Ain't No Mom Jeans

Family-Friendly, Interior Design Considerations (And an Online, Home Design Giveaway From Curio Designs!)

Mamas, I'm so excited about this one!  The following article is a guest post from Allison Harlow (Lane's sister - yay!).  Allison is an interior designer and the owner of Curio Design Studio. Curio Design Studio offers interior e-design for mamas on a budget!  For $85(!!), Allison will help choose paint color (OMG I needed her help - remember these walls?  Nightmare), address space layout, give you some DIY ideas of existing furniture and pull together a shopping list of suggested additional decor.  Love this!  

For those of you with more serious design needs, Allison also offers a few other affordable packages ($185 - $255).  Check out her portfolio here - I'm loving the sophisticated little girl's room she put together.  The chalkboard table is gorgeous.  

In addition to Allison's savvy tips, she's also offering one reader a Classic design package.  For the record, I am jealous.  You can find out how to enter at the end of Allison's article, below.  

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 In order to achieve a modern, polished, yet family friendly interior you should always start by considering the following four design principles:

1. Is it Functional?

  It doesn’t matter how gorgeous your living room is if it doesn’t fit the needs of your family. Address function first!  For families this means storage, storage, storage!

Shelves as Storage

If you aren’t lucky enough to have existing built-ins, try using pre-made Ikea shelving. Ikea shelves are relatively affordable and easily customizable.

One example of customization is to simply add bold wallpaper to the back of the shelf to create interest (here are my current faves when it comes to wall paper):

Home Furniture Catalogs

Cool Ideas for Displaying Your Kid's Artwork

I am an art mom.  I am very definitely not a crafty mom, but art?  Art, I can do. 

What, exactly, is the distinction? In my mind, crafting makes a finished product and often requires some amount of skill (sewing, stitching, cutting in straight lines - all things I am incapable of), while art...well, art is messy.  And making a huge mess is something I have no problem with.  And something my husband (bless him) has learned to live with.

So it follows that we have tons and tons of artwork, in various phases of "finished"  floating about our small apartment.  And since Jackson Pollock is one of my very favorite artists....I obviously don't need a recognizable shape to love the art.  But, given the size of our space, we did need a cool way to display! My old method of scotch-taping-to-the-wall (see it in my previous post on easy Montessori-style shelves) just wasn't cutting it.  After much research, we decided on Ikea's Dignitet Curtain Wire System ($14.99) plus hooks ($4.99).  

NOTE:  Denver still doesn't have an Ikea, but we found the entire Dignitet system on Ebay for $30, including shipping.  Done and done.

But depending on your space (or the type of artwork to display)...you might want to check out some of these other cool methods for displaying your kiddo's work: 

 

Independence Building: Cheap and Easy (yet still cute) Montessori-Style Shelves for Toddlers

Several months ago, my husband and I attended a workshop about bringing Montessori methods into the home.  We went in not knowing a thing about Montessori...other than there seems to be quite a buzz about it among parents.  (Montessori or no? Are you Waldorf?  Play-based?)  

I'm the silly girl that still thought pre-school started at age 4.  Oops.

In any case, we learned a ton.  We learned enough to know that a Montessori preschool is probably not the place for our little guy...but we were both totally enamored with many of Montessori's independence building techniques, especially when implemented in the home.

My favorite tip?  To create a space, easily accessible to your toddler (think low shelves), that "beautifully" displays a small, not-overwhelming amount of his toys. THEN, get this, rotate the toys.  Which allows us to put away the vaast majority of crap toys into boxes out of sight (a necessity for a tiny space like ours), while still making the ones he's really into at the moment easily accessible. 

DIY: An Easy but Cool Outdoor Space for Toddlers (And Portable Enough for Apartment Dwellers)

M and I were recently interviewed by the Denver Post about how to keep the little ones entertained (but safe) at home.  You can read the full article here.  My contribution to the article centered on the transformation my balcony goes through each summer.

As many of you know, I live in the heart of Denver.  We live in a 2nd story condo, right off of a busy street, on an intersection that is the site of fairly serious accidents at least twice a year.  We have bums, I'm practically on a first-name basis with the 911 guys, and we live right across the street from an apartment building only known as "the crack house".  On the upside, you can find a liquor store merely by walking a couple of blocks in any direction, and porn 24 hours a day.  Sadly, most of the hookers have left.  

It's not what most people think of as an ideal environment for raising kids, but for us, it's home.  And one of the ways we've found to cope is by making the best of what outdoor space we do have: our balcony.

The trick to transform a balcony into a play space is that everything must be portable and easily washed.  One can't just hose everything off when it gets dirty.  And because the balcony sits right off the living room, I can't stand to get one of those plastic Fisher-Price sand and water tables -- I would end up poking my own eyes out, staring at that thing all day.  Not to mention that it's hard to store off-season.

So I've spent the last two years trying to find items that look cool, and are also portable, washable and store-able.  Lastly, I want to be able to quickly transform the space from a day-use play space, to a night-use dinner space.  Here's what I've found:

Step Into My Office: Toddler Parsons Desk

 I have this problem time and again.  Maybe you have it too.  I want to provide a fun, child-friendly atmosphere for my kids, but I loathe, loathe, loaaathe most children's furniture, design motifs and color schemes.  For the most part, they're just so bizarrely saccharine that they seem intentionally designed to assault adult sensibilities.  And, in my experience, despite lending that coveted daycare-exploded-in-my-living-room effect, they're under-appreciated by their target audience anyway.  

Modern Nursery Design - A Mod Toddler Room

So, you’re having a baby.  And you love hearts, teddy bears and pastels.  Congratulations, you’re in luck!  A lot of what’s out there in the kids’ design world is still pretty traditional.  But even though the last time I did this whole nursery design thing was only two years ago, I have been pleasantly surprised this time around by how many more options are out there for new ‘rents with less traditional taste.  And, having the experience of spending a year-and-a-half using my boy’s former gear and furnishings (now donated to babe no. 2), I knew where to cut corners and where to put my coin according to my tastes.

The Rocker
In an earlier post, as you may recall, I coveted the IKEA Karlstad swivel chair in Ullevi Orange.  Well, this is indeed the rocker that landed in my boy’s room and which perfectly complements his organic cotton Pixel Organics Lions Tigers & Kitties bedding.  This chair is everything I’d hoped and, with the addition of a lumbar pillow, is super comfortable.  Huck loves it, gleefully spins in it and it’s possibly the best story time chair ever with great elbow support for wide board books and the like.  The footstool adds seating for parental guest appearances (we’ve been using the divide & conquer method since Boy Wonder Too arrived so we can eat dinner together before 10 PM).