Last year when I was pregnant with my second child Marlo and agonizing over the tiniest details of her nursery, I remember conducting random word searches on Flickr for inspiration and stumbling across this incredible arrangement of plates on a wall:
CC image courtesy of shareski on Flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/shareski/2098598077/
That sounds a little menacing, doesn’t it? PLATES ON A WALL. Like you show up late to a meeting, your skirt accidentally tucked into your pantyhose, and you’re all SORRY! PLATES ON A WALL AGAIN!
That is going to be my excuse for everything now: The plates. On the wall.
I found that photograph and others like it so inspiring that I wanted to decorate one wall of the nursery with a delicate set of pink plates, an idea quickly squashed by my annoyingly logical husband. Breakable plates in an infant’s room? Did I really want to see my child bleed and possibly sever her carotid artery?
I guess there is a reason I keep him around.
So I opted for something much more infant-friendly, or so I thought. My first child Leta was such a sedentary kid and was never interested in outlets or dangerous cords. We never had to child-proof anything with her around because she was much more interested in deciphering letters and words. I mean, there we were at an amusement park waiting to ride a carousel when she turned to me and said, “Can we please go back to the hotel so that I can read my books?”
Is that not the cutest little geek ever?
I found a set of whimsical magnetic flower art that I installed in a dramatic flourish up and over the dresser in the nursery:
The dresser that I intended to use as the changing table, yes. You can probably see where this is going. Your jaw just hit the floor, I know. But you have to understand! If this had been Leta’s nursery she would have stared up at the wall, arms calmly at her side studying the intricate way the flowers seemed to burst forth from the wall! How mathematical!
But Marlo is no Leta. Marlo is very interested in touching and grabbing anything potentially fatal: glasses full of water, our phones, forks at the dinner table. How many times I have had to pry the remote control out of her fingers before she has swallowed it whole. Yummy, yummy channel changer!
And so this is what that section of the nursery looks like now:
Lesson learned: PLATES! ON THE WALL!
Really! This is too cute and funny. And I had wondered how you all stylish with an infant in the house.
(weird that someone commented about the 400+ comments about it being a bad idea and completely disregarded the many, many people who have said something to the effect of "OMIHECK THAT WOULD SO HAVE HAPPENED TO ME! Thanks for the head's up!")
That is too cute. Love this statment Heather: "guess I'm someone like you who maybe can't afford an interior decorator to whip things magically into shape, and I'm learning and discovering tricks from everything I read and watch. " It is so true and really shows how normal you are. Can't wait to hear more from you!
BOO TO THE YAH.
So let me see if I understand this correctly. This is an article about how Heather (who is just like you and me, but only if you and me all made $40,000 a month and still claimed we couldn't afford a decorator) saw someone else's idea, and sort of copied it, only not really, because the flow of the pattern isn't the same, and the items on the wall certainly aren't the same, and Heather's version failed due to impracticality, so we are to look for more great design ideas and inspirations from…Heather? This does not compute. I would rather hear more from the woman who put the plates on the wall, because that style and color combination was brilliant. Heather has no business here, in my opinion. She doesn't even address that horrible window with anything more interesting than blinds? Yuck.
Who said or where does it say that Heather pulls in $40,000 a month? And do you have any idea what her overhead is? If she states she cannot afford a designer, who are we to doubt that? My goodness; get a life. Don't like the article? Totally your prerogative. Move on to the next one.
Heather said on her blog that she makes more than $40K/month from her website. To me, that's a LOT of money – enough to hire a decorator, if that's what she wanted. So when she puts in writing that the reason HGTV hired her is because she's just like "one of us" who can't afford a designer, I disagree. I also don't think running a business from home and hiring her husband as one of her 2 only paid employees, thus pouring business expense money right back into their own pockets, is big overhead. I stated my opinion in a forum that has been created by HGTV, so that their viewers and readers may STATE THEIR OPINIONS. As a devoted, long-time fan of HGTV, I want them to know that some of us think this is not a good match, and that Heather's input is far below their usual standards of content and staff. There is no secret forum where only the bad people who don't actually enjoy Heather's work are allowed to speak. All opinions go here, because HGTV wants to know what everyone thinks, not just the people who blindly worship a woman who hasn't said anything fresh, funny or worth reading in years.
Thank you, Marlo. You're keepin' it real, babydoll.
