My Current Obsession - Notebooks

Ever since receiving my first diary with a lock, jotting down bits and pieces of my everyday life has been a part of me.  It probably started with the urge to write down something secretive, to justify having a lock on my diary.  Maybe I rode my bike on the road when my mom specifically urged me not to, or bought bags of chips and hid them under the bed...  I got busier at school, so the entries were less frequent but more dramatic, or so I thought at the time. Then I got busy dating, getting married, having a kid...  yup, blame it all on the hubs.  Eventually my full-blown storylined journal turned into a pregnancy log, consisting of a sentence or 2 of how I felt that day.  Through my pregnancy and the first year of little man's life, I had the ugliest business looking agenda to keep a log - how much he ate, how long he napped for, poopy diaper or not. Then I got some nicer agendas to jot down some notable events through his daycare years.  

But wait, suddenly he started talking and was saying the funniest things!  We love documenting the progress of our home projects, but we're parents to this cute little monster foremost.  We definitely can't miss taking note of HIS progress!  I figured I needed something nicer than agendas to jot down his sayings and our conversations.  Something that would be worthy as keepsakes.  This was when my obsession with notebooks started...

I wanted to keep the notebooks in my purse to record our funny conversations whenever I have a moment.  My mission was to hunt down notebooks that were small and light.  I found my agendas too heavy to lug around, so I would forget those funny moments when I got home!  I also looked for notebooks with a somewhat durable cover, since I would be carrying the notebooks in my purse.  Of course, I wanted the notebooks to have nice, keepsake-worthy designs.  

Sources:  1. / 2. fuchsia/ gold polka dots / 3. diamond/ green wave/ letters / 4. 

The popular notebook brands that I came across through my search include Kate Spade, Lilly Pulitzer, and Jonathan Adler, just to name a few.  I love Kate Spade home decor accessories, so naturally I've also come to love the gold foil designs on her journals.  The artistic and summery patterns of Lilly Pulitzer and the bold graphics of Jonathan Adler are all apple of my eye...  but the notebooks were too big.  They would look great in an office vignette though!

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Some of my lunch hours were spent at Indigo or Papyrus.  Who doesn't feel like they're at a candy store at their stationery sections?  I always get a boost from checking out some beautiful stationery.  And then I saw these...

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How incredibly cute is this notebook?  5 years in one place!  And it would look so cute at my bedside table or on my desk at the home office...  Then again, I realized it looks nicer ON THE TABLE, but too bulky in my purse.  Mission failed... 

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There's of course Moleskine, but I'm looking for something more than just notebooks.  But then I found out they make a set of 12 monthly notebooks.  However, I didn't like how half of the notebook were of conversion charts and whatnots that take up too much space.  So I had to forgo that idea.  Though they would look so cute yet sohpisticated on open bookshelves.

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And through some more searching, I found FIELD NOTES.  They're exactly what I'm looking for. Small sized notebooks with somewhat durable covers.  I liked the fact that they offer different designs and themes for each quarter of the year, totally made for suckers like me.  Their notebooks usually come in a set of 3 in a series of quarterly designs, which work out to be around one per month for my light entries.  Just perfect, and I have about half a year's worth of silliness in these notebooks now!  Check out their latest designs here!

Even though my quest has seemingly ended, I'm still constantly infatuated by cute notebook designs.  I couldn't believe that I didn't know about May Designs sooner!  Their notebook covers are so on trend and sophisticated.  Better yet, they can be personalized with monograms or emblemed titles.

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All of their agendas and notebooks are one size of 5"x8".  They're also quite thin, so it's suitable to be carried in the purse.  Yet, just an agenda a year isn't enough to satisfy my want of their beautiful designs!  I love the Nantucket collection, and I think the whole suite would be nice for journaling through the summer!

I would love to get little man to start on a journaling habit when he gets older.  This would be a perfect choice for him.  

Sources:  1./ 2.

I got his daddy the Darth Vader and Son hardcover book.  The two Star Wars fans had a blast going through the pages of parenting jokes together.

