Nanny&Me

I'm no expert when it comes to decorating, but that doesn't mean that I don't love to try! My husband and I both love giving rooms a unique feel and we do our best to make spaces feel warm and welcoming.

I thought it was important to overhaul our basement bedroom to make sure that our nanny would feel welcome. We started with a lavendar color scheme, but throughout Skype and email conversations with our nanny, we learned that she likes bright colors, and we thought that something more fun would be a better fit, so slowly but surely a coral/orange color scheme took over the room (which originated in the quilt on the bed).

Some people have suggested that perhaps it's not necessary to do quite so much when it comes to setting up a room for a nanny. To this I have two responses, 1) if you have (or can make) the time and enjoy these sorts of activities then go for it, there is lots you can do on a budget by shopping sales and doing DIY projects and your nanny will appreciate all of the time and effort that you put in, and 2) think about the longterm use of the bedroom. We always love making spaces in our home nice so we figured why not decorate a nice space for our nanny that we can enjoy for years to come.


We were fortunate to start with some nice pieces of furniture from our former tenant (the bed and nightstand) and then we went out and purchased a simple desk from IKEA to match, as well a small coral dresser/drawers. We added a slew of personal touches and between the fresh face lift of colors and moving around the furniture to make a desk area, I think the room is far more inviting now. I finished off the room by sewing some pillow cases and matching curtains and making some DIY peg boards. We added lots of photos of our nanny's family and friends to the room too, and of course fresh flowers on her nightstand for her arrival.

My favourite additions to the room:






The room started with:

• Bed
• Nightstand

We then added:

Finished Product 

My first kick at the can. This one went to my hubby's office.

My third and final one for my home office area.

The Idea

As we prepare our home for the arrival of our nanny, we are concurrently preparing for my return to work. This craft project served two purposes: 1) to customize my work-from-home space, and 2) to add a fun and colorful decor piece to the nanny's bedroom. I will be working from home three days per week and it's very important to create a conducive work-from-home space which includes a quiet area away from where my little guy will be spending his indoor time with our nanny. I wanted a space that would inspire focus and drive my work ethic, as such, creating a little office space downstairs was a perfect fit. In addition to the one for my office space, I've been working hard to brighten up the nanny's bedroom, and this seemed like such a fun contribution to the space. When I saw this idea, I fell in love with it! My husband saw me putting together the materials and decided that he'd also like one for his office, so a third one is in the works.

How-To

This one's another simple and fast project that looks awesome! You'll need a clear desk pad from Ikea, strong glue, wrapping paper of your choice, and a few items from around the house (scissors, heavy books, newspaper).

How simple are those materials?!

Start by laying out some newspaper on the surface where you'll be working. Next roll out your wrapping paper. Place the desk pad on top of the wrapping paper and line them up. I used the wall and the edge of the desk I was working on to provide a clear and easy-to-follow grid for lining up the paper to the desk pad. Flip the desk pad over and brush on a coat of glue. I used Elmer's No-Wrinkle Rubber Cement. I have heard of crafters using spray adhesive, and was actually hoping to use PVA paper glue, but couldn't get my hands on any at Michael's so I went with Elmer's and hoped for the best. I'm not sure if the PVA might have provided an even better seal, but the Elmer's worked pretty well.


Press down firmly on the pad and hold. Cut around the edge that allows you to separate the roll of wrapping paper from the piece being used, but leave the other edges to trim later.

Flip the pad over carefully and press down on the paper, smoothing it out from one side to the other to remove air bubbles. Place heavy books down to aide a tight seal and catch up on your favourite TV show (with a yummy snack) while the glue dries.

Bark Thins and Parenthood (my second favourite show)

Once the glue is dry, apply a thick coat of glue around the edges (by separating the paper from the pad and running your brush inside) and the corners, put the heavy books back and let dry. Once that coat is dry, you can cut out around the edges (I used scissors the first time around, but then switched to using an x-acto knife for the second one and had MUCH better results) and voila...your very own custom desk pad with your favourite pattern and colours!

This one was my 2nd go round for our nanny's bedroom.

Cost & Materials 

Clear desk pad: Ikea - $9.99
Wrapping paper: Homesense - $5.99
Elmer's Glue: Michael's - $4.99

Total Cost - $21 (but you can cut this cost down even more by finding wrapping paper on sale and using whatever spray adhesive or clear craft glue you have around the house).

Other Materials



Scissors or x-acto knife
Heavy books
Newspaper
Clips for securing corners

Finished Product


The Idea

I love the idea of providing our nanny with the opportunity to manage her own time. I don't like being micro-managed and I'm sure our nanny wouldn't either. The commonly used daily, weekly, monthly task list approach is a great one because it enables your nanny to manage their own time, while communicating the household tasks that they've completed. This ensures that you're not left wondering what is and isn't being done each day, while still giving your nanny the freedom to manage their own time.

Our nanny will only be working 30 hours each week (since we have lots of flexibility and work-from-home in our schedules), and of course we want our son to be her first priority, so some weeks when she works certain timeframes where he doesn't nap during her work time, then we don't expect cleaning to get done, and other weeks where he may nap twice during her working hours one day, then we'd expect more household tasks to get done. As such, having a central task list board is a great solution for our family.

How-To

This project is very simple and fast, but the finished product looks great! All you need is a clear-backed floating frame of your choice, dry erase markers, and access to a printer.

Start by jotting down tasks that you'd like done daily (such as doing the dishes, tidying up toys etc.), weekly (such as laundry, vacuuming etc.), and monthly (such as washing windows, dusting etc.). Of course these tasks and correlated timeframes will be unique to your family's needs.

Create a word document (or word processing program of your choice) with your lists. Using a wide margin will fit most horizontal floating frames. I used 48pt font for the timeframe heading, and 14pt font for the bullet list.


