Nursery|Office Room Tour

Nursery|Office Room Tour

Welcome to the tour of my Nursery|Office! I first revealed the nursery side of this room 3 days before Laelia was born, with intentions of revealing the office side at one point… Which I guess has turned into almost a year and a half later! It’s difficult for me to pinpoint when I would consider a room “finished”, if I ever truly do, but I figured I was finally satisfied enough to take photos of it and document it before it goes through another transition. Babies don’t stay babies forever!

The nursery side of the room is (more photos after the jump!) covered pretty extensively in my last post; the big changes here are that the crib has dropped (so no more crib skirt – the fabric has since been made into pillows and sold!), and we did add the brackets to the shelves, and there has been some rearranging of items.

Although Laelia has never really slept in her crib, we use the changing station everyday! I have her pretty cloth diapers in the top drawer, along with some wipes and a few covers. The octopus activity plush I designed for babystyle hangs on the rod and acts as a great distraction while she is being changed! As she’s gotten older, she also really enjoys looking at the mini books I have stashed up on the shelf.  Next to these is aunt Kristina’s high school water polo picture (ha!) and a drawing that my aunt Cyndi made in a pretty oval frame. I have her headbands and hair things in one of the drawers below the shelf, and diaper creams etc. in the other drawer. A chocobo piggy bank sits on the top shelf as a representation of mom & dad’s Final Fantasy lurve. Also, this is where I hang some of Laelia’s Outfits to be photographed. I made the fuchsia peony watercolor and the “Welcome to the Human Race” poster which I covered in the last post. I have loose plans to redesign this poster. Mostly I want to redesign the layout and maybe pick new fonts. Also, I’ve been thinking about turning it into a screen print, but the gradient could pose a problem. As much experience as I have designing screens, I have almost zero experience actually screening, unless you include a few things I screened at a Maker faire in Austin and going to a screen print factory in China.
I wrote about the closet in the last post, but I actually have photos here! Before she was born I had some of my clothes on the bottom rack, but now it belongs solely to Laelia dresses. My dresses still hang to the left. I have some waverly boxes I bought from Home Goods for miscellaneous baby things (moby wrap,  swimming diapers, extra wipes, pre-folds, a few disposable diapers in case of emergency). I used the box top to hold her shoes! A striped bathroom rug is on the bottom of the closet floor for a little comfort for Laelia. She loves to sit there for some reason, and it’s one of the cutest. things. ever. I know some parents might say having no closet doors would be something they could not do with their kids, but it’s works just fine for us! We took off the doors because they kept injuring me, and I wonder if they would have ended up hurting Laelia too… The bookshelf is, of course, arranged by color! The bottom shelf is all magazines and catalogues—it is stuffed so tightly that I can barely get something out, so it’s very baby/toddler proof! Ditto for the second shelf.

I find this room to be a pleasant mix of bought, found, designed-by-me and made-by-me items. Here is the inventory:

Items of note:
– crib, Dwell Studio for Target
– changing table, Dwell Studio for Target
– my favorite vintage disney books that I believe may have been my grandfathers; also some newer editions w/ pretty binding
morgan & milo rain boots
– 60s print liberty frame (Target) w/ IKEA print
– 60s print liberty platter (Target)
– vintage baby duck sheet
blabla bird mobile
– a chocobo piggy bank that I got when I worked at Square Enix. Might be from the holiday party…
– Skip*Hop’s Hare set
Sophie, of course!
– anthropologie’s  jeweler’s knob & faceted knob in mint (color)
– chenille rug from Urban Outfitters

I designed:
– the mod nesting blocks
– the plush bunny
– the plush kitty
– the plush deer
– the octopus activity plush
– the flat dinosaur plush
– a set of 4 puzzles for babystyle (barely seen)
– the “Welcome to the Human Race” poster

I made:
– Laelia’s baby quilt
– the stuffed birds (they were our wedding cake topper! Inspired by Ann Wood. Her’s are cuter but her shop was empty and it was a couple of weeks before my wedding, so I gave making them a shot!)
– the tissue tassel garland (inspired by confetti system)
– the french memo board w/ Amy Butler’s French Wallpaper in Duck Egg.
– the watercolor of the fuchia peony
– the taggie blanket you can hardly see behind Sophie
– the gold & white painted chevron stripe box from IKEA (I actually have some photos of this transition!)


The office side finally came together when we found the perfect sized filing cabinet. All the furniture is from IKEA. We have two 2 x 4 Expedits on either side of the wall, with a BESTÅ wall extension unit turned filing cabinet that fits perfectly between them. The filing cabinet works great for holding my printer/scanner! My husband’s MIDI controller (keyboard) sits on top of the printer, which makes it easy for my husband to jump into music making. We have the connecting Expedit desk which is a great large workspace. We have the white drawers & cupboard inserts and use the same anthro knobs we used on the nursery side of the room. It’s the dark wood w/ white drawers & mint crystal knobs that I used to pull the whole room together with furniture. Now, I wonder if it is too matchy- matchy, but I hold by the idea that it was a good guess considering the limited time and even more limited amount of money we had to work with when we chose nursery furniture (we were unsure where we were going to live even 2 months before Laelia was born, due to 6 months of unpaid work in 2009 and then another layoff that led to 3 months of complete unemployment that concluded 2009 and the beginning of 2010). I made the french memo board out of two cork boards I bought from IKEA. I have some old pictures up there (my dad’s family, including his grandmother from Italy at Disneyland a few days after it opened, baby me in the bathtub with a duck on my head, a photo booth picture of my mom’s parents) along with some other things that I’ve collected and been inspired by over the years. It’s not exactly the ever-changing mood board I’d like it to be, but sometimes I feel pinterest has really taken that over for me. I have a leather “M” over the board that I bought from Home Goods at a steal. It is flanked by two of my photos of me and my husband. I hung the garland over the window since I have decided to forgo curtains for now… I just hot glued some buttons over the screws to make the hanging part look pretty. :) Finally, I have the bottom four squares of one of the Expedits dedicated to some toys. I probably have to put away these toys twice a day! At least!

