We made the decision a while back that Claudine would move into Mia’s room sometime this summer and that we would get bunk beds. Mia’s pretty excited about the bunk beds, but I’m not sure she fully understands the implications of what it means to share her room with her sister. Honestly, if we didn’t have all this stuff from our business to contend with, I think we’d leave things as is since Mia enjoys her privacy and sometimes shuts her door so that she can play by herself in peace. But being that we have boxes, ribbon, packing supplies, labels, etc. etc. stored and tucked into every single available crevice in the apartment, I think it’s time. Most people are amazed that the evidence of the business isn’t very obvious when they come over (we hide things very well), but I don’t enjoy sleeping over flat packing boxes stored under my bed. As you can guess, this storage dilemma has really tested the nerves of my OCD tendencies.

So aside from having to make decisions about redecorating Mia’s room to accommodate both girls, I’m really looking forward to having a dedicated space in which to store all our packaging materials and act as our shipping center. I’m fantasizing about flat drawers for storing our wrapping papers instead of having them rolled up and tucked in between the wall and a dresser, and little compartments for all our labels and ribbons, something like this (by the way, doesn’t the price tag seem a little expensive for Ikea, or is it me??) instead of having them stored in separate little boxes that we can never seem to find again. We’ll also store our printers, shipping scale and labelwriter in this room because if it’s one thing that I hate, it’s having to stare at printers and cables when I’m sitting in bed. The other great thing about this move? We won’t have to sneak into either of the girls’ rooms at night while they’re asleep if we forget to take a shipping or gift box from under their beds or closets before bedtime (one of any parent’s worst nightmares…sneaking into the room of a sleeping child, then having the child stare back at you with open eyes while trying to be all stealth about retrieving something from under the crib).

So as you can see, it’s a win-win situation for all. I figure by the time the girls are old enough to want their own rooms again, we’ll have our own space for the business stuff outside the home (I wish I, hope, I pray…)

It’s been humbling, to say the least, to be so sick for this long, but when I do start to recover it’ll feel like a fresh start and I will never take good health for granted. Ever. I was never one to make New Year’s resolutions, but I feel like that is what I’m doing now because being this inactive makes you itch to move, make and create again.

One of the things I want to do when we have a bit more disposable income to spend on the house is invest in some light fixtures. We’ve still got the standard ceiling light fixtures that came with the apartment, save for a cheap chandelier that we got at home depot in the kitchen because I couldn’t particularly stand the one that the kitchen came with (although the one we currently have is sort of out of sync with how the rest of the apartment has turned out). The main priority would be to get an electrician install a light above our dining table - in winter months I feel like we eat most meals in near-darkness. But while at Ikea the other day, we thought it would be nice to have a paper lantern light in Mia’s bedroom above her bed when we were browsing the housewares section. And so we bought the cord kit and the lantern, and installed it…but wait. Where the hell was the light switch? There is no light switch?? What the hell, Ikea???

After cleaning, organizing and decorating all week long, the photoshoot for the Japanese magazine took place this morning. I didn’t get to do as many Christmas crafts as I would have liked, but I did make garlands out of coffee filters after seeing it here, and made colorful felt garlands for Mia’s room. I also managed to sew a couple of throw pillows at the last minute from the fabric scraps I purchased at the holiday trunk show from Hable Construction. While the photoshoot ended up being a lot of fun, it was also a good excuse to clean the apartment from top to bottom and purge the place of baby toys and the changing table. I took a few photos during the shoot that are posted here because the issue won’t be out for another year, and maybe I was down on our place when I posted this because we were in the middle of Holiday! Cookie! Madness! and the place was piled high with cookies and boxes, but now that all of it is gone, I’ve decided that our apartment is pretty fabulous.

We have a new chair in the house today. And the upholstery choice was a bit of a surprise to me. I mean it’s velvet, blue velvet. I never imagined that I’d bring a blue velvet chair into the apartment, but well, something about it spoke to me when I saw it at the store. I knew that I loved the shape of the chair, and I knew that it was time to replace our Nurseryworks Storytime Rocker with a new one. While we certainly have some good memories in that chair, the kids started treating it like a swing and an amusement park ride. Mia was especially upset to see it go, but hopefully the couple who bought it from us will enjoy it as much as we did. This new chair can only seat 1, unlike the rocker which sat 1 adult and 1 kid comfortably, but I don’t mind that only 1 person can sit in the chair at a time (meaning, why do the kids have to feel like they need to cling and climb on me all the time?).

So here it is in our living room. I’m not convinced that it goes all that well with the rest of our stuff and I thought I recalled it being darker and not so blue, or the legs not being such a reddish brown, but this might just be a case of needing some time to grow accustomed to the piece, as it was with almost every new piece of furniture in the house. I do, however, like that it’s dark and hopefully won’t be such a dirt magnet that our old rocker was (”Mia, noooooooo! Step away from the chair! Not before you wash that tomato sauce off your haaaaaands!). But guess what? I forgot that velvet can be a lint attractor (ugh!), so ask me in a week if I still like the chair.

I was the first to wake up this morning despite the fact that I was the last to go to sleep. It’s amazing how well I can function on so little sleep (relatively speaking, of course). I’m not used to being the first up in our house so I thoroughly enjoyed the quiet living room, watching the sun stream in.

I often wonder how long we’ll live in this apartment. It’s been 3 years and while the first year was nothing short of a nightmare (and those who know us, know what I mean), the last two years have been most pleasant and I’ve even grown to love this place. It’s a new building in Brooklyn so it has no character or architectural interest what-so-ever, unlike every other place that I’ve lived, but we’re making it our own. Is it weird that I have no interest in owning a house? Aside from a backyard (that’s what my parent’s house is for), and perhaps an extra room so that guests don’t have to camp out in the living room, I’m perfectly content in an apartment building. We’re lucky that we don’t hear neighbors and we have enough space for now. I’ve seen quite a few friends leave Brooklyn the last 2 years, and I’m sure I’ll see a few more go, but we’re holding on to our life here. Besides, I’m not sure where we would even go.

I’m hearing rustling in the other rooms. We’ve got a busy day ahead, prepping for the Flea tomorrow, plus we have a few birthday cake orders going out. By the way, I think I’ve decided that I can become quite good at decorating cakes so as soon as I have some free time (ha!), I’m going to try my hand at flowers and piping icing. Fun!

Happy mother’s day. It’s sunny here and it looks like it will be a gorgeous day. We’ve got lots of moms here to celebrate with: Mark’s mom, who is visiting from Olympia, and my parents, who are here in NY, will be driving over to come visit us at the Flea and then have a family dinner. One of the side benefits of doing the Flea is the flowers that I’ve been buying for our table and then bringing home. I love having fresh flowers as part of the display and while I normally have done quite well spending under 7 bucks for yellow snap dragons, daffodils and freesias, I splurged yesterday on my favorite flower, peonies. Even though I love having flowers in the house, I never buy them because our cat likes to eat them, and well…it’s not a necessity in our strict budget, so it is a nice change to have flowers in the house.

Mark splurged a bit this week as well and bought 2 bottles of wine, which is was something that we cut out of our budget altogether when Mark became unemployed (and I know this sounds pathetic, but we had a one bottle a month rule even before then). And the girls just gave me a gift certificate for a pedicure at a local spa, another thing that I never do. We’re living large this week!

Mia’s collection of little pots lining her windowsill is suddenly bursting with cute little green sprouts. I swear she just planted these last week. I have no idea what kind of plants they are, but it’s making her quite happy to care for them and watch them grow.