Posts Tagged ‘crib’

When we vacationed in Jost Van Dyke earlier this year, I realized that I really want a room with a view.  Waking up, and falling asleep, to magnificent water views was not only incredibly relaxing but inspiring.  There was no need for a television or fancy decor in this room to keep us entertained.  The views were plenty; the sounds, too.

So it was no surprise that when I stumbled upon Jack Dorsey’s New House in San Francisco on home-designing.com, my eyes (ok, my wide open mouth, too) were fixated on the views this property has.  Jack Dorsey is a co-founder of Twitter and he picked up this cliff side house for a cool $9million in San Francisco.  It has views of the San Francisco bay and the Golden Gate bridge.

Jealous, I am.

If you’re looking for interior shots, head on over to home-designing.com. Until then, here are some of the incredible views.

Hopefully that SongMeanings IPO takes off one of these days and we’ll be able to live in a house with spectacular views quite like these.

Welcome To My Crib

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Posted by Rebecca, March 26th, 2012

At my baby shower two weeks ago, we learned that Mike’s brother and his wife secretly bought our crib for us, yay! Last weekend, they dropped it off and this weekend we finally had a chance to put it all together. In case you forgot, we chose the Stratford crib by Baby Appleseed for it’s solid wood, formaldehyde-free construction.

When I looked at the box, I was a little surprised to see this sticker on the outside.

First I was a little taken back. I had specifically emailed Baby Appleseed to ask if the crib was a) solid wood and b) formaldehyde free. They assured me that both were true. At first glance, this sticker makes it seem as though there are some non-solid wood parts and that the crib does contain formaldehyde (though it meets California’s strict emissions standards). I emailed them again (they must hate me by now) and asked about the sticker. I was assured that what they told me was indeed true and that the sticker is required by law and put on all furniture pieces. Now I can sleep a little deeper at night and be sure that I’m not lying to my blog readers about my solid wood, formaldehyde-free crib.

Anyway, back to the crib all assembled!

We love the way it looks against the paneled wall with the dark/white contrast going on.

And with the blue ceiling.

And the gray walls, which was a major concern when we were choosing a paint color. We’re so happy that everything is coming together the way we envisioned it.

The crib will probably end up pushed to the left so that we can fit a glider on the same wall. If that glider ever goes back on sale at Babies R Us. I’ve been stalking it daily and it hasn’t been on sale since we first spotted it! Anyone know when big sales are at Babies R Us? Best coupon times? Anything?? It was $450 for both pieces when I first saw it and now it’s $600.

Besides the glider, everything seems to be falling into place. I placed the bedding in the crib to see how it looked with the paint and everything and it looked great. I was nervous because it has brown in it, but the walls are grayish and I wanted to be able to mix the two neutrals well. Also, we bought a dresser this weekend and I’ll have to fill you in on that later this week. We are also debating our nursery light fixture since we found another one we like, but that discussion is still in the air.

On top of all of that, we’re still in the midst of our mower and mulch search and we came to a bit of a sad realization regarding our family room carpet this weekend. Let me just say that life with a cat who is recovering from kidney cancer is not fun nor easy, though he’s doing unbelievably well. I’ll fill you in on all of that once we know a little bit more.

In conclusion, things are not slowing down around here anytime soon!

ps- Anyone hiring cats? It’s about time these guys pull their weight around here…

The Crib Search

149 Comments

Posted by Rebecca, January 17th, 2012

Finally, I’m going to write this all out. I warn you that it’s long and not very full of pictures…

From the minute I found out I was pregnant (okay even before), I knew a solid wood and as eco-friendly as possible crib was on my list. It was the number one nursery priority along with an organic mattress.  I understand that I cannot protect my baby from every little chemical in this world, but I felt like the baby’s sleep zone was a good start. In the world of eco-friendly vs. non-eco-friendly, it seems as though you have to be one or the other. I prefer to take the stance of choosing what is important to me and doing the best I can.

Repeat, I do the best I can.

Things like formaldehyde and toxic stains and glues are scary to me. Cotton is not so scary and clothes are washable, so I don’t feel the need to organic-out my baby’s entire wardrobe. Strangely though, I often just like the look of organic clothing more than not. Like DwellStudio’s organic layette collection…

(via DwellStudio)

 I love DwellStudio in general but I particularly love their baby lines. Mmmm.

Anyway, I started our crib search on the good old internets, world wide webs. One thing I learned about baby things is that choosing them is about 90% research and about 10% walking into a store. So I googled and found various articles about what to look for in a crib. One consistent theme was solid hardwood.

MDF and particle boards are often held together with toxic glues. The glues can omit fumes over time and considering that babies spend a good amount of their first, impressionable years sleeping, I’d rather not have those fumes. I made solid wood the #1 priority in finding a crib and started with that.

