art for the kiddo's room

In college, one of my professors taught us about decorating in one of our classes and how it relates to fashion. Shirts/pants are the basics of the room, paint, sets tone of the entire space, etc. Jewelry was the artwork and the pizazz.

Gag.

But seriously about the artwork thing...if there's one thing I am not fabulous at, it's artwork and/or jewelry respective to their elements.

So artwork for baby has been sort of stressful. Hours have been spent on Etsy.com and perusing Spearmint Baby in hopes of being inspired.

It was hard, but I've done it. I've successfully decided on what goes up in this new room. Nothing too childish, nothing too adult. Enough education, enough color. All without having a hippo with a letter "H" plastered all over it in primary reds and blues.

First, I bought this alphabet poster from Etsy seller, Bibitty:

A designer/blogger that I follow (via the web) had a child a little over a year ago and put this poster in her daughter's new bedroom as well and I'd always loved it. I hadn't settled on anything else and still thought it was adorable so purchased it got. We framed it in an IKEA Ribba white frame and since the art itself is 16" x 20", it's sort of the "big piece" in the room and on our big art wall.

I then found a seller on Etsy who sold wooden cut out letters. We're not talking Hobby Lobby curly-Q letters here, we're talking modern typefaces in 1/2" thicknesses, stained, not painted or hodge podged or whatever else people are doing these days. I was in love. But I didn't want to pay $35.00 for something Paul and I could easily do ourselves. I opened my AutoCAD at work and sketched out the exact typeface for the letter "A" I wanted and printed it to scale. We purchased a 1/2" sheet of birch and I traced the letter onto the board from the stencil I made in AutoCAD and Paul went to work. After we got the letter cut out using the jig saw, we sanded it down with our power sander, applied a wood conditioner to it and then a coat of stain. And for $15.00 I got myself my letter A and I only had to wait for Paul to get motivated to cut it out, not shipping. Just kidding.

Paul slaving away over my "lets be cheap" antics and the finished product.

To finish off the wall above the dresser where the French alphabet poster and letter A are to go I decided to go with something more local. Although, you really don't get any more local than your own front porch and a jig saw, but by local, I mean Oklahoma City.

There is an Etsy seller, DeweyandWest, that is based out of Oklahoma City. I'd fallen on their Etsy site almost a year ago by mistake, liked their work and favorited their shop but never did anything else with it. A few months ago, we hit up the Plaza Arts Festival with some friends and as we were walking around, Paul mentioned briefly to me that he liked the art work sitting on the very end of one of the tables. I turned to look at it, and sure enough it was a Dewey and West print. When they're shop popped up on my Etsy a few days ago, I knew their work would be the perfect thing to tie the room together. So after a few conversations back and forth we got a custom listing set up and I got these beauties:

They sold me just the linen print, they didn't apply it to the wood block frame.

We're going to frame them in the same white IKEA Ribba frames (but square) to match the frame for the alphabet poster. Fabulous.

Oh and I went ahead and did this too. My frame isn't as sculpted as hers but when I found a frame at the RINK for $4.00, I couldn't pass it up. Ours is painted coral pink from a tester I got at Home Depot and then I covered in a coat of clear gloss spray paint.

Just for future reference, if you need chicken wire, it doesn't exist anymore. It's now called "Poultry Fencing". I want to know who felt it was necessary to change the name to keep the rest of the foul being corraled from getting upset and wanting to sue. I mean, those turkeys, they want to make sure they aren't grouped in the same category with chickens, I guess. There must be some serious political unrest going on with those birds.

Hopefully there will be more to come soon. Since things are starting to get crazy around here just getting the projects done is my number one priority. Blogging about them? Not so much, but I'll try.

elevator talk

Last week I needed to run up to the fifth floor to help a co-worker with a project. A year ago, I would have taken the stairs but these days I move too slow to go up three floors, so I made my way to the elevator lobby instead.

[Side note: The building I work in consists of a few other businesses but floors 1-5 are primarily my company. Anyone on my floor is an employee of the company I work for. We also all wear badges.]

Standing in the elevator lobby was a guy I had seen maybe once or twice before, he was wearing his Benham badge but I had no idea what his name was or what he did at our company. But by the way he was dressed, I was guessing some part of obscure management or someone who had at least been with our company for awhile. He had selected the down button.

Seeing as I had to go up, I pushed the other button and then we both just stood there in complete silence, waiting. All the while, he had never looked up from his Blackberry. (This is where that new "Really?" cell phone TV ad would have come into play well).

The elevator dinged, I looked up for the indicator and the elevator was going up. I hopped on and he started to follow me, still looking at his Blackberry.

I wanted to inform him that the elevator was going up and that if he didn't mind riding up a few floors first, then he could go down to one. But it didn't come at as informational, or helpful or even remotely cordial.

Christa: "I'm going up, do you mind?"

Unknown co-worker: "Geez, sorry." He hops off, the doors shut immediately and I'm left standing there with my mouth open feeling like a class A witch.

