Stuff Parents Need

Easing the chaos in the nest, one find at a time.

Paying Attention to Liminal Spaces in Your Home

· by · Leave a Comment

Have you ever heard of the term liminal space? It’s something I learned in graduate school (I have an advanced degree in theology, which most people find to be shockingly random…).

Anyway, I studied liminal spaces as they related to houses of worship, but liminal spaces can be found most anywhere.

They are, simply put, places of transition. Liminal spaces are rarely lingered in, and are markers between one type of setting and another. So in a church that might be the narthax. In a restaurant it is the space between the first set of doors you enter and the second set of doors you enter, into the actual restaurant.

Homes often have liminal spaces, too. We currently live in a rather small home, so we don’t have an entryway, which is a typical liminal space. But we do have places in our home where we don’t tend to linger, and that simply serve as conduits from one place to another. Since we spent little time dwelling in these spots, we don’t spent much time thinking about how to make them feel more welcoming.

But I recently did spend some time thinking about one of our liminal spaces and how I might make an improvement upon it. I looked very closely at our upstairs bathroom. The bathroom is designed in a fashion you have almost certainly seen before in other homes, with two sinks and under counter storage serving as the first room and the toilet and shower in the second room. All the bathroom “dwelling” takes places in the tiny second room, and the first room gets mostly walked through, though of course we do wash hands, brush teeth and when the spirit moves me, apply makeup in there. Still, it isn’t an area where I will hang out (except for that one time that I hid from my family so I could read a magazine…).

It occurred to me last month that there is a huge, empty wall on one side of that first room, and that the other side of the wall has a huge mirror.  If I could find a lovely piece of art for the blank wall, I could enjoy looking at it through the mirror, even if only briefly while using the sink or the bathroom counter. It would make the space feel less institutional and more like my home.

So I headed over to Gallery Direct to find the perfect piece for the space. Since my whole goal was to encourage a bit of slowing down in a “move on through” area of my home, I searched for prints that made me feel very calm and quiet. I found the perfect piece by one of Gallery Direct’s newer artists, Brett Pfister. He is quickly becoming one of my favorites, as his work seems to draw me in again and again.

Gallery Direct bathroom 1

I absolutely loved We Who Find Rest and decided that a beautiful forest scene was the perfect thing for me to reflect on while getting myself and Darah ready in the bathroom each morning. We may be a home bustling with energy, but even in the midst of our busy day, it is good to be reminded of the beauty and serenity of nature, and the peace that comes with being still, if only for a moment.

Gallery Direct Bathroom 2

Since this was a forest scene, I knew exactly how I wanted it mounted: on birchwood. This is a very cool option that Gallery Direct provides, and the other piece I have had mounted on birchwood gets rave reviews from folks who see it. It was a beautiful choice and I’m very pleased with it. And the price point was amazing…today it is on sale for $101 for the large. What a bargain for a beautiful piece of art that is mounted in a unique way.

Gallery Direct Bathroom 3

Do you have a space in your home that is hurried past and where, for whatever reason, you don’t feel comfortable dwelling? What can you do to make it more inviting, and to make it feel less transitional and more like a space in its own right? I’d really love to hear your thoughts!

And don’t forget that if you follow Gallery Direct on Pinterest and pin your favorite piece from the Gallery Direct website using the hashtag #gallerydirect, you’ll be entered into their weekly Pin it to Win it drawing. Every week a winner is drawn for a $200 credit. Here’s an example of how a pin it to win it entry should look: https://pinterest.com/pin/278308451942150520/

I serve as a blog ambassador for Gallery Direct. Product samples are provided as part of the program. All thoughts and opinions expressed here are strictly my own.

How I Used Art to Fix a Design Flaw in My Home (GIVEAWAY!!!)

· by · 121 Comments

I think almost every house has at least one feature (or lack of feature) that makes you wonder what on earth the architect was thinking. In the case of our new home, it seems that the designer did not think windows were very important. The north facing side of our house has only 1 small window, and the south facing side of our house has 0 windows. I knows those aren’t the directions that get a ton of light, but still, can’t we let a little bit in???

