazing growth chart several months ago, but didn't quite have the $120 in the budget to purchase it. So Kevin and I decided to just create our own, much more simplified height chart out of a pre-cut 1x6 piece of pine. We then purchased the spice racks and rug from Ikea a couple of weeks ago. The spice racks as bookshelves idea is not unique to us, as I've found numerous examples in the blogosphere that gave us the idea. It's a perfectly genius, affordable way for us to display the non-board books that our over-eager page turner does not have access to on a daily basis. 

All in all we are quite pleased with how the tiny space turned out. Hopefully this is one step closer to using his room much more frequently as a space to play and to enjoy. As for August, he seems to be a fan as every time we are in the room, he holds his chubby little hand up for us to grab one of the books down for him. 

Ready and Waiting...

We are 9 days away from Baby A's designated due date. As far as we can tell, we have everything we need for him to make his transition into our home (well, materially speaking of course). We thought you would like to see some images of the new and improved baby room that we (and his Momo) worked so hard on. We're so happy with the results and are just waiting for the little man to come fill it!