The corners of our homes are all woven spaces of emotion, history, love, personal style, art and living. Corners of our homes tell stories, really they do. This is true of every corner that I have shared with you here to date. Today I share with you a corner that is an intricate lace, complete with fine details, beadwork and woven together with thought, love and attention to details (in this case the details of our needs).
This is how this story began. When it was obvious that the angst I had over my newborn baby girl rolling off our bed and hitting the floor, with a quick smack on the bedside table on the way down to the ground was impeding my "motherhood joy' our large beautiful wooden bed frame and bedside tables were deliberately moved out. I just did not have room in my head for such thoughts. Our mattress has been on the floor since 2006 and I built a fabric covered headboard to make the bed look a little more than something seen in a fraternity house. Then, when it was obvious that the co-sleeping in our home was not a short phase we would grow out of within a few weeks, I drove to Ikea. I deliberately took all the seats out of my mini-van, drove myself to Ikea and bought a second large mattress so that yes - I could lay it straight on the floor and then the four of us could have sweet dreams. Our master bedroom is now a room full of mattress.
We never really set out to co-sleep, as most people call it. It was not a plan Sean and I laid out. We had been through different phases with sleeping, even did some sleep "training". I bought the sleep training book and had my mom come to stay for emotional support and the training began. It even worked for some time. But then we would get out of the standard operating procedures and the effort and struggle to get everyone comfortable and happy in thier own rooms became just too much and was not working for any of us. It was a major operation each and every night.
Even though this wall-to-wall memory foam floor plan was not deliberate, I actually did have very deliberate alternative plans and clear ideas for this corner that did not involve wall-to-wall mattresses. Before it was obvious that this corner was going to be taken over by memory foam I shopped for just the right reading chair. I was looking for something smart, modern but organic in style, something comfortable that you could curl up in and read a book. It was going to be a "statement" chair, something you saw the minute you walked in the master bedroom and that drew you into the room. I even had searched ebay for just the right vintage reading lamp or funky chandelier to go along and light up this corner. I had a new substantial bed frame picked out waiting to be ordered. But then the second mattresses took over, the initial mattress moved to make room and the "reading corner" became much to small for a chair.
You can call us names if you like- granola, hippies, enablers, lazy. This is not whom we are but sometimes it is easier to judge with labels. It just was simply about needs and getting as much sleep as possible with the most comfort for all four of us. Just needs...needs being met. Certainly connection is also a need considered in this undeliberate and unfolding arrangement.
Believe me questions have come up, some psycholigcal and some just ego-centric material design dilemmas...
- Do you move the fabric covered headboard (it is screwed to the wall) once you have the moved the beds around to make room for the second mattress? Do you move the lamps attached to the wall, that where centered to the first mattress?
- Will our children need extensive therapy as adults?
- Do you make matching semi-handmade quilts for the two beds or go along with this hodge podge of West Elm, Garnet Hill and Ikea Bedspreads? I mean it is temporary after all. (The seashell colored crocheted blanket at the foot of Bed #1 was hand crocheted by my mother and is indeed King Size! That is a lot of crocheting!)
- Does making these two beds each morning count as a cardio work out?
- Will our marriage sustain such an arrangement?
- Will they ever want to sleep in thier own rooms (the kiddos do indeed have thier own bedroom with beds)?
Proof is in this post, this post shows Cassidy's bedroom now and this one shows her room a few years back before we rearranged most recently.
Nonetheless this is us, this is us right now. Right now... here we are.
So need I say, the looking around for the "statement chair" is on hold. I instead have enjoyed making this stretched canvas to hang over the fireplace. It has four birds in descending size made from textured home fabrics in bluish seashell colors. Here is the free pattern for the framed version from the Amy Butler website. I just cut out the bird in four slightly different sizes, sewed them onto a piece of an old Ikea bedspread that had a stain and stretched this over a semi-handmade wood frame instead of actually framing one bird as the pattern outlines. I also enjoyed laying out the arrangement of frames above the dresser, using mostly photos from just this last year and then a few from before we even had kids. My favorite of the latter is this one of a donkey.
Sean took this when outside of Pemberton B.C. (near Whistler) when at a dear friends wedding. I like the look on the donkey's face and the texture of the wooden fence. I also love this photo of Sean putting on a golf course in Punta Mita, Mexico circa 2004 on a trip we took on our wedding anniversary that year.
A few other tweeks and this corner really is comfortable and ok to look at too, even when it is covered with children's books, the too often used humidifier, glasses of water, lego "dudes" that had to come to sleep with us several nights in a row and the other random objects that tell our story.