 I’m sure some people out there might think “Why would you ever consider splitting a nursery w/ an office?”. There are a few reasons why we ultimately decided to make what was our office do double duty as a nursery:

  1. The biggest and most obvious reason is we live in a 2 bedroom apartment that is slightly under 850 square feet, and have no garage. Finding a new home for our work space and office equipment was a daunting task.
  2. I work from home, and need more than just a laptop to do said work.
  3. I thought it would be great to work in the same room where my baby might “sleep”, and later would play, so I could always be close to her. While we pretty much knew we would be co-sleeping at night, I thought maybe she would nap in her crib while I worked (HA!). (No, I would not have put those shelves above the crib if I intended on her sleeping in her crib with out someone awake in that room; if it is seriously bothering you, please read my footnote!¹)

Of course in reality things worked out differently. Laelia has slept a total of maybe 3 hours in that crib. Maybe. Instead she took every nap in the Moby or Ergo carrier for perhaps her entire first year, and it was completely perfect! Now she falls asleep on our bed just fine. Every time she’s lowered into the crib she wakes up and wails, although she thinks it’s great to stand in it and bounce! This little one is definitely not a crib sleeper, but we aren’t bothered by it much. So, the crib has really just been a large sculpture or holder of laundry/toys, and a cute one at that. :)

And as babies don’t stay babies forever, our little family has outgrown this arrangement. I wasn’t expecting to stay in this apartment this long. I know I mentioned in an earlier post that we might be moving to a 3 bedroom house, but that blew up very spectacularly in our faces, which is about all I have to say about it… We are going to stay here for an indeterminate amount of time, and so now we’ve got to be creative and work with what we’ve got! We are officially making this room Laelia’s-room-only. I want to get a bed for Laelia, or buy the toddler bed conversion kit for her crib, because I feel her slow transition to a bed approaching. And I SO want to make her a kitchen set, and there is just no room for it anywhere right now! Also, I’ve become frustrated by having my computer in one room and all of my art supplies & sewing in another room. A few weeks ago I moved the computer onto the dining room table when I had a big project to work on, and it has stayed there since. I really love being able to be on the computer and talk to my husband while he is in the kitchen when he gets home from work, and while Laelia plays near the couch. So, we’ve decided to change the dining area in our living room into a studio. It will  be tricky, but we are looking forward to the change!

Here is a gallery of all of the photos for your viewing pleasure (It’s flash, I’m sorry iPhone/iPad users).

Get the flash player here: http://www.adobe.com/flashplayer

¹I don’t want this post to sound whiny, but I understand how anything placed above a sleeping area brings an obvious criticism made by anyone who lives in an earthquake prone area: “ZOMG STUFF ABOVE CRIB!!! EARTHQUAKE!!! DEATH!!! BAD STUPID MOM!!!”. As I said earlier, we co-sleep. We absolutely knew Laelia would never be in this crib unless there would be someone around. In fact, we were pretty sure she’d almost never be in the crib,  especially considering the very similar situation most of our friends and family have been through with their kids! So, if there was a quake, and something did fall, it would fall into an empty crib. That being said, we still didn’t want anything to fall, even if it would fall into an empty crib… So these shelves are screwed into the studs in multiple spaces, have 18 screws holding them up, and then we added brackets under them for extra support. I’m pretty sure I could hang from them and they wouldn’t fall. Moreover, every bit on those shelves are held down with museum putty, which you can see in some photographs. Most of the stuff in our house is secured to the shelf with museum putty, and the tall furniture is strapped or bracketed to the wall, and the frames are all pressed down with museum putty as well. We love that stuff! Seriously, it’s greatness! Check it out.

7 Responses to Nursery|Office Room Tour

  1. Emily says:

    This is completely amazing and lovely. I love all of the little details….and I love your blog too. :D So beautiful!

  2. Wow! I love the colours, handmade items and all of the little details. You are one very creative mama : )

  3. […] in the first place! What was I thinking… You can revisit what it used to look like in the old office|nursery tour. Materials: 1: Museum Putty 2: Wood Block Moulding, with a 1/4″ hole drilled into it. […]

  4. Katie says:

    i’ve been looking for a good layout for our soon to be nursery (which is also our closet and my office!) and this is sooo helpful! thanks!

  5. […] 150 sq foot studio in Venice to this space felt unbelievable! First it was an office, then it was a nursery/office, then it was just an nursery, and then we transitioned into a toddler room, and now it is a […]

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Welcome

Welcome to Visual Vocabularie! My name is Jesyka, and I am a designer, artist, mom to Laelia and Luca, wife to software engineer and UX designer Tyler, coffee lover, and all around enthused person. This is my blog; here I share my personal projects, whether it's a furniture makeover, a new painting, a birthday party, an invitation I designed, or a favorite outfit for my little. You’ll also catch a glimpse into our family life in Los Angeles.

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