Thank you Heather, I am in the process of deciding what to do with my nursery when baby number 1 comes along in August! The wall decales (is that the word??!!) are a great idea, and whilst I love your butterflies I have got so much more from your article about NOT using the butterflies and got some great tips from commenters about the flat stickons rather than something that could be pulled off (which I totally didn tthink of, i just wanted something cute!). My only question is, how easy dothe stick-ons come off?? Am I going to ruin my paint work (and when I say my i mean my husbands!) underneath when I decide they need to come off, has anyone had past experiences? ta!
Ok Heather….let's just say I already purchased these lovely flowers for my soon-to-be-born daughter's nursery. Any design suggestions on where to hang them instead? They don't go too well with the style of the living room or other bedrooms!
Before our daughter was born I wallpapered her bedroom in the prettiest, dainty green and white floral wallpaper. When she was old enough to stand in her crib I entered her room one morning to greet my smiley face cherub. She was standing, her back to me in her crib and as she turned around she bounced up and down, grinning the grin of "LOOK MA,LOOK WHAT I DID! DON'T YA LOVE ME?" She had found the vertical seam in the wallpaper and peeled away, in VERY tiny pieces an area the size of a basketball. It stayed like that for a long long time.
Well done Dooce! This is too funny and so true in my home as well! I am all about being organized and my children have taught me to be, let's say, more flexible and careful in my planning:))) Although if you are like me, you will treasure that picture of the before and how fabulous it looked once upon a time!! You have such a fantastic and refreshing outlook to life and say things that I know I have thought of at one time or another!
I still remember the day when my now 8 year old pulled the curtains in his nursery (rod and all) off his wall and into the crib with him. So very pleased with himself!
Ditto abi's request. I need good advice and tips on how to decorate my home to where it looks nice and put together while being extremely kid friendly. I have 2 toddlers who, like Marlo, insist on touching and grabbing and destroying everything they can come into contact with. And they climb… oh how they climb… Also, I should mention I live in earthquake country so shelves with pretty things on top are probably not such a great idea.
LOL! That is what 9 months of visual stimulation from Pregnancy magazines et al! It is not a pit we have not fallen into. I wish on any given day I could keep any of our kids resembling more Pottery and less barn.
I keep singing "Plates on the wall" to the tune of "pants on the ground". That's a hysterical post, Heather, you are a breath of fresh air to HGTV…they are lucky to have you! Good luck in this and all future endeavors!
Okay, I have 4 kids (three of whom are 2 years old) and even after reading this article I would STILL love to get those flowers. SO PRETTY!
Unbelieveable how nasty some people (Lisa E) are. Go AWAY. Go some place else people like Lisa E. If you are not happy here – please, go some place in the world where you will be happy (although I'm guessing you're one of those people who find something miserable in EVERYTHING). Well. Except maybe yourself. Bet you think you're pretty darn special huh?
Anyway, maybe the post by Heather was a little bit too sophisticated for you. There are places for you…just not here, K?
Loved the post Heather. I can't tell you how many similar decorating mistakes I've made.
Oh and I don't make $40k a month!
It’s interesting to me how UPSET people get when someone comes on a site and gives their negative opinion! You gotta agree that the window is very under-decorated….but to get so upset? Pleeezzze. Everyone is entitled to their opinion and there’s room here for positive and negative!
Peal and stick wall appliques are AMAZING!!!! So movable you can change the look in no time!!!! Those flowers however are gorgeous!!!!!
Notice that the theme here is that the first child is sweet and calm and the second child is destructo-child. I have those same children. My theory is that if I would have had my daughter first (my second child), I would have decided that parenting was way tooo hard and decide never to do THAT again. Heather, the flowers on the wall were adorable, and hey, at least you have a picture to remember that brief moment in time.
Solution: Place things out of their reach.
Heather doesn’t write advice columns; not her style. She shares stories, experiences and anecdotes and you can take (or not) what you want from them. Or, she’ll have to learn to write in a more traditional audience-directed style, which is not her style.
[...] month or two ago, I blogged about my role in putting together the new relationship between HGTV and Heather Armstrong of [...]
LOVE the dresser as a changing table idea! Am I in the dark? Do people have a bad reaction to that?
as a soon to be mother myself.. looking at baby furniture .. just about EVERYWHERE has the dresser doubling as the changing table
Plates. On the wall.
Reminds me of
Pants. On the ground.
lovely plate wall!!