Adventures in Baby Cribs

Cribs, one of the most important pieces of furniture in your child's life.  Anyone who has purchased one of these items knows that there are all sorts of regulations, from the space between the bars to the firmness of the mattress, to the chemicals used in the paint, there are a zillion things to consider.  Knowing all of these things, we made the conscious decision to buy a bona fide Argentine crib.

This decision has been a bit more than we bargained for. 

We bought our crib on Belgrano Street at a shop called Quartos (Av Belgrano 2610, 4943-1227).  For those that don't know, Belgrano Street has blocks of furniture shops lining both sides of the street, each one just slightly different than the next.  We went store to store searching for the perfect crib, and we chose Quartos because they had both the crib we liked and the matching dresser/changing table.  This is where the frustration began. 

Hooray!  The crib is finally here!

Issue #1:  The Delivery.

We purchased our crib on November 6, 2010 with the promise of delivery within 45 days.  To be exact, the salesman, Oscar, said that he thought it would be delivered before Christmas.  Delivery actually occurred on January 17, complete with an added charge, an additional $140 pesos - a detail that was omitted from our original "grand total" bill. 


Issue #2:  The Invasion.

Three months to the day after our crib finally arrived, we realized that the delivery brought more than just furniture into our home.  The wood platform that supports the crib's mattress has termites.  Disgusting little bugs eating away at our little girl's bed.  Immediate action was required.  Luckily, we had Grammy and Papa in town to assist in the deconstruction, thorough cleaning, de-bugging and reconstruction of the crib.  We did everything we could to be sure that all of the little buggers were gone for good.  As a side note, I have called Quartos repeatedly to see if they would replace this part of the crib, each time they say that they will call me back.  I have yet to receive a call. 

Issue #3:  The Sheets.
Most cribs in Argentina are bigger than those in the US, and the style that we chose was the most popular on the market, a style that will eventually become a toddler bed.  In all of the planning that we did when shopping for a crib, we didn't consider the fact that: larger crib = larger mattress = the need for larger sheets.  We received a few adorable crib sheets from our baby shower in the US, but they were too small (both in length and width).  I shopped all over the city for sheets that would fit our crib mattress and the only ones I found that fit were extremely thin, see-through, white and cost $75 each.  Fortunately for us, our incredible cleaning lady, Candy, is a whiz with a sewing machine and has added material to our US crib sheets to create this adorable result.  I have no idea how she did it, but they fit perfectly and look adorable. 

Whew!  That was a lot of problem solving for one little piece of furniture.  We are still hopeful for a long life from the crib, but we will certainly take more care in thinking through our future furniture purchases.

Oh, My Heart!

A phrase stolen from our friends Shannon and Hatch's blog, The Reppard Crew, about their adorable family.  Shannon uses this phrase often, and I love it, and it best described my feelings towards our nursery.

Welcome to our changing area.  Complete with my childhood clown, the rocking chair my husband sought out for my birthday this year and the wall decal flowers that I have grown to love.

 

Continuing on to the reading nook. Could that polka dot rug match our room any more perfectly?! Also, the dark wood hutch is another relic from my childhood, I remember being the same height as the hutch and playing with it in the kitchen (my mom wallpapered the hutch shelves to match the kitchen walls, so it felt even more real.). Now it makes the perfect bookcase for our little one. 

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And here is the crib, which we purchased in Buenos Aires at a store called Quartos on Belgrano Street. The crib styles are a little different here, much lower to the ground and larger mattress area.  In this style, the crib will eventually convert to a toddler bed and the furniture pieces at the end of the bed will be removed and become nightstands.

And on the other side of the room are the closets split by a built in TV stand.  We're using it as an extra piece of furniture to hold our electronics (humidifier, sound machine, etc.) and a cutie little desk lamp. 

 

There you have it!  Our room is set, all we need now is the baby - and with only 6 weeks to go, we cannot wait!

Wall Decals - Tacky or Amazing?

I'm no expert, but I would put my money on the US being the world capital of variety. When we go back to the US I spend at least a few days skipping and singing down the multiple aisles of cereal choices in Giant or marveling at the cheese selection at Wegmans. There is certainly something to be said for overindulgence and how people certainly don't need 100 different types of chips to choose from - but then again, it's a choice that I took for granted until we moved to a place that didn't offer the variety that we were accustomed to in America. When we found out we were expecting a baby, I started looking for nursery decor in Buenos Aires and I realized that the variety (and convenience) that I had come to expect from the US was not extended to our current city. So, instead of praying for a Target or Toys R Us, I decided to go minimalist on our nursery decor, if nothing else this would save me the stress of searching for things that cannot be found.

