Name: Eleanor (9 months)
Location: Venice, CA
Division: Single Room
Room Size: 70 square feet
Tip for Living Small with Kids: Simplify, simplify, simplify. We don't buy or borrow anything until we find we can't live without it. We only have two closets in our entire house so we regularly send hand-me-downs off to new babies in the family.
Biggest Design Challenge in this Room: Three big challenges: 1. we rent; 2. one corner of the room consists of two doors - one from our bedroom and one from the bathroom - which make that space pretty useless; 3. budget. We couldn't do much about the first two challenges so we focused on personalizing the room as much as possible. We're pretty into surfing so we opted for a subtle sea theme. Pretty much everything - from the sign on the door to the bench cushions - is homemade by friends and family. My mom and I made the crib blanket, changing table pad and crib skirt, my husband's father painted the small beach paintings above Eleanor's bed and the alphabet board, and my husband painted the surfboard. We splurged on getting two Flensted mobiles and brought the Jay Ryan print in from our living room.
Favorite Thing About This Room: The surfboard. My husband found an abandoned surfboard on the street in New York, lugged it out here when we moved 6 years ago, and was finally inspired to turn it into wall art for Eleanor's nursery. I even made a little film documenting the endeavor.
Thanks for your entry Caddie and good luck!
What's at stake? Bragging rights AND $1500 worth of gift certificates from Oeuf!
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love the minimalism, the colours, and the band artwork - even the soccer pillow looks intentional.
I love it! We also have an Eleanor and live in Venice!
I'd love to see that video you mentioned.
One of my dear friends takes vintage surfboards, paints beautiful and unique commissioned designs on them, and then partners with World Vision to give 10% of her profits for clean water. It's such a great idea to use the boards that would otherwise go unused-- and it's such a different medium.
Cute room and I love the wall art. What a nice mix of vintage.
Thanks, everybody! It's definitely spare but we like it that way. Perhaps you can settle a design dispute between my husband and I... He's not a rug on top of carpet person and I feel like the room could use a rug. Any suggestions?
PS The video is here: http://youtu.be/5beVmWcyAoI
PPS I'd love to meet the other Eleanor in Venice!
I love the "baby sleeping" sign; where is it from?
Cute! And I love the surf board.
I love the ocean and I love surfing. I hate to see that board hanging there up the wall without it being used. But well, better there than up for the scraps on the pavement.
I would love to see some color on the wall. The surfboard is great.
Nice room! Where did you get a white storage bench? I'd love to have something like this!
Sorry for the late reply here - the "baby sleeping" sign was made for Eleanor by a friend of mine. The storage bench is the KidKraft Nantucket storage bench which we bought on Amazon.com. We bought foam and fabric at Joann Fabrics to create the cushion. One note: the bench definitely needs some airing out when it arrives to remove the paint/chemical smell.