Our pantry in our kitchen is one place where it seems obvious to me that a window should be. There’s a blank space in the wall that is just the right size, and it would bring in so much natural light to the pantry and to the kitchen. It would make so much sense and look great. But this is real life, and just because a window would be a smart idea, that doesn’t mean that the funds exist to install one!

This is just one more way that art can be so awesome. You can use it to correct a design flaw in your home. I thought finding art to be my window was an idea so crazy that it just might work. So I headed to my #1 source for all things beautiful, Gallery Direct. The moment I saw Remoteness III it just clicked, and I knew I had found my new “view.”

Here are some shots of the installed piece.

(It’s really lovely, isn’t it?)

(This is the view from my kitchen table where I do much of my blog work. It’s directly across from the only window on this side of the house. I love it!)

I’m curious if you have a design flaw in your home that you think art could help correct? Perhaps you have an unfortunately placed fuse box or thermostat that needs to be hidden. Or perhaps you DO have a window in a room, but it is really off-center and throws everything off balance. Or maybe your home is just suffering from a case of empty wall syndrome. Whatever the problem, Gallery Direct is here to help!

Gallery Direct also has a 50,000 fans sweepstakes running on their Facebook page, so get entered over there to win a $500 art shopping spree!

ALSO….if you follow Gallery Direct on Pinterest and pin your favorite piece from the Gallery Direct website using the hashtag #gallerydirect, you’ll automatically be entered into their weekly Pin it to Win it drawing! One winner each week gets a $200 credit! AWESOME!! Here’s an example of how a pin it to win it entry should look: https://pinterest.com/pin/278308451942150520/

Win it!: One lucky Stuff Parents Need reader is going to win a $200 credit to Gallery Direct! That can buy some AWESOME art, folks! Please note that the credit is for a one time use, so if you don’t use it all in one transaction, you lose it!
a Rafflecopter giveaway

Be sure to enter my other current giveaways, found on the sidebar of my page.

I serve as a blog ambassador for Gallery Direct. Product samples are provided as part of the program. All thoughts and opinions expressed here are strictly my own.

Giving Art as a Gift! Have You Ever Done It?

· by · Leave a Comment

Giving someone a surprise is SO MUCH FUN. That’s just one of the reasons that I love being a blogger who gives products away all the time. I have a blast sending out those good news emails to the lucky winners. I get to have a Santa Claus moment several times each week!

I also really enjoy getting the opportunity to give a gift to people in my life for no particular reason. Personally, I find those unexpected gifts to be some of the most memorable.

Recently, I had the opportunity to give a gift to my blog assistant, Alanna. I’ve mentioned Alanna before, and I’d like to take another moment to highlight all the great work she does for this site. She works tirelessly behind the scenes to promote all these fantastic giveaways we have, and her posts on various contest sites and on Facebook and Twitter are the reason so many of you found your way to this corner of the blogosphere.

Alanna takes care of most of the parts of running this blog that tend to wear me out (indeed, like any type of work, it’s not all rainbows and sunshine!). Honestly, if I didn’t have her help, I likely would have burned out and quit blogging a long time ago (GASP!). But because of her help, I am still very joyful about blogging and it is something that I look forward to doing (almost) every single day!

So yeah, Alanna is an important person in the life of this blog! And I wanted to give her a gift to express my gratitude. So I asked her to hop over to one of my favorite online shopping destinations, , and pick out the perfect piece for her home.

She was so thrilled! She and her husband combed through the site and selected the perfect piece for their home. I didn’t want to pick out the art for her, because I think that art is a really personal thing, and it can be difficult to capture someone else’s style rather than simply picking out what you personally like.

Here’s Alanna’s precious daughter enjoying the process of unwrapping their art. This is a familiar scene to me, as Darah LOVES to play with all that bubble wrap, too!

And here’s the piece, which is on birchwood (it is such a cool look!) hanging on their wall!

I really had fun seeing what they chose. I think the piece is absolutely stunning, yet it is something I’ve never even noticed on Gallery Direct before, as I tend to search for art with cooler colors (blues, greens, yellows and grays). Did you catch that? You can search for art by color on Gallery Direct. That’s one of my favorite features of the site!