Print out the lists, cut them to fit the frame, and place them in, and that's it! For an added touch of fun, you can use funky tape to frame the printouts.

Your nanny can use a dry erase marker to check off tasks as they are done, and you can also draw a heading (or footer) on the board with either the dry erase marker, or a permanent marker (use a stencil if you're doing it this way). You could draw a straightforward title such as, "Household Tasks" or go with something more creative such as, "Have We Said Thank You Today?"

Cost & Materials



3 photo clear floating photo frame: Kitchen Stuff Plus - $18 (I was hoping to find one at the dollar store, but wasn't able to find one that I liked)
Dry erase marker: Staples - already owned (but cost $1.89)
Funky tape (optional): Staples - already owned (but cost $3.89)

Total cost - $18

Other Materials

Scissors
Tape


HAPPY DIY-ing!

Finished Product




The Idea

I LOVE being organized. I mean I am seriously passionate about organizational systems; charts, graphs, schedules, spreadsheets, to-do lists, you name it and I love it. Lately I've been thinking more about the end of my maternity leave drawing nearer as I move on to the second half of it (how did this happen so fast?!). I am loving every moment of my time off, and even though I am very committed to my work, I can't help but find myself feeling sad about my 24/7 time with my son coming to an end, but today I realized that it's not as if life is a dream that I wake up from all of a sudden; I will still have a wonderful son whom I will be fortunate enough to get to eat lunch with when I'm working from home and enjoy during all of my non-working hours.

The exciting thing now is starting to think about how I'll organize my family when I'm back to work; what schedules and systems will I use to manage our time so that we are organized and can just sit back and enjoy life. The first thing I thought of was a weekly schedule board.

Our schedule varies week to week so I wanted a wipe board that I could go to every Sunday night as we prepare for the week ahead and chart our nanny's hours. Along the road of envisioning this board, I realized that it also made sense to add some fun little touches to it, like magnets with Logan's activities on them, and some magnets for sticking reminders to the board. We'll also use colour coating of the dry-erase markers so that we can show when I'll be home vs. at the office or in meetings, and the same for my husband. While we are big fans of Ical, I wanted a visual where we could see all of our days laid out, so off we went on a long awaited trip to Staples and the Dollar Store...

I love our little DIY adventure outings!

How-To

Measure twice, drawn once :-)

I used a fun tape to create columns on the board for days of the week, but took the time to measure out the board first to ensure that the columns would be even. I originally planned on creating rows as well for hours of the day, but realized during my crafting that it wouldn't really work because the tape would take up too much space, and it would be awkward to draw across the rows, so instead I just blocked the hours together on the left-hand side to create a spatial sense on the board, and then wrote in the hours as a guide. I placed packing tape on top of the days of the week and the hours in order to keep the content static.


To create the activity magnets, I bought some cheap dollar store magnets, labels, and stones. I stuck the labels to the round magnets, wrote the activity on the label, and then fastened the stone to the magnet using a glue gun.

These look better in person, but the light reflects at funny angles in the photo

Cost & Materials



White board: Staples - $21.99
Colorful large round magnets: Staples - $3.50
Funky tape: Staples - $3.89
Dry erase markers: Staples - $1.89 each (I bought two)
Small round magnets: Dollar Store - $1.00
White gem stones: Dollar Store - $1.00
Small labels: Dollar Store - $1.00
Total cost: Less than $40 all in with taxes

Other Materials

Measuring tape
Glue gun
Packing tape
Sharpie marker

Final product with sample week

So just to demonstrate my DIY gusto, I thought I'd post a little sampler of what's to come. I'll be honest, this DIY sampler has nothing to do with the nanny-focused DIY projects that are on the way...unless she likes tea...at which point in time it's a stretch, but I'd say it's relevant. I'm actually more of a DIY builder myself. Over the past several years, I've installed two kitchens, tiled 4 backslashes, built one shed, one deck, and overhauled two washrooms, in addition to making cosmetic upgrades to multiple spaces, BUT crafting is actually very new to me! I'm getting very into it with the help of a few friends, namely, Lindsay who is a fashion forward fellow blogger (The ELM Life: DIY, fashion, crafting and the like - you can check out her blog HERE) and Danielle...she's super crafty, super sweet, and talented to boot! She helped me with this project, check it out...

Finished Product

Tins - finished product

The Idea

I am a huge tea drinker...all herbal...all the time. My husband and I like to think of ourselves as "beverage people"...herbal tea, smoothies, apple cider, fresh homemade juices, lemonade...you name it and we sip it. :-) As my love for teas progressed, I was finding less and less room in my cupboards, thus a tea wall was born.

Tea wall pre-labels

How-To

With my friend Danielle's help, I found some super cute (and thick/stiff) wrapping paper - thanks Target...(make sure you say it with the soft "g" to make it sound classy) ;-) I cut the wrapping paper to fit the tea tins, using a ruler (for a nice clean straight line) and an x-acto knife. I then covered the wrapping paper around the tea tins using a small glue gun. Finally I developed a template in Word to make tea tin labels using cute little post-it notes I found at Target. They were sticky on the backing (not just with a stripe along the top like conventional ones) so I just stuck them to the tins. Then I found some simple white shelves at Ikea and mounted a tea wall in my kitchen. This was my first DIY (of the craftier persuasion) project.

Sharp knife...who knew crafting was such a dangerous sport!

Cost & Materials

David's Tea tins - already owned
X-acto knife - already owned (originally paid $8)
Ruler - already owned (but can buy at Dollar store)
Glue gun - already owned (but can buy at Dollar store)
Wrapping paper - Target: $4.99 (x3)
Blue post-its - Target: $3.99
TOTAL COST: Less than $20

Before

See how proud we look!

My tea wall :-)