Archive for May, 2010
On Your Mark… Get Set…
With just seven days until my actual due date (although we’re pretty sure Baby P will make us wait even longer), we’ve officially begun getting ready for her arrival. Of course you’ve seen us tackling her nursery, but now when we say getting ready, we really mean getting-ready-for-my-water-to-break-and-to-actually-welcome-our-new-daughter-into-the-world. See, pretty much right after we found out I was pregnant we slowly began to wrap our minds around the idea that our family would be growing as my belly continued to expand with every baked potato and chocolate milk craving.
Now you see why I’ve been humming my tweak on an old Beyoncé classic: “I don’t think you’re ready for this belly.”
And only quite recently did we fully digest the concept that we actually made a person. We made a person! There’s a girl in my belly who will walk and talk someday, heck she’ll even have a job and probably be desperately embarrassed about her dorky parents who always have paint in their hair. It’s just such a giant thought that it literally takes about nine months to sink in- which might just be why it takes so long to cook one of these things. It’s probably nature’s way of making sure you’re really ready for the life changing and momentous birth instead of smacking you in the face with a baby after 30 days of gestation. But anyway, now that we have fully been able to wrap our heads around the notion that we’re about to really be parents (!) there are a few things that we’ve done in anticipation of our little miracle’s arrival:
1. Our practical purchase: My obsession with my water breaking in bed or on the couch got the best of me and I convinced John to let me get a waterproof mattress cover to protect our beloved organic mattress and another little waterproof blanket that I can place on the sofa or the seat of the car in these last few days… you know, just in case. And the good news is that they’re not nearly as crunchy and diaper-like as I expected (we picked them both up for $23 total at Bed Bath & Beyond thanks to two of those 20% off coupons). Maybe it goes back to how fiercely I love our house, but it just seemed worth the added security to at least attempt to keep the sofa and the bed (along with the passenger seat of our new car) protected from the wrath of holy-cow-it’s-really-time. Especially since my mom’s water broke in bed with every single kiddo. Sidenote: my absolute dream is for my water to break at Target or Home Depot because I just think that would be hysterical since we practically live there. I know, I’m weird.
2. Our DIY project: This second idea was John’s brain child (I’m telling you, he’s the sweet sentimental one and I’m the neurotic fool who worries about my water breaking). He actually brought it up as my birthday gift back in March by suggesting that we get a fabric covered album and create our own little “baby book” with fun patterned paper and printed prompts that you see in typical baby books like “The First Week Was….” and “First Word…” We love the idea of adding in keepsakes like her hospital bracelet and her little going-home hat along with a ton of photos and even things like her inked footprints (we plan to bring a few pieces of cardstock to the hospital since the nurses will gladly make footprints that we can stick into our little memory book of sorts). So we headed over to Michael’s (with a 40% off coupon in hand) and snagged a sweet 8.5 x 8.5″ album covered in super fun Amy Butler fabric for just $9 after my handy coupon.
We also picked up a pad full of 8 x 8″ patterned paper to use as a backdrop in our keepsake album (to the tune of $6). So our entire DIY baby book project ran us $15 total. And after adding all the decorative paper and leaving room for notes about momentous occasions (along with photos and other memorabilia) we were left with a pretty sweet way to document many of Baby P’s firsts:
And since we made it ourselves we had fun adding in quirky things, like this page of “future predictions” where John and I guessed everything from her hair and eye color to her first word, her favorite subject in school, and even her future profession. It should be super fun for the beanette to look back at all of our goofy (and most likely completely wrong) guesses someday.
Plus the fact that it looks so cute in the nursery is the icing on the cake…
3. Our Burger-meets-baby prep: We’ve actually read quite a bit about how to ensure that your pooch and your baby get along, because there’s nothing we want more than for our first fur baby to happily coexist with our first human baby. And time and time again we’ve heard that bringing home a gift for the dog along with the baby can help your pup associate the baby with good things and feel appreciated and excited upon her arrival. Of course we’ll also be doing the bring-home-a-baby-blanket-for-him-to-sniff-beforehand trick, but ever since John mentioned that his mom got him a He-Man toy when his little sister came home from the hospital I’ve been convinced that something super fun for Burger (like a pup-cake from Three Dog Bakery along with a new chew toy) will make him giddy about our growing fam. So we recently picked up some goodies for him… and can’t wait to see his tail wag when he gets ‘em.
