Monday Morning Foam

In days filled with melamine dishes and sippy cups, fine china helps keep a busy mom's morning coffee ritual sacred... Here's to rich, frothy sanity!!

Family Planning: Redefined

Began the process of switching myself (and my life) over to my new 2011 planner today. Most planners start with the last week of December, and I find it's a bit easier to break into once you get it going before the new year. I love transferring all my dinner menus, schedules, birthdays, save-the-dates etc. There's just something so productive about it... productive, yet calm. Organized! That's the word I'm looking for! It brings a sense of perfect organization, and it's wonderful. While I'm still using my beloved cult-object day planner from Gallery Leather (found a copper colored croc-embossed version last month at Marshalls!), I stumbled upon a truly personalizable planner from Erin Condren. This planner is the brain-child of a working mom, i.e. it delivers! With everything you need to stay organized and put-together, this planner features an assortment of specialty goodies any busy mom would love. My favorite feature is the separate spaces for each day's Morning, Day, and Night - because we all know that the real productivity takes place during the later PM hours... Some of the main features of this planner are; color coded "event stickers" (from play-dates to Vegas weekends), easy-to-navigate daytime planning space (because even planners manage to get cluttered!), "keep it together" pockets (for all those lose papers: invitations, coupons, prescriptions etc.), plastic zip pouch (keep business cards and photographs safe and sound), and built-in personalized notepads (for grocery lists that are meant to be ripped off).

Erin Condren Life Planner, $50.00

Happy transitions...!!

(For some more planner ideas and options, revisit this post on planning!)

Babysitter Board

Sometime during the past year I posted about the "framed glass = whiteboard" concept. A little while after that I decided to work the same feature into our Babysitter Info sheet. Now I've seen this sort of thing popping up all over the web, and thought I'd share the convenience.

Any good mom knows you have to leave information for the babysitter, it's just the content of that important information that usually gets neglected. In case of an emergency, when calling 911 it's much more efficient to know the address and phone number you are calling from. It's also important to know the legal name of the child/children in care. The parents cell phone numbers are obvious, and special instructions for the night are usually written down as well. Here's a simplified way to bring it all together...

Buy any picture frame (large enough for this amount of info), and either print out or write up all the most important things your sitter may need to know on a white paper in the upper half of the frame. Leave the bottom half of the paper blank, and you now have a dry-erase area to leave your babysitter with special instructions, or directions to work the TV/DVD player, password for the computer, where you hid your 7 year olds PSP until after dinner etc..

Any dry-erase markers will work on glass, but go with a smaller/medium point so that it'll be easier to write with in a small space.

Here's to making a busy-mom's life just a bit easier...!

* Had to go back and retouch that photo a bit - it dawned on me that I stupidly had my address and telephone numbers on the www! Sorry about the smudginess...

For the Love of Winter

Though it feels as if winter is deeply upon us, today is actually the very first day of the season... While the miserable rain and sleet continue to fall (don't mean to offend you snow-out folk - but this is winter to us!), I thought I'd post some wonderful wintery reasons to love the freezing season!

- Cozy winter tea times like this one.

- Treks up the mountain for some flurry family fun with this Zipfy snow sled.

- Living chilly weeks on end in your favorite hoodie.

- Lots of rainy-day warm chocolate cookie batter licking!

- Cozy-up couch time with a new-for-winter cotton cable knit throw.

- Break out the adorably snuggly and charming baby bundles!

- Epic outdoor skating rinks - be it with palm trees or Prometheus.

- Hot doses of wintery bone-warming soups like this one.

- The arrival of good-looking snow boots!

Either way, wishing you a happy winter all around!

(Also, check out last year's winter round up...)

Freida's Color-block Bedroom

After posting some pictures of Freida's bedroom here and there (and especially after I put up pictures of her birthday party at our home), I had a bunch of requests to post some proper pictures of the whole room. So here's a little photo-steam of her bedroom/playroom in the name of sharing interior design inspirations: We started with a sea-breeze blue (I was convinced I would have a boy, and if I didn't at least I would be able to decorate using girly colors without the "pink" going nauseatingly overboard; the blue would balance it out), and imitated the buildings original (circa - 1930) white-washed base boards, moldings, doors, and ceiling. Once the canvas was set, the only thing I knew for certain was that I wanted the one big-ticket item to be a crib; unisex, modern, classic: I went with the Oeuf Sparrow. It's natural and safe materials, plus it's modern/classic vibe and unisex color made it a quick love for me.