If you love the idea of giving a piece of art as a gift, but would much rather completely surprise the recipient with a finished piece, you might also want to consider uploading a photo (those are easier to get your hands on thanks to Facebook, Flickr and Instagram!) and have it turned into a work of art to hang in the home. And right now, all gallery wraps of photo uploads are 50% off! Woo hoo!!!! I’m actually going to be getting a wedding picture put on canvas for my sister and her husband as their Christmas present this year (they got married in May).

I’m so happy that I was able to give Alanna a piece of art to hang in her home. I think it is a very special type of gift, and it definitely inspires me to start paying closer attention to the artistic style of my friends and family so that I might be able to gift some art to them in the future! I’d love to hear if you have any tips for choosing art as a gift for someone else…it can be tricky! 

Disclosure: I serve as a blog ambassador for Gallery Direct. Product samples are provided as part of the program. All thoughts and opinions expressed here are strictly my own.

Decorating a Baby’s Nursery: Getting Past The Usual Suspects

· by · Leave a Comment

I spent HOURS AND HOURS AND HOURS trying to figure out what I wanted Darah’s nursery to look like. Oh for the days when I had that kind of free time! Anyway, I was ADAMENT that her room would not look like every other little girl nursery out there, all pink and princessy and filled with stuff you’d expect to see, like Winnie the Pooh and other Disney characters. Not that there’s anything wrong with Disney characters. Some of my best friends are Disney characters!

Anyway, the irony wasn’t lost on me when after spending the better part of 3 months searching, I landed on a bedding scheme that was…wait for it….PINK. Yup, pink. The most stereotypical girl nursery color in the world.

But at least the design was unique. It was cherry blossoms and birds, and I did have a lot of fun incorporating those design elements into other facets of the room.

With Layah, I just didn’t have time do all that exhaustive research. And since she was baby number 2, I also didn’t really have the resources to start completely from scratch. She inherited many things from Darah’s room, which left me, once again, with a pink nursery.

But this time, I knew where to go to get her something really striking and different for her walls. Flowers, hearts, balloons, sparkles and any of the other usual suspects weren’t invited. I decided to go upscale and get my baby a gorgeous piece of framed art for her room.

Since the color scheme was already decided for me, I simply did a search for art by color at Gallery Direct. After sorting through many different options, I landed on this beautiful piece:

This is Spring Orchard II by Kim Coulter. Doesn’t it look amazing as a framed canvas? I enjoy looking at it while I nurse Layah in the rocking chair. It’s so peaceful and pretty, yet still unexpected in a nursery. I love it.

If you are looking for something a bit out of the ordinary for your baby’s room, why not bring in some beautiful art work? Gallery Direct has thousands of striking options, and their prices are really reasonable for the high quality product you receive.

Disclosure: I serve as a blog ambassador for Gallery Direct. Product samples are provided as part of the program. All thoughts and opinions expressed here are strictly my own.

Darah’s Big Girl Room Gets Big, Bold Color from Gallery Direct (GIVEAWAY!!!!)

· by · 102 Comments

We’ve already established that I absolutely loved Darah’s nursery. I never thought I would go all out with pink for my little one, but I did. And it was so sweet.

When we were getting ready for our recent move to a new house, I knew that it was the perfect opportunity to make some changes to Darah’s room. She had already been out of her crib for a while, but we just had her mattress on the floor (Montessori-style) while we waited to find a cool new bed for her. Changing rooms and moving to a house where we are allowed to paint opened up new possibilities, and I knew it was time to let all that pink go and explore some different colors.

Tim painted her walls a very pale gray so that we could experiment with bold colors with her accent pieces. I’m still trying to find some colorful drapes and perhaps an accent rug, but with help from Gallery Direct we have already found the statement piece of the room that is going to inspire everything else.

This print proudly hangs in Darah’s room, just above her gutter bookcases (thanks, Pinterest!). It is dramatic, it is fun, and it is full of beautiful colors. I absolutely love it! We have it in a size large, on canvas with no frame, and I have to tell you that from a distance it really does look like an original piece. You can see the texture of the painting and the brush strokes. You have to touch it to realize that it is a print! It looks magnificent!

