Hello! I’m finally back with a house related post! First off, thank you all for your incredibly supportive comments, emails and tweets for my post about returning to work. I’m trying to kick my ass back into gear and get back to regular posting and project-ing. Hopefully I stick with it because it’s therapeutic 🙂

I posted once before about trying to find a non-synthetic area rug for Easton’s room and many of you gave me great suggestions. It wasn’t extremely urgent since he didn’t move much, but now the kid rolls in his sleep, rolls on the changing table and pets the wall (?) and tries to catapult himself off of our laps. In conclusion, time for rug(s)*.

I found some online that were possibilities, but I wasn’t entirely comfortable making this purchase online. Minus the shipping costs, this rug had to be pretty and functional so that Easton had a nice cushion under him. The rug had to pass the fluff test.

Mike was in Montreal this weekend so I got to soak up a few days with Easton all to myself. Minus the lack of showers, it was some much needed momma and Easton time. On Saturday, we headed to the mall to get out a bit and I browsed Pottery Barn Kids since I still have some giftcards. There I saw a sale section with a light blue 5’x8′ rug. It was the Somerville rug and it was nice, fluffy, soft and worthy of petting. It was a solid blue with a subtle diamond pattern. It was made of wool, so it met my healthy nursery requirement. SOLD!

(via Pottery Barn Kids)

It was marked down to $280ish from $399 (cheaper than listed online!) plus I had 2 giftcards so we ended up paying about $150 for it. Once we got it in the room, Easton was impressed.

By those decorating rules that most interior designers say are meant to be broken, we probably should have gone with a bigger rug. The rug mostly floats in the center of the room, though it goes underneath the front of the crib. The problem with bigger would be that it would cover almost all of the hardwoods in the room, which we just installed and we don’t want to hide completely! Oh yeah, and an 8’x10′ rug is mucho dinero. 5’x8′ it is!

I actually like the size and that it gives the crib a red carpet effect… with a blue carpet.

I also like that there is a relaxing blue on both the ceiling and the floor. When I first started on this room, I thought it would be mostly light blue and green with some navy. Then I was afraid that ‘some’ navy wasn’t going to be powerful enough so I kept adding navy. Now the room is mostly light blue and navy and I love it. The last minute chevron crib skirt I made days before Easton was born was a total game changer for me in this room.

The size of the rug also makes for a nice little walkway on either side, especially in front of the changing table.

I take my shoes off whenever I go near the carpet to make sure it stays nice and clean for the monster. Sidenote: I almost never take my shoes off as soon as I get in the house. I like having all of my shoes in our closet and if they’re on my feet? One less thing to carry up at the end of the day.

Here’s a close up of the pattern of the rug. I love that it adds another geometric print to the room. It really makes it a room he can grow into with a few tweaks.

The crib is currently sporting a breathable bumper on 3 out of 4 sides and a spaceship sheet that came with the bedding set. I prefer a light blue sheet with the chevron crib skirt, but laundry had other plans. Or rather, Easton’s bodily fluids did. The regular spaceship bumper was removed once Easton was old enough to move around at night.

Oh wait, what are those tissue paper things on the wall? Well, they’re… tissue paper. I planned out a gallergy wall weeks ago and haven’t gotten a chance to hang it. I spray painted frames, ordered photos and made a few art pieces. Both art pieces had to be redone after I didn’t like them in the frames, some frames needed an extra spray paint and my shadowbox needs to be handpainted.  So as of now the gallery wall looks like this….

Once that is all done, the nursery is almost all done. We decided to hang some hooks that we already had by the door. That should take Mike all of 10 minutes and then maybe I can squeeze in the big reveal!

One last rug shot?

Mmm so cozy now.

* playroom rug shopping is underway as well!

ps- Just literally fell asleep 3 times while sitting up and writing this…Hysterical? Yes. Pathetic? Yes that too…

..Is my kitchen runner?

Remember this post around Valentine’s Day about how I wanted to order a runner to replace this shabby kitchen mat?

Well I pulled the trigger, the very next day, and ordered the Bogart Flat-Weave Wool Rug from Garnet Hill.

But when I ordered, I got this message.

Side note: I just noticed this, but how funny is it that they put this message the top of the email?

So my rug wasn’t going to ship until a month after my order, which was okay with me. This wasn’t an urgent-need-it-now purchase, plus I’m a patient person.

About two weeks ago, I remembered my rug was coming soon and got excited, then carried on. Last week I remembered it was being shipped, but I never heard anything about it. A few days ago, Mike looked at our kitchen mat with disdain and asked where the new one was. We were getting to that we-want-it-now point.

So today I decided to shoot Garnet Hill an email to ask if I would be notified when my rug was shipped. I wasn’t sure if a) it shipped and I wasn’t told or b) it just didn’t ship. They kindly responded to tell me that they didn’t know where my rug was, but their “specialist” would contact the manufacturer.

I began to get nervous….where the heck was my Bogart Flat-Weave rug??

Disney World?

Is there some sort of wait list for my rug that requires me to sleep outside of the Apple Store? Because I’ll do it.

Accenting one of the world’s wonders?

Transporting people to a whole new world (and therefore landing itself in another world)?

Experiencing Beiber fever?!??

Thankfully, Garnet Hill left me a voicemail later today to let me know that they’ve hunted down the manufacturer and my rug will be shipped tomorrow. Kudos to them for some great customer service.

