We’ve been in this apartment a mere… five and a half months… and before we hit the big six month mark, I wanted to finally share P’s little urban woodland bedroom. Perhaps not worthy of an entire Apartment Therapy style tour, but it’s by far the most decorated room in the house and I’m awfully proud of it for having such a weird space and not much to work with (thanks to minimalism and also moving twice in two years).
Forgive the bluriness of the photos, the lighting in our house being a ground-floor apartment in the middle of a city wherein any available light is blocked by other buildings is… yeah. Sub-optimal. Anyhow. This is the room as seen from the door. And whoever covered our entire apartment in this beige carpeting can eat a bucket of sand. Seriously, it’s the bane of my existence. Anyhow. Can’t do much about it, so I got a rug, which also serves the purpose of tying the room together.
The “woodland” theme came about very, no pun intended, organically. Before P was born, his nickname in utero was “Piget” after Winnie the Pooh’s little friend. So, he had quite a few Pooh things picked out for him upon arrival, though we were in a 1BR at that time and he didn’t even have a real crib let alone his own room. When we moved to Western MA in August ’11, he got a room and a crib and I set about decorating. It was a much bigger space and I had more control over the setting – it wasn’t weirdly shaped, there was no fire door to contend with, and I got to pick the paint color (buttery yellow). It did also have beige carpeting and I did shake my fist at it. Anyhow. We had the Pooh things first, then I hung P’s birth announcement, which is brown and features a little snail on a branch. Coincidentally, I had purchased the Skip Hop Treetop Friends baby playmat, never intending on using it as a wall-hanging, but found once P outgrew it that it did indeed look pretty nice with his other things. So. Pooh + Tree Branch birth announcement + Treetop Friends = Woodland.
In Western MA, this was pretty fitting for the setting. In Boston… it’s a bit of a paradox, but in a way that makes me like it more. The Ikea rug was chosen specifically for this room to fit the theme and cover up some of the great sea of beige.
Playspace. The small photo next to the window is the birth announcement. Bookshelf is from Target, lamp is from Ikea, square storage container (used for linens) is from Target. There’s not much storage in P’s room as his bed is in his closet – all of his clothes and diapers and such are stored in our room.
I joke that he’s a true urban baby since his crib is in the closet, but mostly it was the only way to have any kind of play space in the room. Opposite the crib (basically where I stood to take the photo) is our fire door. Not the kind of thing you want to block *with* a crib. Given that the windows form an odd shape against the other wall – if we had put the crib over there, it would have taken up pretty much the entire space where the bookcase and rug currently reside. I had hoped the crib would fit in the closet length-wise, but no dice. So, it sticks out a bit. Anyhow, it makes good use of the space and P doesn’t seem to mind. I’ve tried to make it as cozy as possible for him. And yeah, that green ottoman also contains linens that did not get neatly tucked in for this photo. Oops.
That green blurry thing above his bed is a collaged letter “P” custom made from Etsy.
Another shot from the hallway door showing weird shape of room and how the crib sticks out. Firedoor is immediately to the left of the small framed picture. (Which is P’s first drawing that he ever did and yes I framed it because I am a nerd.) The elephant – who needs to be framed – is from a little “Asian gifts” shop in Provincetown – Nuno and I bought it on vacation an few years ago.
And no, the room does not usually look like this. The photos being possible are courtesy of Nuno taking The Whuff out for a walk and fetching mama a burrito. Normally all books and toys are strewn across the floor with a moat created around the crib so mama can come in during the middle of the night and not kill herself. I do try to neaten it up every now and then, but as is the case with toddlers, every single time I clean the *very first thing* he does upon re-entering the apartment (because how could I ever do such a thing with him HERE) is to re-decorate. So it goes.