Separation Anxiety

My friend E just sent me a cute photo from Memorial Day weekend.

This photo captures my weekend perfectly because my son basically spent the entire time either in my arms or crying for me to pick him up.

He has been going through a major separation anxiety phase with me lately.

He won't let anyone hold him at all.  

I mean he'd barely even let my husband carry him until this morning.

I think that part of the unusual fussines was because my son got a lot of one-on-one time with me when my husband was out of town for a few days on a business trip. I also think that he's been a little grumpy because of teething (he has four teeth right now, and four new ones are coming in -- ouch!).

I cherish this time because I know the separation anxiety thing is just a passing phase; his clinginess means that he's still my sweet baby.

As a bonus, I'm getting some ridiculous exercise because carrying a 25-pound baby ALL DAY for three days straight is better than any Insanity Workout.

(Isn't the giraffe bracelet in the photo darling? It was one of my Mother's Day gifts. I love it!)

Window Seat Progress and Birthday Planning

I hope all of you had a restful Memorial Day weekend.  

We had fun. Lots of barbecue. Some park time with the kid. 

I haven't uploaded all of my "nice camera" pictures yet, so please accept my apologies if some of these images are a little grainy.

I was thrilled when Garrett from Goodwood Design sent me a progress shot of the built-in window seat he is making for our sunroom. You know you love your home when images like this make your heart skip a beat. Progress!

Over the weekend I poured over fabrics. I'm thinking about grey for the pillows and the sunroom seat cushion. 

I am so TERRIFIED of birds (that's a story for another day) so it's a little funny that the grey solid fabric is Sunbrella "Sailcloth Seagull", and that one of the two Thom Filica fabrics (Griffith in Fog) in the photo is a bird print.

My son's first birthday is around the corner. Although it is a small family affair, I still wanted to send out paper invitations because it's always nice to get an invitation in the mail.

I incorporated a few of our favorite images from the past year on the back of the card.  There is an ultrasound picture taken the day we found out that our little bullet was a boy, an image taken during one of his first baths after we brought him home from the hospital, and a photo of an utterly delighted kid banging on his drum on a Saturday morning.

The invites turned out really cute.

Mainly because my baby is the cutest kid in the world.

The entire world.

Ever.

I think I've settled on this combination of blue and green accordion lanterns for some simple birthday decorations. 

I'm not really a primary colors type of person, so I like that these lanterns are more in the pastel family. I am going to group tight clusters of them on the ceilings around the house and in the backyard. 

Speaking of blue and green ...

This is the blurriest photo of the lot, but this image of my son eating graham crackers with his t-shirt with the green and blue fish is so adorable.

Graham crackers for breakfast? Why not?

I love this kid.

Have a great Tuesday!

Dreary Monday, Pretty Pictures

The weather in DC this past weekend was glorious. My mom was in town and we spent a lot of time outside with the little guy.

We set up this cage play area for the baby because it's the only way to keep tabs on him when we're in the backyard. Right now he's mostly just cruising, but he takes a few more tentative steps each day. Have mercy on me when he really starts to walk (and run!).

Back to the house, now.

Fixing up my house is like planning a wedding. I have furious furious bursts of activity, followed by quiet lulls.

Things are quiet today regarding our sunroom project. The plan is to have the room repainted later this week before we install the window seat.  I'm narrowing down the fabric options for the cushions, and my husband is happily working out the audio-visual details for this room.

Here are some more sunroom inspiration photos that I've been loving lately (You can check out more images on my "Sunroom" board on Pinterest).

I love the cushion on this built-in daybed (the image is from Better Homes and Gardens). I found out from the blog Interior Design Musings that this construction is known as a French tufted cushion. It's so plush looking, no?  Pottery Barn sells a tufted daybed mattress like this one. I definitely want to upholster our window seat cushion in an indoor-outdoor textile for maximum durability. The fabric in the photo below looks like velvet to me. Did you know that indoor-outdoor velvets exist now?

Having a television in the sunroom was always a given. It may not be pretty, but the reality is we spend way too much time as a family in this room to not have a television in here.  With that said, and despite the fact that we recently had the tv wall mounted and hid all the nasty wires behind the wall, I've been a little worried about the visual of having the television above the window seat.  So I've been brainstorming ways I might disguise the tv when we aren't watching it. The room in this photo was designed by Eric Cohler; it's giving me all sorts of ideas about (1) placing a large piece of art over the tv, and (2) balancing the look by placing art on the other side of the window.

-- "My name is onestorybuilding and I like neutrals."

-- "Hi, onestorybuilding."

I like everything about this image from Courtney Giles Interiors, especially the restrained, neutral color palette.

So elegant.

Wire You Making Me Crazy and Hardware Choices

It doesn't look like much, but this next photo brings me unspeakable joy.

