Art + Decor

I’m all for cultivating sophisticated aesthetic tastes at a young age. Kids may be kids, but their bedrooms and bathrooms don’t have to stuffed to the gills with licensed characters to be appealing to them. And when you’re spending big bucks on decor anyway, shouldn’t your nursery art actually be…well, art?

Considering how far the career possibilities for women have come even since we were kids, it blows my mind that it’s still hard to find art depicting girls much beyond princesses, ballerinas, and the ocassional generic animal lover. (Veterinarian? Or just crazy cat lady in the making?)

Craftiness is not my forte. Which means no, I’m not going to be painting a mural or stenciling a border in the new baby’s nursery any time soon. But there is something to be said for having some wall art over her crib that can’t possibly fall on her head.

I love hunting for personalized art for children. But I admit an aversion to those painted plaques adorned with the ubiquitous puffy-pen scribbled names. I suppose I like my art to be actual art and not some craft project from the nice old lady down the block.

When we we reviewed the Little Bird CD from singer Elizabeth Mitchell last Fall, it was hard to decide which we loved more–her amazing tunes or the stunning album cover from talented New York City artist Ida Pearle. Now lucky parents (and their immensely lucky kids) can own both.

Mention music boxes to any mom, and undoubtedly she’ll be able to recall with vivid detail the very one she fell in love with as a child. It’s not hard, considering we all had the exact same one – it featured a spinning ballerina and played either You are the Sunshine of My Life or the theme from Love Story.

Hip kid art is hard to come by, hip personalized kid art even harder. But it’s exactly what you’ll find at the appropriately named Hip Kid Art.

I’m all foralphabet artwork, but it’s always bugged me that the images are of things kids will most likely (and sometimes hopefully) never encounter in their daily lives. Never seen an alligator on the street, not even once. And certainly not a yodeler.

I’ve always believed there’s something special about a child’s name. While my daughter’s name is not "a family name" but rather just one we both agreed on (which was a feat in and of itself), it still feels as if it were meant for her, both in its sound, meaning, and intent.

While we tend to gravitate towards monsters and robots more than princesses and ballerinas in our household, there’s something entirely capitvating about the little girl art of Colorado artist and mom Carla Sonheim.

I was one of those naive moms-to-be who swore up and down that my tasteful adult abode would never become plastic toy central. "The baby stuff will stay in the baby’s room," I insisted. Ha.

If you’re anything like me, you love looking at children’s books as much as your kids do. Okay, so maybe not the one I have to read fifteen times a day. But I do fantasize about some of the illustrators coming over to my house and jazzing up my daughter’s room.

There is no law that says that A has to be for Apple and B has to be for Banana. Especially if you’re one of those edumacated households with perhaps a mathematician or a chemical engineer at the dinner table.

I have a confession: I’m a complete and total insect-loving mama. I was raised to appreciate the little buggers with wall-to-wall ant farms in my childhood bedroom and fish tanks full of snails in the backyard.

I cannot tell you exactly why I still have my Junior Prom corsage stuffed away in a shoebox between old report cards and notes my best friend passed me in French class, but I do. I mean, I didn’t even like the guy and he cheaped out on the champagne. But throwing away the things feels too much like throwing away the memories. Which also explains why I’m already on shoebox number three for my year-old daughter.

I’ve never been much of a pastel gal myself, so it wouldn’t have crossed my mind to decorate the nursery in baby pinks and soft blues. But now that I’ve discovered the work of illustrator Brandon Reese I might have to rethink my position.

The poor little cocktail umbrella. It begins its life the adored centerpiece of your favorite frozen beverage, only to be brought home from its tiki bar paradise and crammed into a nighttable drawer.

Sure the race cars, planes, and firetrucks are fun and all, but how cool would you be if you brought homea few monsters for your kid’s wall instead? Very cool, we think.

Sometimes I get tired of being the go-to gal for any kind of creative writing. Need a poem for your second cousin’s daughter’s fifth grade graduation? An apologetic letter to overbearing in-laws? A newsletter for the softball team?I’m the one who gets the call. So when I found Story People, I felt like I’d happened upon my own personal nirvana.