It also brings such a vibrant pop of color to an otherwise very unassuming, very pale and neutral room. If you are working on making some changes to a room for your little one, carefully consider getting some great art. And MAKE IT BIG!! In the past, I’ve been very guilty of putting “art” on the wall that is no bigger than 8×10. Maybe the pieces are pretty, but they certainly don’t stand out at that size. Really go for it and make a splash with your art work. Gallery Direct is a site that can help you do this for a VERY reasonable rate. The piece we got for Darah retails for $249, but is on sale right now for just $125! AMAZING!!!

Gallery Direct also is a wonderful place to go if you want to turn photos into art. In fact, right now a 12 x 18 gallery wrap of your photo upload is just $49. That’s a PERFECT gift for Mother’s Day!

Win it!: Gallery Direct has a very special giveaway for 2 (yes, TWO!) of my readers: a 12 x 18 gallery wrap of your favorite photo! Woo hoo!

[Read more…]

Beautify the Space You Occupy All Day: Your Office!

· by · Leave a Comment

When I worked outside of the home, I had a really nice private office with beautifully selected furniture that I inherited from the person who was in it before me. But the walls were all bare and it still had an overall “generic” feel to it. One day it occurred to me that I was literally spending 1/3 of my day, 5 days a week, in that space. Why couldn’t it look a bit nicer? I asked my boss if there were any extra funds available to do just a little bit of decorating. He didn’t have much ($150, I seem to recall) but I said I would work with that and I hopped online to see what I could find to beautify the space.

In the end, I purchased some lovely curtains and rods, which really gave my office a more comfortable and less institutional feel. I also shopped around the office suite for some items. We had several pieces of framed art work from previous city-wide multi-cultural festivals just gathering dust in a closet. I selected a few and put them on the walls. They looked great! Then I spent the remaining funds I had on some plants, which also helped the space feel so much more inviting. My students commented that the office was staring to have a really peaceful feel to it and that they enjoyed visiting.

Now I work from my home, but I have taken the same mentality with my work space. I want it to feel productive and not cluttered, but that doesn’t mean it needs to be bare and devoid of anything interesting! I have art on my walls here to inspire me, and I’ve also put down area rugs and made sure my office chair is decent.

When Valentine’s Day was approaching a few weeks ago, I started thinking about a way to show my love for Tim outside of typical gifts like chocolate. I started to think about the space he dwells in when he is away from home. I asked him if he likes the look and feel of his office. I’ve seen the space, itself. It is large and has a lot of windows, which is very inviting. But other than that, it looks SO BORING!!!! And there’s not one single thing on any of the walls. So I encouraged him to think about a piece of art he might like to have on his walls, both to enjoy himself, and also for his visitors to get to enjoy.

He headed to Gallerydirect.com and spent some time looking around. And he did find something that he felt spoke to his role as a City Planner, and that would also bring some color and some life into his bland office. He loved this print by the abstract artist Jasper. While this isn’t the original piece, Gallery Direct is only offering 950 prints total of the work, so it is a limited edition. The print is also signed and numbered. Tim selected to get the print on paper, and to have it framed in a gorgeous metallic aged bronze frame. The end result was fantastic!

I have to say, we have ordered so many different combinations of print and frame options from Gallery Direct, and every single time, we are thrilled with the end result. Everything they offer is of the highest quality. Tim absolutely loves having some nice art work in his office, and it looks so polished and professional; just perfect for an office!

Gallery Direct is sure to have whatever you might be looking for to make your work space more inviting. You can search by style of art work, by color, and you can even upload your own images. I can’t say enough great things about this company and the quality of what you will receive. You will most definitely be pleased with your purchase!

Be sure to check out their site; it just got an overhaul and now is even easier to use!

Disclosure: I serve as a blog ambassador for Gallery Direct. Product samples are provided as part of the program. All thoughts and opinions expressed here are strictly my own.

My New Year’s Resolution is Hanging on the Wall

· by · 3 Comments

This year, Tim and I decided to go with the increasingly popular trend of bucking a New Year’s resolution list, and coming up with a New Year’s resolution theme. Specifically, we wanted to come up with a word that would help guide us for 2012.