This space initially functioned primarily as a guest room. In it we planted my husband's bachelor-era queen-sized Ikea Malm bed with nightstands and his corresponding Expedit bookcase. Once Freida joined us, I decided to skip on the extraneous "changing table" and simply secured a changing pad to the top of the Expedit. I used canvas bins in the storage units below to stash diapers/linens/layette etc. It's now filled with her toddler wardrobe and used as our primary toy storage. The best thing about this unit is that once you are finished with the changing table and/or looking to free up some extra space, the Expedit can be flipped upward and used vertically!

Once the nursery essentials (crib, changing station) were in place, I didn't want to rush into anything, and waited until we found piece by piece. Slowly the room began to take shape... we moved the queen bed out when Freida was just under a year, and decided to turn it into her playroom. We found the futon and table at Urban Outfitters and fell for them instantly. They were part of a Blu Dot for Urban line, and we scored big on clearance!  We slowly found pieces we loved to deck the walls, the butterflies at a artisan shoppe, and the Flor tiles on Craigslist!

My priority when designing and decorating this room was to keep it as unisex as possible. I can easily spray paint the pink frames (orange, red or any other color), even the bedding works - just need a boyish bumper, and the carpet tiles would just need some swapping additional colors to the mix. If/when I need the extra space and want a toddler bed/twin bed and crib in the room, I can simply move out the futon; because we went with something so modern/classic (it tends to blend in with the rest of our home instead of being a one-use kid-styled item) it can then function as extra seating in a living room, office, or third bedroom. I made sure that with each find and purchase I felt the evident longevity of that piece...how it could be used over and over again, in many different settings, and hopefully would last and last...

The second most important thing to me when designing space for children is the convenience - cleaning and otherwise. The wood floors are a no-brainer, and the Flor tiles are infinitely easier than carpet or a large rug (each square can be cleaned or replaced individually). Again, a futon/day bed is always a good seating option, because it can provide a myriad of functions instead of just one (we have housed many people over the year, and good sleeping arrangements are a snap away - the futon + an air mattress + the crib makes for super easy guest-ing). Plus, you can't imagine what that futon does for me on homebound sick days and those early Shabbos mornings - I fold it down, add my comforter and pillow, shut the door to the room... she plays safely while I catch another 45 minutes of shut-eye.

Lastly, but possibly the most important: toy accessibility. When kids can see all their toys, and are able to reach them and take them out easily on their own - they are much more likely to initiate play. All of her toys she can take out, and put back without an ounce of help. This makes a mothers life easier on so many accounts! The kids will be happy to take things out and get busy, and the moms will be glad that cleanup is a cinch; for when everything has a place - undoing even the most hurricane-like messes will be pie! Trust me! Freida can honestly clean up her entire room on her own (sans the ball crawl balls). And contrary to popular belief, it's been proven that reducing clutter increases creativity. Girls, go forth and organize.

My favorite feature in this room is the white table. Aside from it's awesomely quirky sliding shelf aspect, this table provides lots of standing play. The items on the table are removed (fine, chucked off) instantely when Freida wants to use the tabletop (read: setting a Shabbos table, dollhouse play, block stacking, car driving, Papo zoo making etc.), and lends itself to heaps of creative tabletop play. The low down reading shelf (my favorite part!) has been put to so much good use! Having a collection of reading options so close to the ground has really made books a favorite for Freida. I often walk into her room and find her sprawled out lazily on her belly, turning the pages of a well-worn board book - completely entranced (for kids a bit older, a low down shelf and some poufs or floor cushions = a cozy library corner).

My most solid piece of advice when setting out to design a space for kids is "versatility". Don't buy things that can only be used in one place or for one purpose! Life and materialism is expensive enough as it is, why spend on things that will eventually "end"? Make sure you always remember to ask yourself: if at some point in time you need to move this or that - can it be used somewhere else? Can it function for another person/place/time? You'll be so much happier knowing you buy things that will go on and on... it's like splurging on a grey cashmere sweater - heirloom-esque! :)