4. Our blog backup: This forth prep step was actually right up there on the practical side with my waterproof mattress cover. We’ve been working overtime for over a month to amass enough extra blog posts to “tide us over” for the first few hairy weeks after Baby P comes home. That means we took on a few secret projects and wrote up a lot of extra Reader Redesigns, Look & Learns, Email Answers, and Burning Questions along with some fun new tutorials to keep the blog from stagnating while we get our “sea legs” with a newborn, so to speak. Oh and we have a killer House Crashing post to share as well. Basically, you can rest assured that you’ll still get the same YHL experience even when our day to day has gone from projects and blog posts to diapers, feedings, and no sleep.
5. And speaking of diapers: We got a bunch of BumGenius One-Size-Fits-All Organic Snap Diapers from a local shop called MonkeyGrass that we love to support (here’s a link to their online shop and for any Richmond people you can visit their store inside It’s Hip To Be Round in Carytown). These cloth diapers alone (which were actually selected as “more convenient cloth diapers” by Cookie magazine) will save us a substantial amount of money over the course of Baby P’s childhood, and we even ordered them in colors that will work for a possible boy down the road, since we definitely want to use the same cloth dipes for multiple kiddos.
Plus our easy to use Energy Star front loading washer and dryer will keep our water and electricity use to a minimum (everyone says you do laundry like crazy with a baby so we figure it won’t be much of a difference to add some diapers to the mix). And since the average baby uses 8,000 to 10,000 diapers between two and three years, we’ll get to keep that many disposables from landing in a landfill. And all the moolah that we’ll save from buying disposable diapers all the time (which is commonly estimated to be between 2-3K per child) means more money that we can put towards future DIY projects (maybe even with the help of our little girl when she gets big enough to hold a paint brush…). Is it weird to be super excited about diapers? Probably.
6. My clothes cleaning ritual: I actually read that washing all new non-organic baby clothing and bedding (as well as the removable covers of car seats and swings) with a cup and a half of vinegar can rid them of most of the chemicals and dyes that aren’t present in organic clothes. So I’ve been busy washing all of our sweet baby socks, onesies, and pretty much everything else I can get my hands on… just so I’m über ready with the purest baby clothes possible. And the funny thing is that they don’t smell like vinegar when they come out of the wash (they’re completely odorless, it’s kind of amazing). Of course I did have one fateful white-blankets-and-onesies-are-now-pink incident (don’t ask- I somehow tossed tiny hot pink leggings in with the whites) but the soft pink cast on everything actually charms me to no end. And I guess I should get used to letting things roll off my back, so it was a good lesson in the whole nothing-will-be-perfect-and-that’s-ok concept.
7. My pillowcase purchase: I actually got a quick tip from a reader that I just had to follow since it seemed like such a simple way to add some cheerful color to the pretty-stark-and-sterile hospital birthing experience. Joni wrote to us and said:
“I have a little piece of advice that may seem stupid but you’ll thank me later. Make sure you have a pretty pillowcase for the delivery of the baby. It will be in a million photos. Mine was so pretty that when I look at the pictures 13 years later, all I see is my gorgeous baby and that fabulous fabric. It’ll distract people from looking at your puffy I-just-gave-birth face”
Well, for those who don’t know me, I can puff up like the best of them. Seriously I broke my nose in college and my cheekbones didn’t come back for nearly a year. I’m a swelly girl (John even calls me Swell from time to time). So the idea of a pretty pillowcase to take the focus off my giant face sounds like a good one. Plus I just love pillowcase shopping. And the best part is that I hunted down this beauty (on sale of course) and John’s family actually got two of them for me as a birthday gift. So springy and sweet right? Just like my May baby on the way. And not only do I plan to use them at the hospital on Baby P’s b-day, but they’ll make such pretty and fun guest bedroom pillows from then on.
