All posts tagged: toddler

Jumbo & Friends

Published by Karen Knox

Today i’d like to introduce to you a brand new design company based right here in the U to the K. Jumbo & Friends have landed, excitedly bringing their fresh perspective on children’s furniture with them. And I love it (and kind of want it all). It all began in 2013, when the creative founder, Esther fell pregnant and began the search for a cot for her son’s bedroom. Let’s just say she wasn’t really feeling what the current market had to offer. “that’s why I decided to create something different that would make children’s furniture more exciting, beautiful and engaging so that it becomes part of their world and ours, and makes it better!” Esther and her son A lady after my own heart. If it doesn’t exist, make it so! Launching the website just last week, these guys are already firing on all cylinders. After an energetic phone interview with Esther and this ten second video teaser of what was to come, I knew Jumbo & Friends had to make it onto the blog. Beautifully …

The Marvel Bedroom

Published by Karen Knox

And another project is completed. I’ve never been asked to do a child’s bedroom before so this was a new one for me. Max was turning four at the end of May and mum wanted to give him a big boy’s bedroom full of his favourite things. Spiderman. Hulk. Iron Man. Blue. Yellow. Red.  Mum wanted it to be subtle, not too manic and have plenty of storage for all his toys which were living on his bedroom floor and breeding rapidly. Another birthday and another party’s worth of presents and she may not have found him in there. Dad had purchased a shed load of Marvel wall decals (cue, mum’s eye roll). My job was to bring everyone’s ideas together, solve some problems and create a room that would make everyone happy. Eeesh. Walls were all painted in Duracoat paint from Homebase. It went on really nicely and I can attest that it is scrubbable. Really good value at £18.99 for the 2.5l pot of Cobalt I selected for the blue feature wall. Still half a pot …

Play Tray – Mini Project

Published by Karen Knox

My son is obsessed with Lego. Lego and making a mess. So I planned to make this slightly more bearable by trying to keep said Lego (and mess) enclosed in a play shaped space. Bring on the tray which is about 18 years old and a bit worse for wear and the vinyl Chalk Board roll which was left over from the Mini Kitchen project. It only took about 10 minutes to apply the vinyl to the clean dry tray surface. Use a Stanley knife to carefully cut the vinyl into the very edges of the tray. Considering the tray was going to get thrown out and the vinyl was just sitting in the loft, it looks pretty cool. I think this little mini project is going to help maintain both my sanity and Charlie’s Lego heads. Chalk dust all stays in the tray too. Brucey bonus.

Mini Kitchen for Minis

Published by Karen Knox

After we had our kitchen done, we discovered quite quickly just how much our son LOVED our kitchen too. Well, emptying the entire contents of the cupboards out onto the floors. It was a fun game. He would empty a cupboard in two seconds flat and I would spend the next five minutes huffing and carefully replacing everything. Rinse and repeat… until mum got fed up and decided to get creative. Our little kitchen loving, cupboard emptying cherub was getting a kitchen of his own. I’ve always believed role play activities are what children are best at don’t you think? Kitchen Ingredients: Ikea – Duktig Kitchen – Just the base section Ikea Ribba Shelf A roll of chalkboard vinyl (I always spell vinyl wrong – just had to write that out three times). Uni Chalk Marker pens – the ones they use to write on restaurant boards Wooden A4 Drawer Chest – Argos 3 little white screw in hooks Give your ingredients a good mix, pop it in the oven for about an hour at 180 …