You may have noticed the conspicuous omission of The Child’s room here. I guess there may have been (not so) veiled references to the Bermuda Triangle that was my daughter’s domicile, but I’m pretty sure I never horrified you with a visual of the carnage.
There was very good reason for the omission… you will thank me later.
Her room in San Francisco started off with two major strikes against it: it was impossibly small; and the only window did not look outside, but upon the kitchen (yeah, don’t ask – I have no idea why either). I tried to be very creative in my space planning. I got her a loft bed and put a desk underneath. Her dresser was tucked in an awkward nook. I made every possible attempt to preserve as much floor space as possible.
My efforts were in vain.
The third, and quite possibly largest, strike against her room in SF was that I really tried to let it be “her space”. I didn’t want to nag about keeping it clean – hoping that she would also want to have as much space as possible by making efforts at tidiness. No dice. On at least 4 different occasions I took everything out of her room (overfilling the livingroom), and put it all back neat and orderly-like with “fool proof” organization systems.
The day The Child started packing to move, THIS is what her hovel room looked like. Yeah, I warned you… Honestly, it’s so dark in there because the drifts of detritus eclipsed all light sources. Honest.
So once all of our stuff landed in Sebastopol, one of my first priorities was to create a new and beautiful room that was exceedingly realistic for a 10 year old to keep clean. I wanted lots of open space, a lot less crap, and the threat of great bodily harm whatever is out of place going in the garbage can if she goes to bed even once with a messy room.
This is the result…
She LOVES it. It needs curtains and an area rug, but it’s darn close. In fact, she’s been living in it for 2 weeks straight and I didn’t move a thing to take these pictures. This is exactly how she left it.
My poor garden is long-suffering. It goes through periods of total neglect, being used as a paint/workshop, or is the victim of my less than expert attention. Last week when attempting to dig up a science project I realized the dire situation that had bloomed back there.
Weeds! Giant killer weeds!! And they were taking no prisoners! It’s shocking how they can grow on top of brick!
There were at least a thousand chores I didn’t want to do so I decided to head outside and slay some weeds. A little bit of effort yielded a BIG sense of accomplishment – and a big sense of dread at the enormity of the task at hand.
It ultimately took 3 hours to weed my tiny little garden - and I filled the curbside composting bin TWICE. As you can see, there’s not actually a lot of dirt back there… it’s mostly brick.
Oh… and while I was pulling weeds like a mad woman, what was The Child doing? Uh, she “helped”. Who doesn’t need a gigantic hole in the garden? I really can’t tell you just how helpful it is to hear “LOOK NOW!” with every shovelful extracted! The annoyance pride shone across my face as I reminded myself that there were many other ways she could have “helped” that would have been far less helpful
So today – in honor of the first day of spring – we prettied up the clean, weed-free dirt with some actual pretty and EDIBLE things!
Red-leaf and Meyers lettuce, two kinds of tomatoes (at least one is fog-tolerant – we’ve had them 3 other summers), sugar snap peas, and catnip for the Hairy Beast. The tall, green-thumbed super salesman at Sloat Garden Center assured us that all of these things would survive the total lack of unclouded sun, cool weather and questionable soil that graces our neighborhood. Riiiiiiight. We’ll see about that.
We put some major COLOR!!! along the far wall to brighten up the view from the livingroom. I’ll be happy if the Forsythia survives… because it’s so bright and grows quite large, and also because it’s my namesake
Ok, I am officially obsessed with coral! Thankfully, I think they go together smashingly!
I’ve been hating this color I put up in my bedroom but I think painting this frame will help me live with it – at least for a little while. I fully expect to get a wild hair and paint it the same blue as my hallway. I ran out of gloss black paint, but the dresser will soon be bathed in it. Then it will look truly kick ass!
Thanks, Christine, for talking me in to keeping this photo. I am LOVING the blues in the photo with the orangey-red of the frame.
The infamous vanity is done and I could NOT be happier with it. In fact, when I look at it I *SQUEEEEEL*
And to hold my jewelry I HAVE A STAG HEAD!!! I know you wish you had one, too!I know you also covet by beautiful UmberDove tray, so go get one of your own!
