Strollerderby : decorating

They'll Know It's Christmas Without the Inflatable Nativity

JeanneSager — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 15:31:00 GMT

I haven't gotten the courage to ask my neighbors where they found the blow-up nativity. I'm kind of curious. Do you have to order them specially-made off of the Internet? Does the blow-up baby Jesus come separate so you can stick him in on Christmas morn?

Do you think the kids will respond better to the virgin birth of a living God through giant plastic and an air compressor?

Egging me on to ask these burning questions is one of my favorite ~~time wasters~~ blogs, the ever-hiliarous passive aggressive notes, which this week shared the giant yard sign erected by a mom fed up with those holiday grinches who dare sneak into her yard and steal one of the approximately seven trillion towering plastic candy canes.

Allow me to present Exhibit A (courtesy of Passive Aggressive Notes, natch):

As they at Passive Aggressive so wisely (OK, so snarkily) put it, "poor little boy. now he’s not going to know it’s christmas.”

Yes, poor child indeed. His mother spent her whole holiday vacation decorating the yard with tasteless junk, and all he got was this damn letter in his defense. Do parents really think their kids care as much as they do about the holiday hoop-la (gifts aside)?

Image: OogaLights

Gramps Goes Christmas Crazy with 20,000 Santas

Teacher Tells Kids: Santa's Not Real

The Ten Best Christmas Songs For the Kid in You

When Kids and Taste Collide: Room Decorating

Karen Murphy — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 12:57:00 GMT

I grew up in a pink room. Light, insipid pink. I hate pink. Pink walls, pink curtains, pink rug, pink bedspread. Pink, pink, pink. Who invented that awful color and assigned it to girls? Ugh. So when I turned 13 I asked to paint my room, offering to do the work myself. Problem is, the walls had to match the existing curtains, which left me a choice of a deeper pink or the-seventies-are-so-over avocado green.

I went with the green.

You would have gone with the green, too, wouldn't you?

When my middle two began sharing a room I lovingly lazured the walls in a glowing outdoor palette of sun yellow, grass green, and a deep blue sky on the ceiling. I so wanted to give them a beautiful and peaceful space to sleep and play in. I think that parents tend to want to create cozy and beautiful spaces for kids when they're little and have less say about how their room looks. But then those kids start growing up.

My almost-12 son is asking to redecorate his room. I can tell it's mostly about wanting to express who he is. Kids don't have many venues for self-expression: rooms, clothes, and hair. That's about it. And I have decided to let my kids make their own decisions about all of it. Blue hair? As long as it meets theschool's standards, fine with me!

But some parents have some difficulty with this. My son wanted to paint his room black, naturally, but I had to demur, blaming the landlord. And he has quite good taste and so led me through Ikea showing me what would work, but in reading this article I got the idea that parents aren't always comfortable with their kids having complete control over the self-expression of their rooms. Rental issues and cost (which can obviously be a big issue) aside, what's the big deal? Especially if the kid is willing to do the labor and change those black walls to something more neutral when they eventually move out? I say let kids make mistakes. Let them live with crushed-velvet animal prints. As long as the room's not a health hazard, who cares?

Decorating the Nursery for You...I Mean, the Baby

Jessica Ashley (Sassafrass) — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 22:28:00 GMT

I am not a fan of most of the nursery decorations that fill up Babies R Us and other places where jungle, princess and a bear riding in a hot air balloon themes abound. That is why I totally ripped off the design of the baby's room my friend Maggie designed for her first-born. When I visited her and her newborn, I remember feeling calm and happy in the nursery and so I ran with that, choosing the same style of crib and color of paint when I was pregnant for my son. No lamps that match the bumper that match the mobile that inspire the rug that coordinate with the diaper caddy. Just sweet colors and good feelings.

These good feelings have also inspired many other couples preparing for the birth of their children and not wanting to go the traditional nursery-in-a-bag decorating route. This, I get. These parents-to-be want to evoke some bigger wish or message for their babes, something revealing about the family they've been born into, something to create the first inklings of hope and creativity and calm, something to inspire them as they grow (or at least once they can see beyond their own little hands). This, I also get. These parents with an eye for detail want symbols and modern furniture and a place they feel is a haven for their infant who is awake every night from 1 am to dawn. Again, totally understandable.

What I don't get is why all of this needs to have a price tag of up to $15,000? I'm all for investing in great baby gear, especially sturdy and shapely cribs and sumptuous gliders and yummy sheets. But does a room that will soon house piles of talking plastic toys and cardboard tubes and Dora stickers forever adhesed to the satin-coated low-VOC painted walls need that much of an investment? Just in case the answer is a whole-hearted, curb appealing "yes!," then shouldn't the well-intentioned parents just admit that the decorating endeavor is really for themselves, even if it is in the name of the barely-born baby?

Decorating Your Kid's Room with a Model Train Set

Jessica Ashley (Sassafrass) — Tue, 15 May 2007 18:28:00 GMT

I wasn't the kind of person who got all amped up to see a backhoe loader or steam locomotive until I had a boy who gets all amped up about these kinds of vehicles (he also loves to wear my bracelets and file his nails with an emory board, so don't go revoking my feminist mama membership card just yet). The change has come on with such furiousness that I looked out the car window the other day and squealed, "Look! A crane!" To this, my husband dryly said, "Ummm, yeah. Dial it down. The kid's not even in the car."

Whether my boy's on board or not, I am also pretty excited about the model railroad decorating tips Geekdad's suggesting for kid's rooms (or mommy's rooms or...wherever). The design is simple -- a shelf-like track up near the ceiling rather than taking up space on the floor or a table -- but the cool part comes in the pass-through tunnel so the train runs in and out of the closet. I got a little giddy thinking how much fun it would be to watch from a lofted bed or even bunks.

I'm pretty sure my landlord won't care if we burrow into the dry wall to build sweet tracks like these through our apartment. You know, for the boy.

Pimp Your (And Your Kids') Furniture With Ikea Hacker

Patti — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 20:24:00 GMT

We haven't grown out of Ikea yet. Honestly, we have barely grown out of gathering most of our furniture from city street corners; Ikea is a huge step up for us. And while we do aspire to someday having furniture that doesn't require an Allen wrench, we probably won't even think about it until our kids no longer play with Playdoh (let that be a lesson to you all).

So it goes without saying that I'm a big fan of Ikea Hacker, a blog that features people's modifications of standard Ikea products. Every now and then an excellent idea for kids' stuff comes through, like today's cute paintjob on the cheapie Latt table and chairs set, among others. And many of the shelving and storage hacks are perfectly suited to children's spaces (this Barbie-emblazoned storage chest is freakin' incredible)