8. Our space saving multipurpose solution: We heard from various friends and family members that a white noise machine and a light machine were two secret weapons to help the beanette drift off to sleep (especially in those first few weeks). And although we believed that they both would really make a difference, with limited outlets and surface area in the nursery, we wondered if we could get some sort of a two-for-one solution that would work double duty. Enter our new iPod I-Home dock stage right (we’ve seen it on amazon.com for a good price):
It was another baby item that came highly recommended by friends and fam (since we can upload children’s music and learning songs for Baby P as she grows). And John, in a stroke of daddy-to-be genius, realized that we could download a CD of white noise from iTunes – to the tune of $6 no less – and effectively turn our iPod dock into a white noise machine with the press of a button (we can even leave it on “repeat” for lengthier renditions of “crashing waves” or “static”). Gotta love a $6 quick fix that allows us to cut back on an entire nursery gadget while saving money. But wait it gets better, the particular I-Home dock that we selected actually has a color changing feature, so it can cycle through a bunch of room-illuminating hues (quickly, slowly, or not at all if you turn off the ambient light setting). So not only does it serve as a sound machine and a music player, it’s a light machine too! Jackpot.
Oh and while we were prepping left and right we came across this quote, which touched both of us so much that we just had to share it:
“A baby will make love stronger, days shorter, nights longer, bankroll smaller, home happier, clothes shabbier, the past forgotten, and the future worth living for.” -Anonymous
Pretty sweet, huh? We can’t wait to meet our little one. And we’d love to hear what any of you guys have done while prepping for a new arrival (whether it’s a baby, a four-legged friend, a roommate, or even a few weekend guests). How did you get your house ready for the new company?
Easy Upgrades: Count On It
Maybe it’s the whole organize-everything-because-it’s-spring thing or even a bit of last minute nesting, but lately I’ve been all about whipping things into submission. As in, finding a place for every last paperclip and utensil… even putting every single one of our photos into coordinated leather albums and chronologically numbering them. Yeah, it’s a little crazy but I’ve always been a nerd for organization. And looking at those nice little hand-numbered tags just makes me smile. It’s the little things, right?
The first stage of the project was to go through all my mismatched old falling-apart albums (and stacks of sad album-less photos) and put them all in chronological order. Then I grabbed some nice-enough-but-not-bank-breaking albums from Target and filled ‘em up. I could have stopped there but I wondered if they might be hard to differentiate and sift through since they’re all so similar looking (which I like for consistency, but it’s not as easy to remember as “the moving photos are in the yellow sunflower album”).
And so the idea of numbering the albums was born…
One trip to Office Max and a few dollars later I came home with these metal-rimmed white labels. They actually were meant for labeling valet keys or something (so I removed the little key loops) but the loops would actually be handy for hanging them off of baskets in a linen closet. Gotta love a multitasking accessory like that.
Anyway, I just scribbled a number on each one using a regular old ballpoint pen and relied on a loop of scotch tape to secure them to each album (a dot of Liquid Nails would probably hold them in place even more securely). What do you think? Does it make you want to slap me? Or does it make you want to organize something? I’m one of those people who watches other people clean their house on TV and immediately wants to clean mine. Here’s hoping my obsessive organizing rubs off on a few enthusiastic storage freaks like me!
And since many people write to us to ask how we organize and store our photos on the computer along with our hard copies, here’s more info in that regard. We keep a folder for each month on the computer (since all of our pics are digital) and we dump them into the right month as we take them. Then every few months we go thought a few months at a time and pick the ones we love and get them printed at CVS on the cheap and stick them (chronologically) in our newly-matched-and-numbered albums. Then we toss the rest into the computer trash and hit “empty.” We definitely like editing down our photos (instead of printing every single one that we take). And burning the remaining photos that we thought were good enough to print at the end of the year on a CD labeled as “Photos 2009″ gives us a nice little photo backup system that’s easy to maintain (we’re left with one small CD of annual pics to store in our fireproof safe, while the identical CVS prints are displayed in our numbered albums).
So that’s what works for us. And speaking of organization, what have you guys corralled or chronologically arranged lately? Any junk-drawer-clean-outs going on? What about paring down clothes or donating all those unused cans of food in the backs of your kitchen cabinets? Do tell. You know we live vicariously through you guys, right?
Psst- Wanna see other “Easy Upgrades” we’ve implemented? Here’s one and here’s another.
