Projects for PJs!

I am super stoked to make lots of crafty things for little PJ's... However, if you look at regular patterns there are certainly a lot of 'meh' items out there. I've been inspired lately by lots of well-designed things like the collection from Dwell Baby at Design Public, things like this swell hooded towel, the squashy blocks, the bibs, the toy animals... So, rather than shell out I am going to use them and others as inspiration and get cracking with the scissors & fabrics! Luckily I've bought a ton of great Amy Butler and other awesome fabrics over the summer (what can I say, I tend to collect materials for my crafty ways!) and once I get some terry cloth, piping cord and foam I'm on my way! I'll definitely post some photos once I get some of these projects done!

SLEEP!

Sleep, or more correctly, the lack of it, has made my last few weeks pretty difficult and tiring. On Wednesday night I woke up at 2:30 and couldn't fall back to sleep for three hours - that is rough! Hot milk, half a magazine and a whole Columbo movie later I was still awake - and had to work in the morning. Made for a very tiring day, especially after so many other nights like that!

So, always in the mood to find something oddly to suit my needs, I looked for some sleep inducing music. Found a really highly recommended Japanese artist, the late Fumio Miyashita, online and bought the CD Best of Fumio: Music for Sleep from iTunes. You know I'm desperate if I'm actually PAYING for music (master pirates of all things audio & video that we are in this house!). And I'll admit, designer that I am, the reason I gave the album a listen initially was the sleek, minimalist cover art - I couldn't look at another copycat CD with bad 'serene blue pond' graphics! Check it out - listen to the track Woman to get a quick feel for how relaxing it is!

Fumio had a long and prestigious career in Japan, and his healing & therapeutic music is based on traditional principles of harmony and balance. It's supposed to bring the left and right side of your brain to balance - calming the logical left while stimulating the creative right.

Anyway, it was terrific - if you can't sleep I highly recommend it. I listened to half of it when I first went to bed and fell asleep. Then, when I woke up in the middle of the night I pressed 'play' again and presto - asleep! I didn't even hear half of the first song. That is well worth paying for music. It's new-agey but not creepy - often a problem with meditative music I've found is waking up halfway through with the heeby-jeebies!

Any other suggestions for good sleeping music or other ways to fall asleep would be great too!

Good question!

So, we've obviously been thinking of this lately, and I hadn't expected to be so inspired by our small space, or so inclined to think it not that small at all! This question on the Apartment Therapy forum really helps reinforce what we're thinking is true, namely:

• Babies don't need that much space at the beginning
• Having a baby doesn't mean we have to suddenly embrace a ton of plastic consumer crap - less is more!
• 800 square feet is pretty darn luxurious - we have two bathrooms, a great solarium/den, a patio, storage, parking, good closets and perfect crib-sized nooks in the bedroom!
  

So, more focusing on what's important and thinking of creative and ingenuitive ways to live.

First day at this...

It's a good first day to start. Working from home for my one day every two weeks as agreed on at work a while back and enjoying how nice it is. Workout pants, tea, Etta James & Billie Holiday playing, view and a breeze even. Great! I absolutely can't wait for PJ's to arrive so I can do more of this! Much more productive from home, I don't know why. I suppose it's being comfy.

Check out the view, by the way. Not much, but a far cry from cublicle walls!

Made super homemade beef, veg and organic barley soup for lunch - another plus to working from home is actual food, and not having to think of it in the morning, five hours before you're hungry!

Well, so far this post about the fact that I made soup and like working from home is really boring, but I suppose if you're still reading then oh well! Don't despair, I'll drum up some better material in the days ahead!