Then we went visited home in October and our friends threw us a beautiful baby shower and the decorating bug hit me again. All these questions had no answer - What color are you painting the nursery? What's your theme? Are you doing stencils or wallpaper? Uh, no, we're not doing any of that, and the theme is whatever currently exists in the room. My desire for variety and mega stores was stronger than ever. So, in a fit of feeling inadequate, I searched Amazon for wall decals and bought the cutest ones I saw.

They arrived and I opened the package expecting to be amazed. They were beyond disappointing. I don't really know what I was expecting, I knew they weren't going to look real. I mean, trees and flowers don't grow out of walls so this wasn't really a surprise. What I did know was that they were, in a word, tacky.

Cut to a few months later, I am much more pregnant and our 15-foot-tall nursery walls are looking even more bare than before. So I broke out the wall decals and thought I would give it a go.

The cherry tree decals

Long stem pink flowers

I'm kind of in love. I think they look adorable. And, if you are renting your apartment, or if your child grows out of the pink flowers, you just peel them off the walls.

Or, if you hate them after a few days, you can peel them off the walls and pretend it never happened.

You be the judge; tacky, or adorably convenient?

Finicky Ficus

We gladly inherited some trees from a friend that moved back to the US despite having no knowledge or experience with trees of any sort.  They warm up our house, reduce echos and generally make it a more comfortable space.  Aside from that, they are a pain. 

We are now the proud owners of two ficus trees and two palms of some sort.  The palms are a piece of cake, it's the ficus trees that are making me mental.  When we first brought the trees home, both ficus trees lost about half of their leaves.  After some internet research and moving them elsewhere in the house, we finally found a home for each tree. 

All was well until we put up the Christmas tree and had to move one of the ficus trees 20 feet from his home.  Wouldn't you know it, that tree has now resorted to weeping in the corner.  Everyday there is another pile of dead leaves waiting for me underneath the tree.  I don't know which one is worse, keeping the tree where it is and hoping to ride out the storm, or moving it again and risk the finicky fallout. 

At this rate, it's going to make Charlie Brown's Christmas tree look like a redwood.  Any thoughts on how to help our ailing ficus?  We will reunite him with his favorite spot after Christmas. 

The Bed of Gold

On Tuesday one of the most anticipated events in our Argentinean lives occurred.  The Bed arrived. 

It all started in February when I decided we needed to buy bed frames for the guest beds in our apartment.  I fell in love with this antiquey-style bed made out of window shutters at this store in Palermo called The Bed Shop, Godoy Cruz 2161, only to realize that I didn't possess enough Spanish knowledge to be confident in my bed purchasing skills.

After months of deliberation, I couldn't get the bed out of my mind.  Jon gave me the go-ahead so during my brother Chris's visit I dragged him with me to The Bed Shop and I bought the bed.  All in Spanish.  It was slightly more expensive than I had hoped, but it was the wonder bed of all beds, and I had been thinking about it for many months, so it was alright, right?  Well, it was, until late August when said "wonder bed" was to be delivered and I realized the very small but extremely significant detail that changed everything.  Throughout my brilliant Spanish correspondence with The Bed Shop we had interchangeably used the words "cama" (translation: Bed, clearly a necessary word) and "respaldo" which, in every place I looked to translate it meant "support" (strange, but a bed has supports, so I didn't really think anything of it).  I came to realize later that this word also means "headboard".  Which also means that I had ordered exactly 1/4 of the bed I thought I had ordered.  Yikes.  A most humbling and expensive mistake. 

Many emails and frustrated phone calls later, we agreed to have the other 3/4 of the bed made, for an additional price, obviously.  And many weeks later, Tuesday to be exact, the amazing bed-of-gold arrived.  Isn't she a beauty?

Look at how she glows in the light.  Perfectly matching the light blue hue of the room.

Check out the shutters!  Real shutters!  Making the beautiful respaldo I had been dreaming of.

The spindles!  Look at the spindles! 

Was it worth the wait, the stress, the price?  I'll never tell.  Just know that if you visit us and sleep in this bed, you might as well be sleeping in a bed of gold.