Budget Blooms: May Madness
As most of you know, every month we like to enjoy one inexpensive- and sometimes free- bouquet to keep things feeling fresh around here (the idea actually stemmed from a super sweet Christmas present from the hubs a while back). But this month we got lucky. Nope, not with a free backyard bouquet, but with the photo shoot that we mentioned this morning… which involved a cooler full of flowers provided by the prop stylist, many of which weren’t even touched when the cameras were being packed away.
And what did that ever-amazing prop stylist do? She offered all the floral outcasts to us as she left. Did I mention said prop stylist happens to be my best friend who actually worked with us on our last photo shoot with Do It Yourself magazine as well? Anyway, we tried to send the bouquets home with her and she said she would just throw them away if we didn’t keep them because she had a long hot drive home and they’d be a bit worse for wear. Convincing argument. So we kept them. And our house has never felt more fresh and spring-like. Here’s what we ended up with.
We inherited a few errant cream colored carnations…
… that we stuck in three cheap-o Ikea vases on the windowsill with a bit of greenery to beef them up.
And you may have noticed that bottle with three roses in the first shot of the kitchen. Well, we were also left with these beauties, so a glass milk bottle that we had laying around became quite a charming (and kitchen appropriate) vase.
Aren’t the scarlet tips so pretty with the creamy yellow coloring on the rest of each bud? We’re not usually rose people, but we’ve both stopped to admire these guys for the last week on a daily basis.
The half bathroom also inherited a nice little cluster of cream carnations. And this time the vase was actually one of our new drinking glasses from World Market.
We love how the green glass and the green stems work so well to offset the pure white and cream blooms. And we’re confident that these guys will last clear through May and well into June. Of all the flowers that we’ve brought home over the past year+ of this whole monthly floral arrangement adventure, carnations never fail to last the longest and charm us to no end the whole time.
But now for the piece de resistance. Check out these luscious tulips with gorgeous varied coloring in my new green vase from Crate & Barrel (it was actually a sweet birthday gift from my sister-in-law, does she know me and my love of green glass or what?). These guys are definitely our favorite bouquet of the month- the entire house feels more vibrant and alive with them happily sitting on the dining room table.
So yeah, we’re feeling pretty spoiled by all the bouquets. Heck we almost feel guilty for having such an abundance. Have you guys ever found yourself with a plethora of petals throughout your home? Maybe from an overly enthusiastic backyard rose bush, a secret admirer, or a flower sale at Trader Joe’s? Do tell. And while we’re on the subject of a bounty of bouquets, what do you prefer when it comes to bringing the outdoors in? Do you like all-the-same-flower arrangements? Clear glass vases only? Low packed-tight bouquets? Wild meadow-like bunches? Brightly colored blossoms? Spill the bloom beans.
Wanna see our first grocery store bouquet from last January? Itching to check out February, March, April, May, June, July, August, and September too? How about this year’s January, February, March, and April bouquets? Just follow the links for some pretty sweet cheap-o (and even free) bouquets.
Behind The Scenes: Our Friday Photo Shoot
We’re back to share the “backstage” details of our recent photo shoot with the crew from BHG for Do It Yourself magazine and Kitchen + Bath Makeovers (with our newly transformed nursery and our recently renovated bathroom playing the stars of the show). Let’s just say it was a day full of prepping, propping, shooting, eating, secretly high fiving when no one was looking (ok, that was just me and John), and standing around staring as the masters worked their magic (again, that was just me and John).
And we had a lot to stare at. There were large panels of fabric to soften any outside light, big worth-more-than-our-house camera lenses, and computers hooked up to the camera so each picture could be analyzed and every detail could be tweaked to “get the shot.” It really reminded us of how much goes into those seemingly effortless photos of people’s homes that fill every shelter magazine on the shelves of Barnes & Noble. Below you’ll see the high-tech-camera-hooked-up-to-the-computer setup, along with our nursery chair full of baby toys and a shot list (which is a printed booklet from the magazine’s art director or editor which directs the photographer and stylist when it comes to which photos to snag for the story).
