The Interior DIYer

Baby

Two designs, one room. Which would you pick?

I’ve been taking my time thinking of a design for Cora’s bedroom. I measured her room soon after we moved in and since then I’ve made quite a few designs on Google SketchUp. Some good, some very bad. But only within the past few days have I managed to narrow down the design to two options; a dark design and a light design.

Keep in mind that these mock-ups are minus a lot of accessories and details that will be added to the room (like Cora’s faux taxidermy pig, her Katy Perry cross stitch, our Bill Murray print and some Christmas lights to name a few), so it looks very bare. The dark walls may seem a bit overwhelming, but they’ll be covered with fun pieces.

I got fancy and made Google SketchUp videos to show the different angles of each design. I went entirely dark with the dark room, but for the light room I added a kind of feature polka-dot wall. I didn’t want just one wall to have polka-dots, but I also didn’t want the entire room to be overwhelmed by them, so I kind of ombre-d the polka-dots onto each adjoining wall. Does that make sense? I’m using a lot of hand gestures as I’m explaining, but I realise you can’t see that. These videos will hopefully better explain what I mean …

I like the idea of a dark room for Cora as it might be a calm space for her (especially around nap time and bed time). I also like the idea of going with a less traditional colour palette for her / “a little girls room”. But at the same time, I want Cora’s room to be somewhere fun so I keep coming back to the light design with polka-dots. I am leaning towards one design in particular, but I’m curious to see if it’s the most popular choice.

So which design do you prefer? Are you more dark side than light side? Or does the idea of black walls in a little girls room make you think WHY WHY WHAT ARE YOU THINKING I’M CALLING CHILD SERVICES. I’m very curious to know, and even more curious if there are very strong opinions on either. I’m looking at you, dark side.

 

Blogging

New year, new website!

I’ve been wanting to update the look of my blog for a long time. I took my time and over the past few months I thought about what I wanted and what changes I’d like to make. I decided to make the switch over the Christmas holidays as Robert would be home with Cora which meant I’d have some time to sit down and get all the hours of painful details done (oh, the pain. Moving something by a few pixels, saving, uploading, hating it, removing it, resaving, moving again and then wine).

 

I also moved from Blogger to WordPress.org this year. Blogger was wonderful and saw me through many years, but I wanted to move onto something a bit more design friendly. Looking back at my blog design and comparing it to my shiny new one here, my old blog looks like a truck full of hot diapers set on fire.

I’m very happy with my new site and I hope it’s a bit easier to navigate than my last one (especially on phones and tablets!) and I hope it’s a bit easier on the eyes too. Despite having to redesign it twice and then accidentally deleting my blog (eternal thank you Kimberly for helping this inept WordPress newbie), I really loved giving my blog a new look to more closely match how I feel these days; a bit brighter and attempting to look a bit more professional. An internet version of putting on a bra, if you will.

If you are so inclined, you can check out my collection of screenshots of what my blog has looked like over the past 7+ years. Some of my designs were eh, interesting.

Baby

My resolution this year

It’s the new year and though I don’t usually set myself resolutions, this year I’m definitely setting myself one, and I don’t think it’s too unobtainable either.

When Cora was a newborn and we were home together – sometimes days at a time – I became very reliant on my phone as it was my only connection to other people. Other people that didn’t need their diaper changed, I should say. It was my only contact with what was going on in the world and I became very addicted to my phone. Not to mention social media has its way of destroying our attention span and other lovely things.

I was very aware that my problem was getting out of control and wasn’t healthy [the worse I felt could be directly related to how long I was spending on my phone], and I always had the intention of cutting down on my phone use, but what really made me decide to do something about it was Cora. She was getting older and good god she was catching on to things so quickly. At less than a year old she knew how to unlock my phone [it’s a swipe movement to unlock it so it was complete fluke at first] and knew to hold a phone up to her ear and say “hi!”.

I started my resolution a few weeks ago and it’s tough. Being able to access whatever you want with a few swipes of your finger is such a trap, but I’m working on it. I’ve managed to become more aware of when I mindlessly pick it up and I say to myself, do I need to be on my phone right now? And chances are, no. Social media is an incredible thing and I don’t hate it entirely, but I’ll be logging out a lot more these days.

What about you? Do you set yourself new years resolutions? Or do you find the idea of them more of a burden? Or is this the year you’re going to, like me, try to set a realistic one that can only have positive benefits?