Beiber is forgiven. As if I could ever be mad at him…

I mentioned last week that Mike and I were headed to Ikea over the weekend for some extra storage. I also had another mission in mind- an area rug. You were all very helpful in my past office area rug plea, but after painting the stripes, I decided I no longer wanted a patterned rug. This was one of the reasons why I started this blog, to chronicle the adventures of me changing my mind and rooms evolving 🙂 I just thought it would be a little much to have a large graphic rug with such dramatic walls. I remembered that when I went to Ikea looking for a patterned rug, there was a perfect color green solid rug. So my main reason for going to Ikea Friday night? To pick up that rug.

When we finally made it down to the rug section (who am I kidding, Mike and I go to Ikea so often that we fly through the upstairs in about 15 minutes!), I spotted the rug and ran over. It was marked as “last chance” and the only size left was the larger one, which was nearly 7’x10′. Right before we left, I measured out a 5’x7′ area and figured that would be a good size. I was fairly certain this large one would be too big, but it was a low-pile and the perfect color. Oh and it was $199. Seriously Ikea, every other rug you have is like $19.99, yet I manage to find a $200 rug?! The price scared me and the size scared me, but what scared me even more? The fact that it was “last chance”. Our dining room furniture was last chance and I wanted it for months. When we finally went to pick it up, we ended up on a wild goose chase to Brooklyn to find our table. “Last chance” brings back awful memories for us, so we decided to pick it up and if it was too big or we had buyer’s remorse, we could always return it.

So now we’re carting around a nearly 10ft rug when we once again walk by the Mongstad mirror I’ve wanted for years.

I have just been waiting for this thing to magically disappear, since every time we go and decide not to buy it, I feel like I’m playing with fire. We have an SUV now and we figured our desktops are 80 inches long and they fit, so maybe this would too? We measured the Mongstad and it was only 75 inches long with packaging!!! Score! Let’s bring that home too! Here we are with our carts of oversized purchases, that’s Mike in front of me…

We also got some doors for our Expedit bookcase, 2 white planters for the porch in the spring and some more storage boxes. We waited on line for.ev.er. Really we walked through the store and picked up all of this loot faster than this line moved.  We paid for our stuff and headed out to the car…

We put down the seats and start to slide the mirror in… it doesn’t fit. Wait wait! We can move our seats up a little! So we do. And it’s still sticking out of the back of the car. It’s about 25 degrees and windy, so I really don’t want to drive with my rear door open. Plus we couldn’t figure out where the heck to tie it down. We realized at this point that we are morons. The desks are much more narrow than this mirror and we were able to put them diagonally and push them up on our center console a bit. No such luck with this giant mirror. So we figure we’ll move our seats aaaall the way up just to get the mirror in and once we get the rear door closed, we can push them back a bit.

So Mike pushes the driver’s side seat up and I push the mirror in and close the rear door. I get to the front of the car and I see Mike, completely smooshed against the steering wheel, as if he is driving a clown car. I couldn’t hold it in, I doubled over with laughter. I asked him if he wanted me to drive and he said no, he just wanted to get out of the parking lot before someone saw him. I also tried to take his picture to insert here and he told me that he was suffering enough and did not need the moment documented on my blog for all eternity. I respected his wishes and will attempt to show you the ridiculousness of this situation with a picture of my own knees…

My knees are normally no where near the front of the car. I actually had to reach back to reach the cup holder. We laughed the entire way home and hoped that no one would stop next to us at red lights because we looked that ridiculous. I believe my seat was actually angled forward because by the time we got home, my back was killing me.

But I got my giant mirror finally!!!! 😀

On Saturday Mike cut holes in the office wall to hide the TV wires, but the power cord we had was too short so he had to order a longer one. I’ll take pictures of the much cleaner looking TV when the last wire is hidden! But we did install these guys…

We planned to go with white doors but when I saw these glossy dark gray ones, I couldn’t resist! Mike also drilled some holes in the backs of these to hide the Mac Mini and the battery chargers to our Shark Stick Vacs (every pet owner needs one!)….

So far I’ve only stuck a few things on this bookcase since I knew Mike would have to move it again this week once the new wire arrived.

Saturday night we rolled out our giant rug. Upon first roll, it was ginormous and I was nervous. We had to wiggle it under Mike’s desk since his computer was already hooked up, so we didn’t get that immediate feeling of the size. But once we rolled it out? It’s perfect! Macky obviously agrees!

He seriously did this about 2 seconds after we let him back in the room after rolling out the rug. He should be an Ikea spokesman…and yes he’s playing with a roll of frog tape, sign him up to sell that too! 🙂

Here’s a room shot from Sunday morning.

At least now the price doesn’t seem so outrageous for such a large rug! Really, I think any smaller would have looked funny and once we get chairs in there they will roll right to the back edge of the rug on either end. Speaking of chairs, we did stick to one plan…

We picked up 2 of these chairs I first spotted in Staples back in November. They were actually even cheaper than the “sale” price back then and we got them for $99!! The boxes were stacked on the floor in a display, so we were able to judge the size and thought they’d fit in the car. We almost had a repeat of Friday night, but thankfully we got them in…

We still have to put them together, but we’re almost there!

For those of you wondering what these fabric samples I posted yesterday were for?

Curtain panels and possibly covering some of the storage bins we have. I want something with some white, gray and green in it to bring everything together so I’m working on a solution 🙂

One last time for that Macky video!!

Isn’t he adorable?? 🙂