We gave the idea very careful thought, and came up with the word “rooted.” That one idea speaks to many of the specific dreams Tim and I have for ourselves as individuals, a couple, professionals and citizens of Chattanooga.

We tried (admittedly half-heartedly at times) for 6 full years to plant roots in Memphis. It just never happened. We are committed to seeing that happen in Chattanooga, and we’ve already got some roots planted, but we have much more work to do before this place really and truly starts to feel like home. We both want to get more involved in our church and in our community, and really be part of the fabric of this town.

We also want to form more meaningful relationships with people; its really hard to thrive when you don’t have very close personal friendships. I have already met some wonderful Chattanoogans, so I hope to continue to nurture those relationships (haven’t done a good job at all since becoming pregnant, unfortunately). I also hope to meet some new people who will become life long friends. It’s pretty darn tough to make friends with other adults. We are all so busy with our respective commitments, so carving out time for new people is a big ask. I hope that I will make the time to seek out those people, though, and should I be lucky enough for those people to seek me out, I really hope that I will make room in my life for them!

We are also welcoming another child into our family, and this will be a year for Tim and I to become even more rooted in our role as parents. I know we will be tested repeatedly, not just this year, but for the rest of our days, but we have strong foundation now, and I look forward to seeing it become even stronger as we grow.

Having a theme is easier to remember than having a list of 10 goals. My original idea was to put the word somewhere we could see it daily, like on the fridge. But then I thought it would be even more powerful to see a creative expression of this word, through art, hung in our home where we could enjoy its beauty and meditate on its meaning throughout the year.

So, of course, I turned to Gallery Direct to put together something truly beautiful. Would you like to see it?

This is a print of a photo I found on Flickr, under the creative commons licensing section. When something has a creative commons license, that means you are free to use it as long as you attribute the photographer. This is a beautiful piece by Kevin Buehler. It really spoke to both of us, as it shows these really big roots stretching out far and wide. It now hangs in our kitchen/dining room, and is in a place where we see it many times each day. I can actually see it from my spot at the kitchen table right now!

This custom print has already helped get me re-motivated to work more on our business we are launching (something I’ve let fall completely to the wayside for the past 3 weeks) and has inspired some quality conversations between Tim and me. The frame is absolutely stunning…this is so much better than sticking a word on the fridge!

If you are in need of some inspiration in your house, consider framed art. If you have a particular picture in mind that you’d like to get framed, you are REALLY in luck, as I have an awesome coupon code for you! Use code photo75 to save 75% off your canvas photo print! It expires on 2/1/2012, so hop to it!

Disclosure: I serve as a blog ambassador for Gallery Direct. Product samples are provided as part of the program. All thoughts and opinions expressed here are strictly my own.

Using Art as Holiday Decor!

· by · 1 Comment

Most of us have already done a bit of fall decorating in and around our homes, and we are just a few days away from breaking out all that red and green! Most of us have boxes in the attic of ornaments, garland, lights and various decorative pieces that we display throughout the house.

But do any of you have art that you display just for the holidays? I’d never even considered adding art to my holiday decor collection until this year, and then I realized that it actually makes a lot of sense. Gallery Direct, my go-to online destination for amazing art prints, offers pieces in a variety of sizes and framing options, so you can select something that is really easy to store away for most of the year.

I opted to get an image (The Visitation) in a medium size and to not have it framed, so that transporting it up and down from the attic wouldn’t be cumbersome. Even in its modest form, it looks incredible, and I think the picture is just so much fun! I love that the colors aren’t the traditional holiday color scheme, as you’ll find blues, greens and whites throughout my house year-round. So the art still works with the colors in my house, but there’s no denying that it is a  holiday piece. I love all those twinkling lights! It very much reminds me of taking walks during the week of Christmas and enjoying the decorations in the yards of our neighbors.

Hanging festive art on the wall can really go a long way toward transforming a room for the holidays, and it only requires one piece, as opposed to needing to fill the room with lots and lots of smaller decor pieces. Our storage space is very limited, so as much as I’d like to have 20 storage tubs of Christmas decor, I have to keep things at a minimum. That usually means that only 2 rooms in our house get their halls decked. Now I can bring the holiday spirit into another room simply by placing a picture on the wall. I love it!

