van's bench

when damion and i decided it was time to have a baby, my sister, julie, and her husband were deciding it was time to have their second baby. we both ended up pregnant within weeks of each other. she had her gorgeous 'little man, van' and i had eden (who is, of course, also gorgeous!).


as the kids got older, julie noticed that van was missing certain physical developmental milestones. after taking him in for tests and an appointment with the neurologist, van was diagnosed with spinal muscular atrophy type II. SMA is a rare genetic condition that affects the proximal (closest to the trunk) muscles of the body.

julie asked me to build van a little bench and stool (the stool is still in the works) for his physio exercises. of course. but, a cool kid like van definitely needs a cool bench. so, i photoshopped the vans sneaker logo and a funky graphic to produce this design. i projected it onto the wood and painted it black. julie is going to take care of the finishing touches (adding a bit of colour and varnishing it).


for more information on SMA visit the families of sma or fightsma.org.

i'm still deciding how to design the stool...if you have any suggestions, let me know.


new blog of the week feature

one of my new favourite pastimes seems to be scoping out neat blogs online. i get a little thrill when i find a cool new-to-me blog. when my cousin spent 6 weeks recovering from a surgery i sent her a new website everyday to help keep the boredom away. now that she's up on her feet again i've missed digging around the internet with purpose. so, i've decided to start a new feature here. every week i'll post a link to a blog i love. find it in the sidebar.

birthday fun

we celebrated eden's 1st birthday with family and friends over the weekend. i was looking for a reason to make these crazy pom-pom decorations i saw on martha stewart's site for awhile. so, with the help of my sister-in-law and mother-in-law we made a room full.

inpired by my favourite cupcake blog, i made a tower of cupcakes instead of the traditional birthday cake. yes, and the kitchen is still in one piece (if you knew how bad of a cook/baker i was you could appreciate that like my husband does!).

i made some monogrammed 'e' cupcakes for fun. i printed off an e onto a transparency to create the template. you can see that after close to a dozen i gave up on that idea and just started in with the sprinkles!

this cupcake was shown no mercy by eden! it ended its existence as a ball of mush!

dressing up work walls

i'm carrying on with a pom-pom theme....

when i returned to work from maternity leave i was presented with a very white new office. we are limited to what we can do to the space we are given (my day job is at a pretty conservative firm). wall vinyls seemed like just the thing. they have been popping up everywhere so i headed over to etsy where i found a shop called elephannie. i love my pom-poms!

starting out with a wall vinyl that has a hundred little parts probably wasn't the greatest idea. that's something i should have work up to. i'm glad i came into work early to put them up...i spent an hour struggling and swearing up a storm!

well worth it!

a painted floor

who says carpet and hardwood are the only options for your floor? after years of complaining about my berber carpet (aka the worlds largest scratching post!) i came home to a carpet-less room compliments of my husband. i knew right away i wanted a white shiny floor. every expert i talked to said i was crazy...but, haven't painted floors been around for years? so, i picked up some huge sheets of 1/8 birch plywood and had it cut down to 2 x 4 tiles. i glued and screwed it into the floor (knowing i can always lay alternate flooring over it in the future if i wanted to). my husband took care of the priming and painted. the result is a floor solution that cost me around $150!

this picture shows you a close-up of the birch plywood over the sub floor.

the rest of the room leaves a lot to be desired. but, oh, the posting possibilities!

a knife holder

* my family and i just got back in to our house last night after being evacuated because of a local brush fire. everyone is ok, but it was interesting to see what you really would take with you in case of a fire. once we had eden and the cats packed up it was all about our pictures. our wedding album and a couple of framed pics. everything else wasn't given a second thought (well, i lie...i did think about my tools!). just goes to show you the rest of it is just stuff. and, speaking of stuff...here's an old project.

i was working on a project for my day job that required bamboo skewers. after playing around with a bunch of them i thought 'hey, this would make a cool pen holder', which turned into 'hey, this would make a cool knife holder'. so, i made a cool knife holder. then some guy in australia made a cool knife holder too. and, we all know how that turned out. they are all over the place now.

the design was even featured on "She's Crafty". here is the project plan.

*i don't have a pic of my original knife holder build, the knife holder shown here was built by my friend Louie.

a frog mirror and storage for a budding Imelda Marcos

eden is just at that age where she loves to look at herself in the mirror (although i'm sure we all know a couple of adults who are still at that age!), so i've made her a little frog mirror. i was inspired by eden's new book about colour that has this cute little picture of a frog.



it is a little rough around the edges because i cut it out with a jigsaw (if my husband is reading this blog i would love a router for my birthday!). the mirror is a 10" round from Michaels.

shoe shelves


i was sorting out e's closet yesterday and ended up creating tower of her shoes. yeah, she's a little spoiled. half went in to a bag for the sally ann, the other half got a little storage treatment.

just before eden was born i made up some shelves and a slat wall panel for her very tiny closet. i bought pegs and a plexiglass shelf for the wall panel. the plexiglass shelf was perfect for placing little shoes on....but, at $8 each a little too pricey to buy in bulk. that's where my trusty 1/8" mdf and bottle of carpenter's glue came in handy.


after a couple of coats of paint they'll be good to go.

small steps

ok...i've taken a small step in the right direction. i've opened an etsy site! visit Quirky Kid to see it. i only have one item up there so far, but will add some more over the next week or so. thank you for your feedback. the first item posted on Quirky Kid is my diaper caddy.

i have two new project ideas that i'm working on now....i hope to have some fresh material for you next week.

have a great week!

etsy

i have a project of a different kind to share this morning. i've been playing around with the idea of starting a little business for a while now. i knew one of these days i was going to have to stop talking about it and actually get off my comfy couch and do it. so, here i go.

i'm planning on opening an etsy shop. quirky kid designs. i hope to be up and running in the next week or so. i'm trying to decide which items to sell. i've narrowed it down to a few items. let me know what you think! (i could really use the help!)


choice #1 - customized alphabet shelf












choice #2 - joyeau* towel holder
















choice #3 - diaper caddy



















choice #4 - enia boxes



















tell me what you think about these choices. also, i need a little help on the price point...let me know how much you'd buy them for! thank you!