I found myself becoming extremely frustrated that many brands did not blatantly say whether their cribs were 100% solid wood or not. Of course there’s Pottery Barn, Restoration Hardware and Land of Nod (Crate & Barrel’s kid store) that boast solid wood furniture, but they cost $700+ for a crib. I heard that DaVinci cribs sold by Babies R Us were 100% solid wood, but I couldn’t find it stated on their website. You would think that such a selling point would be screamed from the rooftops “HEY NEUROTIC NEW PARENT, THIS CRIB IS SOLID WOOD!” Though I did catch many brands use terms like “solid wood with MDF parts”, which I took as a no thanks. Needless to say, crib hunting has been one of the more tedious of the baby product huntings I have taken on in the past several weeks.

Oh yeah, another the thing about finding a healthy (or least toxic) crib…it’s still a piece of furniture that you have to like, right? Many of the eco-friendly cribs are unfinished since paints and stains typically have some VOCs. But I don’t want an unfinished crib, I want a dark stained crib. So here I was, like a balancing scale, weighing style, safety and cost.

I started reading some threads on eco-friendly message boards and found some brands. I believe I googled “DaVinci cribs solid wood?” to find a discussion that mentioned that DaVinci was made by Million Dollar Baby. BAM! Starting point. So I went to the Million Dollar Baby website. Sure enough, solid wood, non-toxic finishes and I loved the Annabelle crib….

(via Million Dollar Baby)

 I googled the name of the crib and found that it was retailing for about $350… yay affordable! So I hunted down a semi-local retailer… okay it was in Delaware. Which sounds far but it’s really less than an hour from us since we live fairly south these days. I figured during one of the days between Christmas and New Years we could take a nice little ride there so I could pet the Annabelle crib in person. Nice little ride turned into pouring rain, traffic, a nasty soda from Wendy’s which left me dying of thirst and a whole lot of disappointment. The store was not as appealing as it seemed and guess what? They had just taken the Annabelle crib off the floor that week. I literally walked around the store for about an hour wanting to like another crib but not a single one was my style. Not. One.

I wouldn’t say the entire experience was a waste though. From the sales person, I learned that every single crib on their floor was solid wood. Some were around $300 and some were more than $1,000. There was one I was so-so about and figured if I found nothing else, it would work. I took some flyers with some brands as further jumping off points as to which companies used solid wood in their cribs.

As I hung my head and got back in the car (soaking wet) to sit back in traffic, we decided to stop at Buy Buy Baby on the way home. Very early in our crib search, we had seen at least one crib there that was listed as solid wood. I figured I’d go look at that one again, even though it was about $500. We walked around Buy Buy Baby reading tags and saw that the some of the brands sold in the smaller, family owned store we just went to were also at Buy Buy Baby. Namely, the crib I put on my “if I find nothing else list” which was the Bonavita Hudson crib…

(via Bonavita)

Then we spotted this one crib that caught our eye because of the way it looked. It was traditional, yet modern. When we looked at the tag we saw that it was made out of 100% solid wood. The company also plants 10 trees in a location of your choice for each crib purchased. Hello eco-friendly! And the best part? It was $299.

It’s the Stratford convertible crib by Baby Appleseed (yes, that’s a crappy iPhone picture of the info sheet I took from the store). We wanted a dark wood crib, but not cherry colored. Originally, I wanted something with solid panels on the back or sides but I decided I’d rather have something convertible, which solid panels on the sides are not. I initially liked very straight lined cribs, but as I looked at them in person and realized that we would be doing very straight lined molding around the room, I warmed up to the idea of a curved back. It seemed that this crib had the best of everything—slightly curved back, but straight front and legs, convertible yet solid panel in the front. Safe, eco-friendly, stylish, affordable? Sold.

The downside is that it’s sold in store only and I cannot find any decent pictures of it online. Guess you’ll just have to wait until we get it (or go to Buy Buy Baby again and snap a picture of it). We’re probably going with a Hemnes dresser from Ikea to round out the room, either in the brown/gray color or painting it a gender-specific color. We’re planning on going with a non-rocking Ikea chair and with that, all of the furniture in the baby’s room should run us under $1,000. Not bad, considering I was ready to accept the fact that I’d be handing over nearly that much for a solid wood crib 🙂

Ps- for anyone looking for some solid wood brands I came across here are a few in a quick list…DaVinci (who also makes the very popular Jenny Lind crib), Bonavita, Baby Appleseed and Million Dollar Baby (manufacturer of DaVinci)

Baby Swagg

2 Comments

Posted by Rebecca, January 12th, 2012

My husband finally joined Pinterest after trolling my account for months. One of his very few boards is titled “Baby Swagg”, which literally cracked me up when I saw it. He’s sitting on Pinterest pinning baby items and still pretending he’s Jay-Z…

Speaking of Jay-Z and the giant elephant on the internet… his baby with Beyonce, I spotted a picture of the crib they chose for their little Blue Ivy (Ivy Blue? BIC? Whatever they’re calling her these days). It’s made of lucite and costs $3,500.