Kids grow up too fast (though admittedly, sometimes not fast enough), and there are too many things worth noting.  Keeping a notebook handy in my purse has helped me quickly make these minor events a part of our memories.  Mother's Day is coming up, these notebooks would be a perfect idea for those moms who are keen on memory keeping.  In the purse or on the table, they're all beautiful and durable.

I love flipping through these notebooks (and agendas), and I hope little man will learn to treasure them in time.  You never know, I may need these notebooks in the future to remind me of these cute moments...  like The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks. 

Do you document your child's progress and funnies?  How is it working out for you?

How We Put Together the Nursery

I received another birthday party invitation from little man's school buddy the other day, and I realized how his buddies' birthdays are around April-June.  Most of my friends' kids have birthdays around August-November.  Attending birthday parties is like a once a month activity, if not more often.  Curiosity got the better of me, and I googled about the most popular month(s) of birth.  It turns out that summer babies are the most popular, and in particular, August babies... so you work back 9 months, and most couples were pretty busy in November...  That's what goes through my head when people tell me when they're expecting their babies!  *wink*  

And so it got me thinking back to my expecting days...  Our little man was a Fall baby.  By this time of that year, we had our nursery pretty much all planned out.  Couldn't help it, we were THAT excited!  If you're having a summer baby, you should be well on your way with baby equipment purchasing and of course, planning around the nursery!  No pressure...  if you still need some ideas, read on! 

The nursery was probably our first DIY home project back in our previous home.  This was the first trimwork project that the Mr. took on.  Adding the chair rail was a huge project in itself that made a huge difference.  By huge I mean the trim was all hand-cut and manually nailed-in - the Mr. didn't think he would be doing much wood work in the future and didn't want to invest in electric cutting equipment.  (Now he's probably cursing, "what the heck was I thinking?"  Little did he know that he would be doing all sorts of DIY projects in our new house just 2 years down the road from then!!  Like this and this!) 

We painted the walls above the chair rail in Benjamin Moore's Robin's Nest.   I absolutely fell in love with the colour as I saw it used in a makeover of a teenage girl's room.  I showed the magazine picture to the Mr. and demanded that our baby's room be painted in this colour.  (Yes I already drove him nuts with all my picture-bombarding in the pre-pinterest days).  Even before knowing I would have a boy, I wanted it blue.  It's just such a lively colour and yet so pure.  I really didn't care if I were having a girl, she was gonna live in a blue room!  But a whole room in that colour would seem a bit too much, and that was why we had the chair rail to give it a break.  Below the rail, we painted a sandy beige to sort of tone down the colour a bit.

Our next project was putting up the sticker wall mural of birds and cherry blossoms that we got from IKEA.  I loved how the grey went with the blue wall...  but then, a day later, we noticed some of the stickers started peeling off.  Being the pregnant me, all I could think of was there was ABSOLUTELY no way I would be picking up stickers from my baby's crib through the life of this room!  And so I started doing the unthinkable...  

Fed up with rubbing in the stickers back on the wall, I took a pencil and outlined the stickers. Guess what, we handpainted the wall decal.  Nothing against IKEA, we love our IKEA hacked dressing room!  Maybe it was for the better this time...  

We used a high gloss version of the colour that's a tone lighter than the walls, and I liked the softer look of this over the grey stickers!  The IKEA light fixture compliments the whimsical wall quite well.  

Next up, we put in floating shelves on the opposite wall of the crib.  They were set up in stepped format to add some visual interest.  One thing to remember if you are installing shelves above the changing table, just make sure you're only putting soft items (eg. cloth books, stuffed toys, etc.) on them.  You don't want to risk any heavy items falling on your precious one...  you can never be too safe!

Thank goodness for the comfortable armchair, where I sat nursing him most days.  You definitely need a chair with arms, which lend support to your aching neck/ shoulder/ elbow/ wrist as you nurse your baby.  That was also where I rested, with my legs on the ottoman for a breather...  if I was even lucky enough that he would nap for 10 minutes in the beginning (and where I sat MSN'ing my new baby forum buddy, who was also trying to get her baby to nap longer...  oh the things we moms do!)