My bedroom is this close to being done. I just need some finishing touches. I’ll give you a hint as to the Very Brave for Emily direction I’m going with this….
Disregard the black and white and chrome, then think contrasting color to the other color known to exist in my room
p.s. Look at what a tool I am! I made a keychain! And YES I am that lame and only have 2 keys (and that is the grand total of all keys I own and/or am in possession of). Hell, one of them I never even use! HA!
Honest to God – this is the best $65 (thanks Craigs List!) I have EVER spent. My livingroom rug looks amazing. To think, I almost spent $99 on Saturday on a lowly upright…
My lovely UmberDove has created 2 more custom masterpieces for my humble little home.
Behold, nap-tacular “armrests” for my sofa! Because while it’s armless elegance is a thing of beauty, the lack thereof makes it a little formal feeling when what you really want is to be a sack of lazy.
For four nights now you have had an unobstructed view in to my bedroom. Yeah, not much interesting going on. I’m sure you were hoping for some Must See activity being that my bed is right under my window, but you got none you cheeky monkeys. I’m sure it has been about as interesting as watching paint dry. Wait! Paint DID dry!
Anyway, you may have noticed that the curtains came down on your little voyeur show. That is because curtains finally went up!
Once I could again operate under cover without my cursing, frustrations and missteps being viewed by you sneaky little peepers I undertook the Herculean project of building a headboard. In typical Emily fashion I looked around to see what I had on-hand. Lo and behold I had turquoise fabric! And I had enough! What I didn’t have was the proper workspace or tools for the job. So, unsurprisingly, I invoked my powers of ghetto fabrication and got to work.
Ok – FYI – Elmer’s spray adhesive doesn’t do jack to hold foam to wood. Neither does wood glue. Nails pretty much pull right through the foam, too.
I recommend enlisting an octopus as an assistant should you try this yourself
The piece of MDF that Eamon brought by was PERFECT. The width fits like a glove inside my bedframe. My extremely accurate measurement guesstimation skills apparently only work on the horizontal. I was feeling sooo smug when it nestled in and I L-bracketed it to the bedframe. Patting myself on the back, I was. Singing my own praises, I was.
I figured that I’d borrow a staple gun and smooth out the edges. My patience only lasted so long hammering finish nails to secure everything at 11p. Yes I was feeling pretty damn full of myself. With joyous glee I enthusiastically began putting the rest of my bed together. It wasn’t long before remembered my “Princess and the Pea” mattress situation (standard mattress + 4″ of memory foam = zzzzz). Uh oh.
Uh. Crap.
The turquoise fabulousness that is my new headboard is hardy to be seen.
Yes – this is a headboard FAIL. Not an epic fail, but…
Add longer L-brackets to my hardware store shopping list.
We’ve been keeping fresh flowers around the house for a few weeks now. It’s part of our commitment to making our home feel special. (And what girl doesn’t love pretty, pretty flowers? )
And all my Azorian DNA was running full throttle this weekend! Krylon makes an unbelievable chrome spray paint, so I am elevating my Papa’s silver metallic affinity to a whole new level!
(Look at those cute little part-breeds)
That is the original frame to that picture. It was some 70’s fabulous oak kind of color. Now it’s a SHINY THING!!
This tray had a kind of cool old world map on it, but it was a little banged up and the aged parchment look just had no place in my Girly Modern Fabu-Palace. *ahem* This morning inspiration struck me: I am going to paint some zebra stripes on it tonight.
Quite by accident I discovered that my Nana & Papa’s old card table was just the *perfect* dining/worktable solution for my space. It’s been sitting in my coat closet since the day I moved here, and it has never been used. Back in The Day, my mom’s parents used it in their travel trailer. Later it was passed on to me and it lived in my old VW Westie. It has seen more card games and camp-out dinners than you can even imagine. (I seem to recall it being the site of a campstove flame out too )
When I needed a sewing table I remembered it was back there in the closet. I couldn’t believe how perfectly it fit in my livingroom. It was big enough to be handy, yet not so big that it took up the whole room – and it belonged to the best grandparents ever to grace this green earth.
But, it was a table only a granddaughter could love… it was beat