Unspeakable waves of joy.

It's not about what you can see, kids, it's about what you can't see.

No wires!

Looking at a jumble of wires and cords drives me to distraction and makes me itch. Nothing says this is my college apartment more than a bunch of flipping cords all over the place. It was okay when I was 21, but it makes my house feel unpolished now that I'm old and I'm all, "Pull up your pants! Get off my lawn! Kids!"

So as part of our continued sunroom spruce up, and in order to keep my husband even slightly interested in the the virtues of faux ostrich vinyl versus indoor-outdoor linen, we had a company come out to wall mount the television, hide the television and AV wires in the wall, and move a couple of outlets around.

So we went from this seventh circle of crazy ...

... To something resembling normal.

The DVR and Blu-ray are still on the ground for the time being ...

... But eventually they will sit on a shelf which will be hidden behind doors in the new window seat (my husband explained it all here).

It's so freaking worth it, right?

Also, a couple of hardware options arrived ...

Both of these options are significantly less than my favorite one, which I posted about a couple of weeks ago. But at $100 per pull, I just couldn't justify it when I need five of them and we still have to hire painters, get a new sofa, have a custom cushion made for the window seat, etc.  

The one on the right feels nicer than the one on the left, and I also like the color of the one on the right a little better.

Which do you like better?

Sunroom Technology

This week's "Wired Wednesday" post is not about technology I'm already using.  Instead, I wanted to share my current plans (hopes? dreams??) for incorporating new gadgets into the sunroom renovation, with a focus on how to make the most of the new storage space provided by the under-construction window seat unit.  

My lovely wife previously informed you that she was torn between a symmetrical design with shelves at both ends and a design with only one shelving unit and the maximum number of drawers.  In the end I was able to convince her to go with the symmetrical layout, with the understanding that both shelving units would feature hide-away door panels identical to the drawer fronts.  

Here's the awesome design that Garrett from goodwooddesign.com developed for us:

So, why did I want two segments of shelves?  The short answer is that I'm a guy and I love electronics, and I want to cram as many gadgets into every room of the house as is humanly possible.  The (slightly) longer answer is more practical:  even with shelving units at both ends, we'll still only have four places to stash things like our cable box, a Blu Ray player, a bookshelf stereo, etc.  It also happens that the sunroom is the most practical location for our cable modem and wireless router, so those will have to be tucked away in the unit as well, leaving even less real estate for A/V equipment.  

So two shelving segments it is.  Now, what to put in them?  With shelves at both ends, I now have the right set-up to add a pair of bookshelf speakers.  (I'll be mounting a TV on the wall later this week and thought about installing in-wall speakers since I'll already be concealing the cables and power source in the wall, but that option looked to be cost-prohibitive and structurally challenging.)  But which speakers?  The shelves will each have only around 5.5 inches of usable vertical space, meaning I'll need an extremely compact speaker and I'll still have to turn it sideways in order to make it fit.  

I have a pair of BIC America 32DVs in the basement, still in their original box.  They were purchased to be the rear surrounds for my system when we lived in our old condo, but I just never got around to using them.

I have another pair of these BICs that I've used for years, and they're decent speakers considering the price point - you can get a pair for about 50 bucks if you search around.  However, the bass is not that great and I already know that I won't be able to utlize a subwoofer.

I've also got my eye on these AudioEngine P4 speakers, which have much better bass and are (in my opinion) pretty cool looking.   

The P4s are almost exactly 5.5 inches wide, however, so it might be a tight fit. 

I'm still going back and forth on speakers, but I'm definitely planning to use a Sonos Connect Amp (formerly the ZonePlayer 120, or ZP120) in lieu of a receiver in the sunroom.  

Sonos products allow you to create an expandable, dedicated wireless network for music throughout your home.  Once you have one Sonos product connected directly (through an ethernet cable) to your network, you can add additional components and beam music to them (and control them) wirelessly using the propietary Sonos remote control or your iPhone, iPod touch, iPad, or Android device.  Sonos units are compatible with two of my favorite music services (SiriusXM's Internet radio and Spotify), among many others, and you can of course stream music from your computer's hard drive or from a dedicated network-connected hard drive (something I know almost nothing about but am curious to try).  

The Connect Amp has a line level analog input, which I plan to use to amplify sound delivered by the audio outputs on my TV.  That should allow me to do without a speaker bar. The Connect Amp is also really compact (obviously important to me given the space constraints I'm dealing with), with a height of only 3.5 inches and a width of approximately 7.5 inches.   

Over the next few weeks, I'll provide updates on this part of the sunroom project.  Once everything is in place and up and running, I'll give you a more detailed review of Sonos and let you know whether I recommend it for your home.  

Next week: Roku.