Aiden gets another new room!

It seems to me, that if you are 3 and you have had 3 new bedrooms, then perhaps you are a little spoilt. Yep. That's Aiden. He got a new room in our Glebe St house when he was born. You can read about it here. Then we moved to Bridge Rd and even though it took us a little while, he got a new room and a big boy bed. You can read about that room here. 

And then Charlie came along. Poor Charlie has not even had one new bedroom. He has spent most of his life so far in our bedroom, which is not ideal. No one was sleeping that well. It was hard for Arran and I to come to bed without waking him and it was hard to get ready for the next day by the light of our mobile phones. Often the three of us were awake when Arran got up to ride his bike at 5am. I was finding it hard to sleep because I woke up with Charlie's every move, snort, snuffle and cry as well as waking up to feed him a couple of times a night. Arran was finding it hard to sleep...oh wait. Hold on. Arran can basically sleep through anything. Bastard. Arran was only waking up when I shoved him to go put Charlie's dummy back in. Really, the only person who was sleeping well was Aiden. No wonder. He keeps getting nice bedrooms.

So with me returning to work and being fed up with not getting a decent nights sleep, something had to change. Aiden needed to move into a different bedroom so that we could put Charlie in the room beside us, so it's easy to get to him during the night. I thought about them sharing a room together, I know many small kids do, but up until recently Charlie was very good at screaming in the middle of the night. Despite Aiden being a good sleeper I figured that as we have the room, we may as well make use of it.

Aiden's new room used to have cream coloured walls (same as every other room in the house), a bare MDF cupboard with stained brass coloured knobs, exposed beams and light brown carpet. Not that exciting. I really should take 'before' photos. Before becoming Aiden's new "Big Boy Room", it was a spare room with two single vintage beds and two basic (dare I say ugly), pine bedside tables.

Here's how it turned out. I seriously wish this was my room:

We had "Just Screw it" paint two of the walls in a soft blue/grey colour called "Miller Mood" and the other two walls including the built in cupboard in my favourite white "Antique White USA". Both colours by Dulux. I really like how these two colours provide a base for some of the vintage and industrial pieces I found for his room.

Around a month ago I had what Arran refers to as the "Festival of Lisa". Inspired by Arran being away on another mountain bike weekend I decided that Arran could look after Aiden and Charlie all weekend while I got to do whatever I wanted. Those of you who are friends on Facebook know that there was facials, massages, a "float" as well as some shopping. The shopping was focused on some furniture stores on Regent, St Redfern. I have driven past these stores many many times on the way to the airport. I thought they were just second hand furniture stores but discovered they were an amazing collection of mid-century retailers selling second hand and restored furniture and artefacts. They made me want to redesign our whole house to incorporate this era of design and furniture. I had a lovely time talking to each of the store owners and learning about their connections with the other stores on the street and their history and backgrounds. 

Some of the wares in Rudi Rocket

Graham and Graham Design

I wanted something quirky and unique for a bedside table and was looking for something that wasn't designed to be one. I found this great mid century set of drawers at Rudi Rocket that were most likely used in an office or factory. I thought about changing the colour and sawing off the legs a little but once I put it in the room I like it just as it is. It's one of my favourite finds. The lamp is from Ikea and it has a similar industrial feel.

Industrial vintage meets new

 Another favourite is the "Fresh Young Poultry" sign which I also found at Rudi Rocket on Regent St. It's retro but fresh and young and vintage, and really cute. I imagine it would have hung on the farmer's fence and I like that it now has a new home, where the sign-writing and colours are appreciated for a new purpose: as art!

Aiden's big boy room!

I bought and stained this table for my nephew's Marley and Jordi when they were little. Now they are in Aiden's room!

 The letters are from Typo and the red lacquer book shelf-come toy storage is from Ikea  I like that is has an industrial feel with the castors on the bottom.

A place to keep books and toys in red lacquer

Every boy needs a Tonka Truck

Just like new

 The old MDF cupboard looks like new. I was going to buy new handles for the cupboard doors and drawers but man are they expensive!! I ended up spray painting them silver. They look great. They looked like this before:

This was so easy!

 Aiden loves his new room. Who wouldn't! I think its my best "Aiden" room yet.

 

Bookclub is back, baby!

So I wrote recently about the Book Club Problem. I cheekily emailed the link to my blog, to all our book-club members and suggested a time to meet. It worked! Last Saturday all of our book-club members (except one, see you next time Suzanne!) came along to my house for our first book club meeting in nearly 12 months, though I haven't seen some of our members for longer than that.

It was a lovely afternoon. There was wine and cheese.

Good friends and lots of chatting:

Long time member Sally and new recruits Nicole and Evie

Sally, Nicole (hidden), Evie, Laura, Luella and Karina. Karen was sitting to the right of Karina.

There were some sweet things:

 

Little cupcakes from Babycakes. Bought by new member Evie. She can come again!

Charlie hanging out with Evie

And we all agreed how nice it was to see each other again and be back "book-clubbing". We chatted about the books we had read recently that we loved, and chose a book for next time. If you want to read along with us the book is The Light Between Oceans by M L Stedman. We are meeting next on the 2nd of June. I'll do a blog update and let you know what we thought of the book!