We’ve learned that as glamorous as at-home photo shoots sound, you really have to be completely ok with people rolling in and rearranging all of your stuff (sometimes moving it into a pile in your nursery chair for example) so they can reset the space and style it in a unique way to capture every angle that they need with ease. So our first behind the scenes tidbit would be that as flawless as each room looks in a glossy magazine, picture it with piles of props just out of frame, since it’s likely that there are tons of eyesores hiding just beyond the bounds of the shot – like thick extension cords for cameras and computers as well as stacks of unused decor items. The good thing is that everyone’s super respectful when it comes to putting things back and leaving the house exactly as it was when they arrived (if not a bit cleaner- bonus!).
Oh and amid the chaos we somehow managed to work in a quickie interview to sleuth out a few photo shoot tricks of the trade with both the stylist, Cat (who happens to be my best friend- we actually met in NYC and worked at Country Home magazine together back in the day) and Erik Johnson, the photographer (we worked with him a while back when he shot our house for a three part series for Do It Yourself which ran last year- you can check those out here, here, and here). So without further ado, a few glossy magazine secrets and tips, straight from the pros themselves…
Of course these tips aren’t necessarily things that you’d try when shooting your own home for your blog or your personal photo album (some are a bit intense) but it’s definitely interesting to learn what it takes to get the shot for glossy national publications. And it’s not all glitz and glamour. In fact, Erik’s first tip is to check your pride at the door and do what it takes to get the shot. That might mean lying down on the floor or squishing yourself into a corner and holding your breath, just to get a photo from the right angle. Heck, in our nursery’s case it actually meant sitting on top of a ladder and shooting into the room from an exterior window (after removing the screen) – all in the name of getting the widest angle possible.
But that wasn’t the only exterior action that our house saw that fateful Friday. They also used a strip of fabric (referred to as a scrim) to diffuse the light coming into the window from outside so it was less harsh and a lot more ethereal. It might not look like much, but the difference in the photos was amazing. Oh the tricks of the trade…
Erik’s second tip is to always use a tripod. It helps to keep things steady and adds to the crispness that you can capture. So that’s actually a pretty easy trick that anyone can implement (even without getting on a ladder outside or purchasing a huge fabric scrim for filtering light). And again you’ll see him doing what it takes to get the shot he needs (which happens to mean standing on one of our dining room chairs). Whatever works, right? It’s just funny to see this side of things because we’re sure when the shot he was actually taking runs in the magazine no one would ever guess that capturing that photo involved a man with a giant tripod standing on a chair.
And just for fun, here’s an over the shoulder shot so you can see why he was up on a chair in the first place. Yup, he was just getting a boost to be closer to our hanging mobiles. We can’t wait to see how all of his photos turned out. But on to Erik’s next tip: after your camera is mounted to a tripod, experiment with angling the camera up, down, or to the side. People tend to only think about shooting straight on when their camera is on a tripod, but Erik was all about working those angles and swinging his camera 45 degrees up or 25 degrees down, just to get an interesting viewpoint and a less stagnant looking shot in the end. He suggests trying a few different angles since you never really know what will work best until you give a few of them a try.
The last two photography tips actually come from Erik’s photo assistant, Abby Greenawalt. She was also a real pro when it came to making sure they got every shot they came for (and then some) and she was the one to toss out photo tip number four: natural light is best. Every single photo that they took of our home was taken without any of our interior lights on. Which was totally crazy for us since we’re used to turning on every single light that we can just to avoid our camera’s garish flash (which always blows out the foreground and makes the background fade into the shadows). But Abby pointed out that when you use a tripod, the camera is more steady and you can capture things more crisply and get lighter shots than you could if you tried to hold it still and shoot in such low light situations (which results in a blurry mess). Good point.
Abby’s last photo tip of the day was: less is more. She recommends resisting the urge to snap a million pictures of a space, and instead suggested taking one and uploading it on a computer (just like the pros) so you can study the composition and ensure that you like everything (from the way the curtains are hanging to the flowers you placed on that side table). It’s easy to see if something is out of wack when you’re looking at the large photo on the computer (as opposed to the tiny view finder on your camera). Then you can tweak things and take one “final shot” instead of having to sift through 500 pictures in search of the best version after an unbridled snap-fest.