I meant, "I'm going up, do you mind riding up to the fifth floor first? Ya know, before it takes you down to one?" But no. No.

Instead it came out as, "This is my elevator, get off."

Cue mortified face and silent thanksgiving that it wasn't anyone who performs my yearly performance evaluation.

it's time to get serious

First of all, I find it ironic that a word that means "to reduce" is eleven letters long. Shouldn't words like this coordinate with their meanings or does the entire basis of oxymoron theory fall on this?

Secondly, I find it strange that someone felt the need to come up with a different word for cleaning (simplification, purging, etc.) for women who are pregnant. Other than the fact that it really is sort of a phenomenon that the desire to get things in order overtakes you, it's still the same thing: cleaning.

Whatever you call it, it's setting in hard around the Ryckbost house. The actual action has not happened yet, but the desire to start is huge. It's 3:00 on a Wednesday afternoon, things have been semi-rough this week and I really should just want to nap, but all I can think about is going home and breaking out the toilet bowl cleaner and purging my makeup box.

Please don't judge me when what's really going to happen this afternoon/evening is something more like this: I leave my office and head home to lay on the couch watching TV while the frozen pizza is warming up in the oven, the bathroom door in my peripheral vision, but don't worry, I won't be moving that direction because I know I won't have time to get it all done before we leave for church. And really? Why bother if you can't get it all done? 

But no really, I want to de-clutter, clean and purge anything I can get my hands on.

The kitchen? I want to clean out the refrigerator and wipe down every crook and crevice. I want to reorganize drawers and base cabinets and they were all just put together in May of this year when we remodeled.

The office? It doesn't need much purging as I took care of most of that back in September but the dresser needs to be painted and the desk needs to be skirted and on and on and on.

Oh and the bookshelves in the living room! Don't get me started on the bookshelves.

Unfortunately, time is not on our side. With family commitments, holidays, our last big vacation sans baby, church, doctor's and dentist appointments, weddings and showers of all sorts, the next seven weeks are pretty well spoken for. I printed a calendar today and penciled in my to-do items.

Did you read that? I penciled in nesting.

I sent Paul an email talking briefly about simplifying our life and typed the line "because some of the simplifying will involve you." His response back to me was, "You're letting me go? :)"

If I knew he'd be taking half the contents out of our little house with him, maybe.

I kid, I kid.

color: something from nothing or nothing from something?

Color Collective is a blog that I catch every day thanks to the genius of Google Reader. There's never any text, just photos and extracted colors. Photos of art, clothes, landscapes, objects, you name it she can pull colors from it.  

"So what?," you say? "What's the purpose in this?!"

Well, basically, it's like doing what I do, but backwards. Any type of designer or artist has to be able to create something from nothing, from white. To create a color palette that works and works better than what the average Joe-Schmo can come up with. It has to scream at you, it has to pop. People who do this go about it in different ways. Sometimes I have set color palettes before I start a project and then I pull materials and finishes using those colors. Other times I start with a solid white quartz counter that I like and run with it from there and see what I end up with. It's quite genius really. 

(Side note: that's the glitzy part of the job that I only do 15% of the time, after that I sit in meetings and in front of my computer making sure my vision becomes a  reality. And reality in my industry is not what people would consider so glitzy. I always think people would be shocked if they knew what I spent 85% of my time doing).  

Back to the glitz though. And why I love what this blogger does.

She takes something that someone has created and shows you why it works. She shows you what about the art, outfit or room that makes it flow and graphically stimulating. I know people probably think it's as easy as grabbing a color dropper in Photo Shop and clicking on colors, but I know it's not. I know it's more than that.

Everyday, I scroll through my reader and take a look. Some days I like the palette more than others but everyday I'm looking for something that reminds me of something I've done or maybe something I want to make work somewhere. And today I found it.

 

via Color Collective

The photo didn't quite catch my attention as much as the color palette did at first. Those are the colors of our baby girl's new room. Well, very close to them. I looked at the photo again and realized the style of her clothes, the scenery, everything about it worked too. The bright colors in an eclectic, feminine, somewhat European and whimsical combination without looking too childish way is what I want. It works. I love it. I mean, I still love it. Granted, the room is turning out a little more "vintage" shabby chic than I'd like right now but I think if I curb it now with some other purchases I'll be able to make it work.

So if you need some inspiration, check out her blog every now and again. You may just find the color combo that speaks to you.   

the "p" card, i try to use it sparingly

I wrote this about a month ago, I thought it got posted...alas, it did not. Why not post it now? PS - Paul brought me a cheeseburger and cheddar bites in the middle of that afternoon, he almost went with the French Toast Sticks too but he was trying to keep me from having a heart attack. Good man.

I slept for four hours last night and today all I want to eat for dinner is french toast with a side of cheeseburger, an order of cheddar bites and some sweet and sour chicken.

Don't judge, or I'll pull out the card. You know what card I'm talking about.