(via NurseryWorks)

I’m kinda not getting it. I’m not a big fan of lucite to begin with, so it’s definitely not my style. Though I can appreciate how the brightly colored sheet appears to be floating in this picture…

(via NurseryWorks)

We did decide on a crib and I was going to give you the play by play of our decision, but I’m dying (cue the drama) of carpal tunnel pain at the moment and I think the story is a little too wordy for me tonight. So instead! I shall leave you with pictures of the famed Beyonce birthing room.

(via TMZ)

Now, I’m not one to care for celebrity rumors. Sure I’ll read them, but I didn’t think any differently of Beyonce and Jay-Z with all of the stories floating around because they were simply…just stories. I wasn’t there, so who I am to judge?

The hospital has supposedly confirmed that these are pictures of the executive birthing suite that is available to anyone willing to pay. Uhh how do I get me one of these? You know, without selling my house.

(via TMZ)

I think it would be easier for me to give birth if I had some beautiful furnishings to look at, don’t you? Maybe I’ll go play the lottery 🙂

Christmas Wish List 2011

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Posted by Rebecca, December 15th, 2011

Last year we made a list of things the house would ask Santa for, if House Santa existed (we all know that regular old Santa exists!) We still haven’t decorated anything around here since Mike was sick this past weekend and I’m still working on school stuff. In fact, Christmas is 10 days away and I still have no clue what I want (I just asked my family for gift cards). Totally unprepared this year, but of course, we could always use things to work on this house! 🙂

Here’s our budget-less wishlist for this year:

1. A table saw

(via)

For all of the things we want to build around here, our little circular saw isn’t going to cut it (no pun intended). We want some bookcases and a bench in the new office, as well as a built-in bench wedged in the bay window of the new playroom.

2. Headphones Rug from Pottery Barn Teen

How awesome is this? And how appropriate would it be in our office (aka- SongMeanings/Lil House Headquarters)? I feel like we need to find somewhere to put this…

3. Kreg Jig

(via)

All of those things we want to build in #1? Well this thing would surely come in handy for some of them!

4. A maid.

(via)

Come on, there’s an unlimited budget with this list and with everything going on, House needs a cleaning! Also if the maid could fold that basket of laundry that’s been hanging around since Sunday, that would be fabulous…

5. Ikea Ekenas Chair

This list wouldn’t be complete without some Ikea! We spotted this chair in person in the gray-brown color a few weeks ago and I immediately liked it. We’re hoping to get one for the nursery, more about that decision another day 🙂

6. Horses

(via)

Okay not that type of horses, I mean these ones…

(via)

Yeah we want a lot of tools since we don’t have much to make the bookcases and such we plan to. But back to that first horse picture! Our house is supposedly built on a former horse farm (evidenced by the old fence at our property line). Maybe 5 houses down, the property that backs those houses is STILL a horse farm so they have horses in their backyards! Granted, I don’t think I’ve ever really met a horse, but I love animals and I want a horse… or two… or five.

7. Million Dollar Baby Crib

I’ve been researching for a solid wood crib with a non-toxic finish, which is sadly hard to find. Then I discovered Million Dollar Baby, which makes solid wood cribs that not only meet, but exceed all federal regulations. The picture is the Annabelle crib, which I love, but we’re still planning on taking a trip to Delaware to check them out when we have more time.

8. Dremel Saw-Max

Okay I admit to having no specific reason for wanting this other than I saw the commercial and it looks awesome! I mean, a pregnant woman who wants a table saw for Christmas is a little weird, but a pregnant woman who wants this nice little handheld saw? Still weird, but slightly less.

It’s strange that I can’t really think of any more decor items I want. Most of the things on our makeover list to-do list include using things we already have, hanging some frames and pictures and lots and lots of molding! Other than the nursery furniture (which is still so up in the air), we’re looking a little DIY heavy around here as opposed to decor heavy. But that’s okay, Santa likes tools too, right? 🙂

ps- in case you were curious as to what we’ve checked off our last year’s list, here’s an update…

  1. Delta Pilar Touch 2O Single Handle Pull-Down Kitchen Faucet
  2. Nail gun
  3. Dash & Albert area rug …We bought a green Ikea rug instead
  4. A king sized mattress…Still desperately want/need more than ever now!
  5. Large White Drum Pendant Light…Still want (entryway brass is still hanging..)!
  6. Tool bench/storage…Still want (we have no where to put the tools on this list)!
  7. Some Apple Art… Still want!
  8. Snowblower
  9. Ikea Mongstad Mirror  Though we still haven’t put it in our bedroom!
  10. Custom paintings from Dog House Pet Portraits
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