A Room Of His Own

I really loved having my own home office. I've never had one before -- we've always either lived in places without extra bedrooms, or when I was working full-time, any extra space was claimed by Aaron as studio space. But for the last year and a half, since we moved into this house, I had my own little space to work in and to store my stuff (though Aaron tended to use it as a dumping ground for stuff that he wanted out of sight). But, Henry needs his own space and he grew out of his cradle so quickly, so we moved him into his own room a couple of weeks ago.

Aaron painted this room this weird colour of dark army green in the early months of my pregnancy simply because we had the paint on hand (it was originally intended as an accent colour for the living room but we decided it wasn't right). We're lucky Hnery turned out to be a dude rather than a dudette, because I don't think I could have lived with this stuff in a little girl's room. But for Mr. H, it kind of works. What you see above is a painting that an illustrator from Aaron's work gave to Henry and an old vintage puzzle that I thrifted last year (I glued down the pieces, obviously).

The curtains are newly made (by me!), and while I have to shorten the loops a little bit to bring them up, I actually made them the right size. I wanted to find some curtain fabric at that sale I went to last month, but I didn't end up finding enough for this long skinny window, so I splurged and bought this Marimekko. I figured it was worth the hefty price since Henry (and Ruby, for that matter) is a full quarter Finnish and the fabric hence reflects his heritage. Sure. Actually, I wanted something that wasn't too busy but was suitable for a kid, but not too cutesy. I basically followed the cafe curtain instructions in Bend-The-Rules sewing, but with two panels and longer hanging loops. And I only had to make a single cut (cutting the fabric in half) since I used every square inch of the two yards I ordered. Easy.


And here are the swatch portraits, hung up over the diaper table. Henry loves looking at them -- he actually coos whenever I change him. He's a good boy.