Now we’ll share Cat’s five styling secrets. Here she is standing next to our bathroom door (yup, doors usually have to come off in order to get certain shots) showing off the robes that she painstakingly ironed…
Which leads us to her first styling tip: be a perfectionist. In real life you’d probably never iron your robes, but that’s the job of a stylist. To make everything look flawless. She’s also been known to wipe down mirrors for that perfect shine, and remove screens from windows so they look crystal clear. So that’s another thing to remember when you look at a room in a magazine. Don’t beat yourself up too much if your windows “never look that clean” or your robes “aren’t nearly as luxurious.” Chances are they had a little help from a stylist and don’t really look like that on a daily basis.
Cat’s second styling tip is to cheat things and fake it. Sort of like how Erik will do whatever it takes to get the shot, Cat will do whatever it takes to make every single accent in a room look plush, luxe, and nothing short of gorgeous. Here’s how she created the look of super fluffy towels (she stuffed them with striped dishcloths to create a thicker look)…
She also cheated things like ottomans and accents a bit to the left or right to create separation that works for the angle of the shot (but looks all wonky and crazy if you stared at it straight on). Because it doesn’t matter what the room really looks like- it matters what it looks like through the lens of the camera. Another way that she routinely cheats things is to pull everything that’s on an open shelf (like the ones in our bathroom closet) almost unnatrually forward so they catch the most light. Through the lens they look great, but in person you’d be tempted to push everything back a bit since it’s so close to the edge.
Cat’s other three styling tips are simple: repurpose items from other rooms (she raided our kitchen for a glass cup to use as a bud vase), accessorize in groups of three (this is a common decorating trick, three objects on a side table or mantel just look better than two or four) and just play around (there’s no right answer when it comes to styling, so having fun with texture and working with different combinations of objects until you land on something you love is par for the course).
So that’s what we learned from our whirlwind photo shoot with the kind folks from BHG. Oh and did we mention that they fed us like kings and queens? They even set out the spread they picked up at Whole Foods in a glossy-magazine-worthy way. Doesn’t it look delectable? Yup, we had a fantastic time with Erik, Abby and Cat. And they even left a few extra sandwiches behind for us. Can’t really ask for more than that.
So we’re throwing out a big thank you to the whole crew and to Do It Yourself magazine and Kitchen + Bath Makeovers for setting up such a fun day for us (and for thinking that our house is photo shoot worthy- we’re honored). We hope you guys enjoyed our little behind the scenes details and we can’t wait to see how all those shots actually turn out. We’ll definitely keep you posted…
Psst- Wanna check out other behind the scenes photo shoot tales of yore? Here’s one from a while back with some of the same crew, another shoot for a totally different mag, and the backstage play by play from our fleeting appearance on HGTV’s Rate My Space.
Fab Freebie: Plum Luck
***This giveaway is no longer accepting entries.***
Sometimes you just need a few good pillows to make things better. Okay, maybe they won’t be life-changing, but the right pillow can definitely be sofa-changing. And that’s why we feel lucky to have Plum Cushion as this week’s giveaway sponsor.
Melanie’s spot-on taste in fabrics- from Kelly Wearstler to Liberty of London- combined with her knack for all-things sewing creates a finely curated collection of handmade pillows that amp up the style-factor of any sofa. Just check out how much the character of the same couch can change with a few simple pillow switcheroos:
And this week one of you is gonna score $150 toward any pillow(s) in Plum Cushion’s Esty Shop, so on Thursday we’ll be wishing someone “Happy Cushion Shopping!” while the rest of you will score a nice little discount (so stay tuned for that). Here are all the freebie deets:
- PRIZE: $150 toward any pillow(s) in Plum Cushion’s Esty Shop
- TO ENTER: Comment on this post with the words “I’M FEELING LUCKY” and…
- BONUS QUESTION: … tell us about your lucky charms, rituals, routines or anything else you have/do to increase your luck. Oh, and we’d love to know if there’s a particular pillow that catches your eye.
- GIVEAWAY CLOSES: Wednesday, May 12th at 8pm EST
- NUMBER OF WINNERS: One
- PRIZE SHIPS: The lower 48 United States
- USUAL STUFF: One entry per e-mail address is permitted. The winner will be selected using random.org and announced on Thursday. Good luck!
Find more freebie info on our Giveaway FAQs page. Pics courtesy of Plum Cushion.
