Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Kids Bedroom Rennovation Design

 Design of the kids' room is challenging, when the room is small, it is challenging even more. My kids are growing up and they will move to their own room soon, so I decided to go through the new kid's furniture trends to get an inspiration.

 I browsed lots of examples, but decided to show only the best matching to my goal: decoration of a very small room for two toddler kids.

 According to Feng Shui nothing should be stored under beds and bunk beds aren't the best choice. It is also not recommended to hang things above the head. This is exactly what I always felt intuitively. Surprisingly, I found a lot of bunk beds and under bed storage spaces in the contemporary bed rooms' designs. Well, it is space - justified, but we are looking for the comfy feeling, aren't we? As always, let's try to find a compromise.

 The first one that I really like is a modern and quite a minimalistic design from http://designvarious.com collection of interiors:


This is a very clean and light furniture complex. No massive storage units under the bed and the bunk bed is modified, so only part of the body will be under the second level. And it is quite compact.

Tuesday, October 30, 2012

Christmas Gifts - Be prepared

 You know how it always happens - you start thinking about next Christmas presents right after it passes but you do nothing. When winter begins you are in a rush to get the gifts to everybody and sometimes you buy things just to fill the gap in the list, in the short amount of time you have left and not because you really like them.

 I decided to gather a few gift and decoration ideas more than a month ahead when I got an unexpected gift from Tonya from CityCrochet. She just sent it to me without any reason. It is a completely magical feeling when you get such a sudden present - just feels like Santa brought it to you. We've received these beautiful acorns


and a rose brooch.

Since we've got such a cool decoration element for the coming holidays, I want to find more original ideas for the rest of my family. And I am going to share my findings with you!

 Amazing christmas decoration stained glass candle holder. This will warm the atmosphere in the house especially when it is freezing outside.

 Next on the list are stunning felted toys created by my friend from Israel. She prepared a whole collection for Christmas, but I especially like this one (Vlada's shop):


One more shop, that I like, produces knitted accessories for women and men (and this is very important, at least I am struggling to find ideas for men's gifts).



 Everyone has many acquaintance (colleagues, friends that are not close enough), so I was also looking for small gifts ideas - something that doesn't cost much but is cute and positive. And I found these ornaments.


I also came with a new collection of necklaces which are a perfect gift for any nursing mom, but also for any woman that likes country style accessories.
 These are just a few ideas, but I hope they'll help to find an inspiration for gift shopping.

Wednesday, October 10, 2012

Discover Israel: Beauty of Kineret

Few last weeks were full of holidays and we had a lot of days for traveling. Though we used only half or even less of them, we really enjoyed the places we did visit. One of such sites was Lake Tiberius. We spent two days camping there. Lake Tiberius is a very popular tourist attraction, so I will not tell about it (I simply don't have anything intriguing to add to the well known facts about Sea of Galilee), but I want to show photos that I took at night and very early morning.

Night fishing and stunning view of city of Tiberius:


 This is the same view just early in the morning:


P.S. Children slept much better in the tent than they usually sleep at home :))

More places to visit, find here

Friday, October 5, 2012

Discover Israel: Salt Desert

There are a lot of places in our tiny country that are worth visiting though they don't appear in a tourist guide. I met my husband in one of those places, and we visited together many other stunning sites. We used to climb mountains and descend into caves which became almost impossible for us after our first child was born. It is quite a hot place even at winter, and at summer I can travel there only during the night hours, which makes it even more difficult for visiting with small children. Our dog Jarna also never had been at Judaean Desert.


This is why we were very happy when our friends organized a small BBQ between the salt rocks and invited us to join. It was late and we wisely decided to take only Liya with us :)
Jarna was mad about everything and galloped from one hill to another,  but only in the morning I could really understand how high she had managed to climb. This view is zoomed in, since she was really far and I wanted to see her on the picture :)

Liya slept well in the tent (she is 2 month old here :)) Can you see her there?:)
 In the early morning we walked towards the mountains while it was not too hot.
We spent the hot hours in a deep gorge with just enough shadow and even a small pond, where some of us could even swim :), others slept or climbed. Unfortunately not me this time :(


More places to visit, find here.

Tuesday, October 2, 2012

Toys guid for young parents

When my first son was born I actually knew nothing about baby toys, just nothing. I knew theoretically that little ones play ruffles, or may be some funny sounding toys, but nothing more. I was looking at the local baby stores and feeling completely lost in this sea of possibilities. I was overwhelmed by all those variations of small and big, cheap and expensive, natural and artificial toys. What will my son like? And more importantly what will be safe and educational for him? I guess most of the new parents are asking themselves the same questions I did.

  Well, time passed and I understood that no one can really answer these questions since all children are different and some toys can be perfect for one and be useless for the other. A few tips from parents who have used the toy can really help. So this is what I am going to do in this and a few other publications - share our experience.

   I want to start with our very new toy, since we've got it as an unexpected present from a very nice girl and also because both my children (3 years and 8 month) surprisingly love it very much. So we've got a pair of Waldorf wooden toys - man and women. I will not tell here about Waldorf's philosophy, since there is lots of info on internet. I will tell that the dolls are wonderful for the toddlers to play role games: you can tell a lot of stories using these dolls, my son is already telling such stories to me. As for my baby daughter - these dolls are perfect for her as well - wonderful size for her small arms and natural wood is safe for teething.

  Oksana has a rich choice of the Waldorf toys in her store, she is not only selling the wooden toys, she sews amazing dolls and creates many other unique things. I am completely in love with her cute toys and planning to order the 'GROWN UP DOLL' for my daughter's first birthday :)