Decorating with Toddlers, A How To

First of all, I want to dedicate this post to the innocence lost in this country last Friday morning.  Such a painful loss reminds those of us that are lucky enough today to hold the warm little hands and kiss the soft sweet skin of our most precious gifts that we need to do it more often.  

In honor of the innocence and joy our children bring, I'm going to move on to the point of my post today, which is decorating with several toddlers scurrying about your home.  It's a tough yet creative job, which they truly love to help out with most of the time.

This is our hearth room.  We purchased two very inexpensive leather chairs for the sole purpose of having enough seats for all of us to watch tv.  The leather was intentional as it is fairly easy to clean, and obviously, the inexpensive part speaks for itself.  This is how we choose to arrange our chairs these days because we feel they function so much better this way.  When they face the television, no one even sits in them anyway.  They are only used as a jungle gym and an apparatus to propel oneself to the brick hearth without touching the floor.

Because it is Christmas time, I will also provide a few shots on how to decorate your house appropriately for the season.  This is our tree.  First of all, don't even bother to decorate the lower 4 feet of your tree.  It looks SO much better with about 3 or 4 ornaments on the top half, and maybe a tree topper.  As long as the topper is crystal, like ours, and has about an 85% chance of falling off the tree and poking someone's eye out as they slither under the tree to hide and tear pages out of books.

This photo is a must do.  This is how you must display the ornaments that you did not hang on the bottom half of the tree.  Though, we also had a few displayed at the bottom of the stairs, between the baby gate and the first stair and this is also a fun option.  As long as no one is trying to walk up and down the stairs, because those ornaments could become a safety hazard.

This is our lovely fireplace this time of year.  The fireplace does not function due to some chimney damage, so the previous owner painted it.  We followed suit.  So thankfully, in a way, we cannot have live fires in the hearth, and this cuts down on at least one safety issue.  Though, I think even if you don't have toddlers that climb into the fireplace and play tug of war on the gas pipe that you should always put up a giant plastic baby gate into the space to add some dimension and interest.  Then you should pile as many mismatched pillows as possible along the edge of the hearth to protect the paint job.  Because that is after all what I am trying to protect here (any logical person might buy one of those foamy hearth covers that sticks on, but not this lady - I don't want to jack up my paint job that took many a nap hour to complete).

Now we will move on to the kitchen and dining space and talk seating.  This is how we've decided to use my daughter's ladder, I mean chair, during particularly feisty days.  Its one thing to turn around from doing the dishes and see a 19 month old standing on the table, and its completely another to turn around and see this lovely chair displayed like a work of art.

This one should completely speak for itself.  Dining chairs are so much prettier when blocking a closet and bedroom door.  And the function?  Well who cares when it looks this good!

I am sad to say this is my last photo in the series.  I know what you're thinking: "Do these people really live like this...?  Because its absolutely WONDERFUL?!!"  Right??!  While, I do love having trash spilled all over the floor, (especially when containing my husband's Dr. Shasta can which clearly should be dripping all over the recycling bin instead of my hallway floor), I actually love more what they've done with the highchairs. They moved them around for quite a while finally deciding to place them directly in front of the stove and the sink.  Now all they need to do is learn how to climb the chairs and turn on the burners and the hot water!  Genius!

Now, I hope I'm not flattering myself too much here, but I think this post could be very helpful to a lot of people looking to redecorate, and I will try to have some follow up posts on decorating with toddlers.  Maybe I will concentrate on bedrooms, bathrooms and basements, as ours becomes more complete.  In the meantime, please take my advice for what it's worth and enjoy!

Deconstruction

Our house plans for the winter are to remodel the finished basement.  Winter probably isn't the best time to tear up a completely useful part of your house where kids can play and blow off steam, but the timing was good in many other ways, so we're giving it a go.  Hopefully it will only take a couple of months... 

Before the sad funeral of 1000 cedar trees.  You can't even see them all in this photo, it was BAD.

Basically all I have at this time are "before" pictures and "after the walls came down pictures".  Many people would consider what we had as a very "serviceable" space (to use one of my architect brother's terms).  That's all fine and good, but there is a reason I like hardwood, or hard surface, floors in a house (can you say cat pee?) and the old carpet is going.  I also don't want people to think we are responsible for the massacre of a bunch of cedar trees purely for decorative purposes.  So we decided to strip it down to the studs, have the walls and floors checked out, make some foundation repairs while we can (nothing big thankfully!) and build it all back up just as simply as we possibly can.  We'll see in the coming months how really "simple" its going to be...

One of several built-ins.  Built-ins are great to most people.  I find them annoying most of the time.  In particular, a corner cabinet, made of rough cedar no less.  Can you say WASTEFUL?  With the exception of that beautifully clever girl that has found herself a place to snuggle up.  I love her.

The kitchen/bar area with bath/laundry behind.  All I see is a lot of construction materials used without a lot of thought.  And some very interesting 90's era paint choices.

 

 Bath, with my boy and his purple flower.  The purple goes so well with the pink tile that someone clearly purchased at bargain basement prices because it is found in more than one place in the house.

 

Laundry, just opposite the toilet and sink.  I don't mind having laundry in the lower level (stairs are good for you!), but when the kids occupy the upper level, the laundry chute on the left will be nice to have.  

The fireplace and walk-out.  I cannot wait for next summer when this door will be the most used door in the house.  Look at that tricked-out fireplace with another incredibly useless cabinet next to it.  This is why built-ins bug me...that is the best corner for a tv, but you put a tv there and you can't get to the cabinet.  I know this was finished in a different era, but wouldn't you rather just have a piece of your own furniture to store stuff in and move around wherever you see fit?

Here we are minus paneled walls, carpet, 2 layers of vinyl floor tile, brick around the support beam, a layer of ceiling tile, and a layer of gypsum board from the ceiling.  Yes, when the basement was finished they hung gypsum board on the ceiling, finished it, and then added ceiling tiles glued to the top of it.  BUT, the walls were wood paneling. And the floor tiles were laid in a pattern.  It is clear the people had some money, but their sense is now up for debate.

How amazing will this simple hearth be when not surrounded by needless pieces of wood and cabinetry?

 What used to be the kitchen/bar.  The wall between will go back up with door in the same place as before.  The fridge will move to this position under the stairs with a sink to the left of it.  The wall on the left we hope will house upper and lower cabinets and possibly an oven.  The bath will get all new fixtures.  The door frame seen is a shower that I personally would like to turn into a pantry but I have much opposition telling me its not good to turn a full bath into a half bath (even if its weird).

The view back up the stairs - which are clearly a child safety hazard.  The exposed ceiling and duct work looks so clean that we are likely going to leave it open and possibly just paint it.  The floor also looks good with only 2 minor cracks.  We considered buffing and sealing the concrete, but with 3 small kids and this a future play room/living room we are leaning towards carpet with tile (not pink) in the kitchen and bath.

Overall, the demo went cleanly and once the foundation work is done we can get the electrician in to rough in the lighting and we can start painting the ceiling and hanging walls.  I have anticipated this project since about the day we moved in.  The space is really, really great, especially in the mornings when the sun bursts through the sliding door.  I can't wait for my kids to have a clean, cat pee-less environment with immediate access to a kitchen, bath, and the backyard.  I hope this is where a lot of family memories are yet to be made.