Gallery Direct continues to inspire me as a home decorator to think outside the box about ways that I can make my house a home and using framed art for the holidays is just one more fun idea.

What about you: do you have any holiday art that you hang?

Disclosure: I serve as a blog ambassador for Gallery Direct. Product samples are provided as part of the program. All thoughts and opinions expressed here are strictly my own.

Bringing Nature Into Your House When Plants Aren’t Invited (GIVEAWAY!!!)

· by · 112 Comments

I’ve never had a green thumb, but there was a time in my adult life when I did successfully manage to keep several plants in the house alive. I really enjoyed having those splashes of green throughout my home. I knew they were scrubbing the air and they were a sign of victory for me after YEARS of killing plants (anyone else out there over-water their cactus…twice?).

But I don’t have a single plant in my house at the moment, and I don’t expect I will for another 4 or 5 years. Allow me to explain why:
1. I have a cat who decided a few years ago that potted plants were very unusual litter boxes. Putting large rocks in the pots did help with this problem, but didn’t completely solve it.

2. In the not so distant past I had a newly walking toddler who liked to grab things. And eat them. Things like plant leaves. I made sure that we didn’t have any poisonous plants before we reached that stage, but Darah seemed to be perfectly fine chewing on the stuff that wasn’t poisonous, too.

3. Now that I have a tiny little kid in the house, that means I have a mischief-maker. I know she would delight in toting plants around the house, at least until her arms got tired, and then she’s just drop/break it on the floor.

4. This same child also LOVES to dig in the dirt. You can see where that leads us…

So yeah, no plants for me. Has anyone else out there had to get rid of their plants for the foreseeable future?

I do miss them. And it recently occurred to me that I could bring some plant life back in my house without having to actually have plants. I could turn to art! I’ve learned so much over the past few months about all the ways that art can breathe new life into your home, and if you are a bit short on plants and other signs of nature, bringing in some art can really help you out!

I found a print that really took my breath away on Gallery Direct. It’s by the same artist who painted the beach scene we have in our bedroom. It’s a painting of a tree with some gorgeous moss on it. It actually reminds me very much of a trip Tim and I took to the Pacific Northwest a handful of years ago, where I got to see some of the greenest landscapes ever. I remember driving through the woods and honestly expecting to see gnomes and fairies pop up. The forests had such an enchanted look. And there was moss growing everywhere. This picture immediately pulls me back into those forests and into that feeling of being somewhere magical. That’s more than any houseplant of mine ever did, I have to say!

But what I REALLY like about this painting is the material that it is on. As I was looking over the options on Gallery Direct, I noticed that you could get your artwork placed on birchwood. PERFECT! It gives the piece such a natural vibe. I didn’t tell Tim anything about the piece I selected so it would be a surprise when it arrived. When he opened it, he immediately commented that the wood looked amazing and that it might be his favorite display option so far. It is very much in line with his personal style. I’m so glad I gave it a try with this tree painting. I’m not sure if I would have, otherwise, but now that I’ve seen it, I think it rocks.

Right now, Gallery Direct is having a BIG sale on their site. Everything is 25% off AND you get free shipping! If you don’t have any reminders of the great outdoors in your abode, here’s your chance to remedy that situation, no watering can required! And here’s one more reason to support Gallery Direct (other than the fact that you will be BLOWN AWAY by the quality of their work). Did you know that Gallery Direct provides the artwork for Extreme Makeover Home Edition? It’s true! As you ooh and ahh over the beautiful homes this season, note the art on the walls. It’s all from Gallery Direct!

So how about you? How do you bring nature into your home? Do you have a house full of plants? Any images on your walls that take you outside without having to leave the house? Any other ideas for how to bring the great outdoors in?

Win it!:  EEEEEE!!!!! I’ve been waiting for this moment for a few months, and I’m so excited to tell you that you now have a chance to win a $200 credit to Gallery Direct! You can choose from the AMAZING images they offer, or you can upload your own to create some truly custom art. You are going to swoon when you see the final product!

[Read more…]