Tag Archives: design

Quick Update: Weekend Projects

We arrived back from vacation with an action packed weekend planned.

Firstly, I am ecstatic about my first sale on Etsy. I finished making a custom order for chair bags (for 11 in. wide kids chairs).

The first picture is the actual color swatch which shows the true color, the second picture is the finished bag but the photo was taken in the evening light.

The other big project this weekend is the backyard – we are having a “working bee”, where friends come over and help us out with manual labor in exchange for food and drinks. The two walled levels are being put into the backyard as designed in the previous post. This weekend we should have the following update done to that post (cross fingers 🙂 ):

Additional steps over the next few weekends:

Order and get the wood (DONE)
Order and get the sand, gravel and dirt (DONE – except for the gravel)
Lay out the step walls (DONE)
Put in french drains behind each step (DONE)
Fill in with soil (DONE)
Order and install concrete step tops
Order and get sod
Add the additional vegetable garden (DONE)
Place the boarders for the vegetable garden path
Fill with stones

I will post photo’s on Monday on the progress of our back yard :-).

My projects, over the weekend is to try to make progress on the:

Four Season’s Quilt
Place mats
New Monster Designs

Designing Sean’s Playroom

We moved into our house just over 4 years ago, and we knew we were not going to use the formal dining room for that specific purpose. We made the decision to make it a playroom for our son.

Slowly over time, as he has grown (Sean is now 5), we have added pieces to this room to make it as functional and clean as possible.

The first thing I did to make it look more age appropriate, I hand cut safari animals decor (hippo, giraffe, elephant and lions) out of a very large roll of vinyl. I placed all of these as a border around the mid section of the wall.

The light is our favorite thing in the room. This light (coral pendant) is from a great New Zealand based designer, David Trubridge, who is based in Hawkes Bay where my parents reside. While we purchased this in New Zealand, his designs are now available in the US.

By the time Sean was 3 we definitely needed storage – my husband wants to give Sean the PlayMobile toys he remembers as a kid; myself, its Lego sets, and then Sean has a collection of Thomas the tank engine and rubbish trucks (garbage trucks). To store all these, we bought great Lack hidden mount shelves from Ikea, and storage boxes that we arranged in a stair design. This way we can use the tops as additional shelving. The storage boxes are eco-friendly recycled fabrics from Way Basics.

We bought the colors palette together with the stripped rug, which again was bought from Ikea (however in Germany).

The room has a great bay window for natural light and we use the area for his desk. This desk is from Land of Nod and has three levels and grows with Sean – we recently raised this table to the next level. It has a cool paper roll feature on the side.

The two bean bags in the room made by Beanz (a New Zealand company), can be used for both inside and outside. We use these all the time on the deck, for watching movies/TV in the lounge and for reading or relaxing in Sean’s playroom.

We added some of Sean’s art work on the wall, in bright-colored frames and alternating but matching colors.

The last additions were his cool chairs from West Elm with the homemade chair bags featuring safari animals, which were needed when we raised his table.

The best thing about this room, is by having a dedicated play room, we seldomly have toys else where around the house. They stay contained in this one room 🙂

Backyard Garden Design: Part 2

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With the weather now cooling – it is extremely pleasant in our back yard. It is the perfect time design and planning of our backyard.

Currently, our yard really does not have a whole lot of structure and the grass is not existent (just weeds). We have a finished deck, a vegetable garden (left side) and a play area (right side) all done. This is what it looks like – I love the trees

Our goal is just to enhance the area to the left and middle – by adding stone paths around the vegetable garden, two grass layers that step into each other and a circular area for entertainment or place to relax. The last one will be towards the back of the yard.

Here’s the design:

The grass step areas, I want to have concrete step slabs on the each, with slate tiles added into the grass for contrast and visual interest. Towards the bottom of this design, you can see the circular area which will be intertwined koru’s of grass and stone; and a seclusion wall around 2/3 of it. This project circular space will be a latter project. First of… is the layers and the stone path for the vegetable garden

We started the first steps this weekend.

Needed to re-stain the decks rails (DONE)
Mark and string out each of the layers (DONE)

Additional steps over the next few weekends:

Order and get the wood
Order and get the stones, gravel and dirt
Lay out the step walls
Put in french drains behind each step
Fill in with soil
Order and get sod
Add the additional vegetable garden
Place the boarders for the vegetable garden path
Fill with stones

I will post pictures as we make progress.