Polar Vortex Survival: Toddler Safari


| Baby

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So you would totally think something entitled “Polar Vortex Survival” would include helpful hints about prepping and storing supplies, building an igloo and surviving on a diet primarily consisting of beef jerky.

(Who came up with Polar Vortex anyway? It sounds like a Gatorade flavor.)

But no, I live in Kentucky. Which means the polar vortex brings minimal snow and ice, conditions that northern states wouldn’t even blink at but make our fair city come to a screeching halt. I think at this point the schools will be in session year-round.

So we don’t really need to worry about being survivalists except when it comes to being stuck inside with toddlers all day. So E and I came up with this super simple game that can keep him entertained for a good portion of the day.

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You’ll need:
Some animals, pair of binoculars and one bored toddler.

He likes to pretend to “look for animals” so I made him some toilet paper roll binoculars. Then I made him close his eyes and count while I hid a variety of his animals around our first floor easter-egg-hunt style (so not hidden well).

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He would find them and take them back to the “Zoo” (he just put them in our toy basket). I made him find and return them one at a time so while he was out looking for more animals I could help a few”escape” and hide again. The game could have gone on forever. He loved it.

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Doodling = Total Site Redesign


| Bliss

So earlier in the week my husband had to work late so I ended up with a little bit of time after the boys were in bed. I wasted some time in the Bermuda Triangle known as Facebook, Pinterest & Instagram. One of my favorites to follow is LHCalligraphy. I could watch her calligraphy writing clips all day. There is even a “beginners kit” available in her etsy shop.

Watching all those beautiful clips inspired me to start doodling. Which led to this:

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I thought it was cute so I scanned it and converted it to vector artwork. So the of course I had to make it gold.

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Which led me to want to add it to this site….which meant a whole redesign over the past two days that I hadn’t even planned on doing. Talk about easily distracted.

Anyway it’s up now and I love it.

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My old design was fun for a while but overly fussy so I went in the complete opposite direction, clean and minimal. Plus now it’s responsive so it should work better on mobile devices (pretty and functional).

I’m still culling through old entries to make sure they work with the redesign so you may see some tweaks in the near future. Let me know if you see anything funky!

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Master Bedroom Mood-board


| Decor

So I mentioned before that our Master bedroom is my next decoration focus and when I say “focus” I mean for this week before I leave it half finished and start on something else. I might be easily distracted by shiny things.

Look! Pretty girly things!

JCrew & Michael Kors

You know what shouldn’t be full of girly things? Our Master bedroom since my husband should probably not hate it. And that, my friends, is what we call a segue. And now we’re back on track to the point of this post.

This is our Master bedroom now.

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I know, it’s gorgeous! Oh no wait…it is perfectly acceptable and functional but seriously boring. I feel like I need a nap. Although I suppose that could be the 10 + months of not getting a full nights sleep. It’s also very very brown. Brown floors, dark brown bed, brown furniture (that doesn’t match the bed) and worse there’s MORE brown on the bedspread.

 Here’s the caveat:

We want to finish our basement soon (soon=when we can afford it), so we won’t be making any major furniture purchases soon. So that means if I want to update our room I have to do it A) cheaply and B) mostly through accessories (but mostly A).

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There are a couple of things that won’t change. Those would be our giant bed and bed frame (aka “this monstrosity”). If we had a smaller bed we’d have more options for arranging furniture BUT if we had a smaller bed we would never get any sleep. Since I never get much sleep anyway (thanks Baby N), getting less is not an option. The bed stays.

Definitely getting rid of/reworking that artwork over the bed. Not sure what I was thinking with that…I think I was desperate to find something and it “matched” our bedding. I know. There’s no excuse.

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The other non-negotiable is that giant television (aka “the other monstrosity”) or “one of my husband’s most favorite things”. He was excited to get this for free so there’s no way it’s going anywhere – plus we do actually watch TV and our room so it’s going to stay right there. We COULD mount it on the wall but that’s pretty much our only option.

Funny story about that TV.

We got it for free from his sister right after we moved in. Then it kept coming on BY ITSELF (usually at 3 AM). It was the strangest thing. It would always come on with no sound so the light would wake me up. Or I’d come up in the evening and it would be on. So we started saying it was possessed. Maybe my husband was joking but I was considering asking our pastor could lay hands on it since it was starting to freak me out. Then we realized it was coming on when our DVR was recording and as long as we turned it off with it’s remote (rather than the cable remote) it would stay off. Needless to say I’m glad we don’t have a possessed TV.

Anyway, back to the task at hand.

A couple of other design issues are:
1) our lack of curtains (we do have blinds)
2) our end tables don’t provide much storage (so everything gets piled on top)
3) our teeny tiny lamps
4) and an excess of brown

Here are some of my favorite spaces:

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(could not find the original source for either of these…bummer…stupid pinterest)

And here’s my mood board:

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Clean, modern and peaceful. I’m loving neutrals with small pops of color. That’s what I’m shooting for since there is at least one crayola-colored plastic toy in nearly every other room of our house. This is also the one place we don’t have to worry about everything being too kid-friendly.

It also has to be husband-approved – so no excess of item that’s are purely shelf fillers. My favorite response to my husbands inquiries of why we need a ceramic bird/cute tray/fake lemons, “It’s decorative!”

Lastly, I want to make the space a bit more personal since it could be anyone’s bedroom right now. Monograms and our wedding photos along with a few other more personal touches might help. Although I guess I could just strew our underwear all over…that’s pretty personal.

So there it is…wish me luck!

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