New Rooms

As I mentioned in an earlier post, Mark and I are nesting. Yup, Mark is nesting too - more than me. He's so intent on organising and tidying and readifying this house that its putting expectant mothers the world over to shame. Admittedly this "get-it-done" attitude is just intrinsically in Mark's nature, but he's doing a mighty fine job, let me tell you. We've moved the boys into their new, amazing room and have pretty much sorted out the baby's room too, as well as sorting out the basement, now the family room/tv room/play area/guest room and tidying up a lot of junk that was hiding in plain sight in our dining room.

Before you look at the photos of the boys' room, I should explain a little. Mark works in downtown Toronto and we live in the west end of the city. The boys and I often drive east, towards the downtown core for various activities throughout the week and have spectacular views of the city as we drive along the lakeshore. Owen and William's favorite view is of the skyscrapers of our city, and most especially the CN Tower. For some unknown reason, they think their dear daddy owns that tower and works in it (perhaps for the same unknown reasons that their mother used to think her father owned the various hotels he managed in her childhood) and every single time we see the tower in our travels, there's a gleeful chorus of "Daddy's tower!" from the back of the car. Every. Single. Time.

So the CN Tower has been renamed Daddy's Tower forever now. And when thinking of the various ways in which to decorate the twins' room in such a fashion that it wouldn't be babyish, would grow with them and would be unique, as well as matching the red, white and black of their sheets and furniture, we came up with the design you'll see below. I'd had an image in my head for a few months and I have to say, Mark executed it exactly as I had envisioned it. Perhaps even better than I'd planned. The boys are absolutely thrilled and tell everyone about their new room. The photos were taken shortly after the paint dried and I moved their beds in, but not the rest of the furniture, so the room looks a little sparse. But trust me, its great. I'll try to remember to take a photo from the other side tomorrow so you can see the artwork we have on the walls and our storage system as well. In the meantime, have a peek!

Mark beginning to tape out the design with eager observers asking many questions and offering helpful advice.

Work in progress - it took him two and a half hours to tape everything before painting. Mark's such a superstar.

Finished product with two happy campers giving the thumbs up! Cool, huh?

And then we have the little girlie's room...

Thankfully we didn't have to repaint, since we'd chosen a nice warm yellow when we decorated for the boys. I found some great vinyl stickers for the wall at Michaels (sorry that I didn't go with your very cool products, Jen, I just didn't get organised enough to order them from you!) and had a lot of fun cutting and arranging and sticking them to the walls last night. I'm thrilled with the way it looks and very happy to have my Bobine's many, many, many bags of gorgeous donated clothes put away at last. Basically, we're as ready as we'll ever be for this munchkin. Now if only she'd turn herself over...

A little bit of pink at last

New shelving above the change pad...very handy. Actually, its not new, just new to this room. Mark is happy to finally have a place to put these shelves that have been sitting in the basement since we moved here.

The president of our co-op nursery school has two daughters and she very sweetly offered me the gorgeous pink blanket you see on the back of the crib - its very soft and in such amazing condition, I'm a little nervous to get the inevitable spit-up on it. And the pink bunny is from Auntie Amber. The boys got it out this morning and brought it into our bedroom to show the bump and tell her all about it and how much fun she was going to have playing with it.

This kid already has so many clothes, I think I'm going to have to change her three times a day just to make sure we try everything once. I've been so lucky that Amber and another friend Mel have donated their beloved girls' clothing to me. Note the bags and bins on the bottom left of the photo - those are ALL the other clothes I haven't put away because they're sizes 6-18mths and my drawers are full with the 0-6mth stuff. Like I said, she's got a lot of clothes.

And here's the other side of the room. I still need to swap those two pictures on the wall for something else and hem the straggly curtains we cut last year in an attempt to stop the boys from pulling them into their cribs, but that can wait until later. We put the futon here as extra sleeping space for guests (the baby will sleep in our room for a bit, so if we have an abundance of visitors, someone can sleep here) as well as for middle-of-the-night situations that might need us to sleep in the room with her - no more sleeping on the floor for me like I did when the boys were in here!