An important piece of furniture that is not in the picture was a side table that we had beside the armchair.  Of course you would need a spot to put the bottle, a night light, and other knick knacks!  It came in a dark wood colour, but we painted it with the leftover paint of the wall mural. Little man now has it as his bedside table, on which he has a Spiderman clock =)

Kudos to my dear Mr. to have done such a fantastic job on installing the extras and painting the room.  It was where I spent countless hours in the first few months of little man's life nursing him and trying to get him to nap.  Sometimes I wondered if I would ever get to leave the room, with his cycle of changing diapers, feeding, playing, napping, and crying.  Hey, if you're going to spend hours of your day in the room, might as well make it pretty right?

Now that little man is more than half of my height, I think it's time we start his big boy room project.  We've converted his crib to a double bed, where he's spoiled to be able to sleep slanted in every which way.  We have a new colour palette in mind, and I think we may need to do some furniture painting...  and I LOVE these rug tiles for his big boy room!

Are you ready for your baby's arrival?  The Mr. and I agree though, that nobody will be 100% ready for a newborn.  Do you have a theme for the nursery?

Basic Pieces of Our Hall Table

Looking out the window, blowing snow and all (in the middle of April??), I don't think my previous post on a spring dining tablescape warded off Mother Nature's winter spell.  Can you believe there was a 28C (82F) degrees difference between these 2 days?   Stop teasing us, and let there be spring already!  On a happier note, I have some exciting news to share!  You may already know about this if you follow me on instagram.  I submitted our dramatic dining tablescape for One Kings Lane's instagram event of #homespringhome. Hubby and I were so delighted that our tablescape was chosen and featured on One Kings Lane's instagram!

Continuing with our spring discussion, our entryway table is definitely ready for it!  The eggs have been laid, so to speak, just in time for Easter.

Soft colourful floral arrangement, easter eggs and nest adorn our baby blue ceramic tree trunk table.  These are the seasonal accessories that we change out of our basic pieces.

Think about fashion for a minute, your wardrobe should have some key pieces.  A crisp white shirt for work, little black dress for those special occasions, and the list goes on.  These can be all-year-round pieces, and you can spice them up for different seasons with jewelries, colour of your bag and shoes.  Any tablescape can move forward in a similar fashion.

The basic pieces on our hall table are the large vase, the glass display box, and the chrome tray. We change out seasonal items in our basic pieces, eg. In Winter/ Christmas season, I would put some glass ornaments in the glass display box, and some pine cones and berries on the chrome tray.  Whether or not the change is done in time is another story...  (It's quite time-consuming and tiring being a hockey mom...  to a preschooler.)  The clock is there to stay because we need to know the time as we rush out the door EVERY morning!

Changing the floral arrangement is quite a hassle (actually, I'm just lazy), so this is usually here to stay for the spring and summer.  This was my DIY project, and I scoured the internet for real-looking faux blooms.  Many of these came as a bouquet, which I just cut them apart with pliers and snips.  I could've easily stopped at just the flowers, but the hall table is under an "open to above" ceiling, and faux branches of cherry blossoms brings the arrangement more proportional to the high ceiling.

As I mentioned in my "Coffee Theory" of tablescapes, with a grande size main piece, the other accessories on the hall table should be more airy.  The half-opened glass display case is perfect in this sense.  The see-through open top gives the vignette an illusion of height, without taking away the importance of the floral arrangement.  It also marks its territory on the table to balance out the grande presence.  Without this piece for mid-height real estate, there would be too much of a distance between the height of the floral arrangement and the other flat pieces on the table.  That will look too much like David and Golliath.

So now, let's get the eggs crackin' and bring on spring!  Happy Easter and enjoy whatever activities you have planned with your family over the upcoming long weekend!

What are the basic pieces on your hall table?  Do you re-dress them seasonally or are they set for life?