This will be my last transaction with The Bed Shop.  They were very nice people, very nicely telling me that I owed them more money and that it was going to be an additional few weeks until the bed was delivered.  Also, I know there was more than one misunderstanding in this transaction, and it made for a miserable buying experience.

Let's see the bed once more for good measure.  In a different light this time.  Just drink it in.

Basil: FAIL

It's been four weeks since I planted this year's herb crop and I'm not surprised to report that the basil has died an untimely death.  If you remember from my Herb Garden - Take 4 post, basil is my nemesis.  I planted a few different herbs, including basil, as seeds and bought some healthy looking basil plants to try a double barreled approach to keeping basil alive.  Here are my existing plants a few days after I replanted them:

Healthy basil

And here are my basil plants today:

Basil after the Dawn kiss-of-death

I'm not sure what exactly happened to my crop, but between the week of constant clouds, cold weather and rain immediately after planting and the inevitable hand of death that I bring to the table, these guys were against the odds.  There are two lone soldiers that have made it through the basil apocalypse, and they are my last little stalks of hope.  

There is good news.  The last of the basil plants are actually growing.  The seeds that I planted are also growing - and I've got my fingers crossed that some of them are actually basil plants.  They seem to be getting a slow start, they've been growing for a month and only a few of them have developed a second set of leaves, but here's hoping that they keep on growing! 

Herb Garden - Take 4

For the last four years, I've been dreaming of cooking with my own hand-picked, home-grown herbs.  The garden in my mind is filled with flourishing luscious herbs that are available whenever I need them.  Unfortunately, my gardens inevitably become plant graveyards.  I have tried growing them inside and outside, and somehow they always end up dead. 

So let's try this again.

This year I'm attempting basil, watercress, chives, thyme, oregano and mint.  My oregano, thyme and mint I started from plants and they are doing quite well, even though I planted them in winter.  My real test will be the other plants, especially basil, which I have never been able to keep alive. 

I'm going with the dual attack this year, starting basil from plants and from seeds to see if I have success at either one.  The seasons are opposite, so August is planting season down here.  Maybe the longer, warmer, Argentine growing season will be on my side this year.  I'm keeping my new plants inside for the time being, the temperature here still gets into the low 40s at night, but as soon as it warms up I believe these will be outside the window plants. 

That is assuming they live that long. 

Rancho Room

Bachelor Jon had a typical bachelor-style bed, with just a metal stand, a box spring and a mattress, and on the list of furniture purchases, a bed frame was pretty low on the priority list. Now that Jon's old bed serves as a guest room bed we thought it was time to invest in some actual furniture for the room.

We've been to Tigre a few times and have really liked the style of furniture that we've seen at the weekend Mercado de las Fruitas. I'm not totally sure why its called the Fruit Market, because all sorts of non-fruit related items are for sale, but it is a great market that is held every Saturday and Sunday in Tigre. We were most interested in the furniture sections of this market, which has a mostly unprocessed or "crudo" style.

After looking all over we found a bed we loved - and looks perfect in what I like to call the Southwestern Room:

We also got the alpaca skin rug next to the bed at the Fruit Market. This helps accomplish our cold-hardwood-floor issue.

I love the look of this bed. It's modeled after a fence gate and I don't remember seeing anything like it.

The design is so simple but the bed is sturdy, interesting and (the best part) it was pretty inexpensive. We ordered the bed from a shop called "El Buen Pino" located at Sarmiento 270, and spoke to the guy who was actually going to be making it. We chose the stain and size, and we had some options with the height. I have their card around here somewhere, when I find it I'll update the post, they were great to work with. The only item we plan to change is the chain used for the headboard looks a little sold-by-the-foot-at-Home-Depot and we would prefer something a little more, I don't know, authentic.

Hooray for new bed!

Casa Gill

There have been some sweeping changes to Casa Gill lately with more on the way.  We have the luxury of a great, large apartment here in Buenos Aires, although there are a few items that need attention.  The challenges of the apartment as far as I see it are as follows:  1) We moved from a much smaller place in DC and now are trying to fill up our apartment with furniture, 2) Our new place is filled with all wood floors and we own one small carpet, 3) We have extremely tall (maybe 15 feet) ceilings.  All of these things combined means that our apartment is large, semi-empty and every sound echos. 

Our first project, the great room:

This is a huge living room/dining room combo with elaborate chandeliers a functional marble fireplace and on the wall not shown in this photo, a complete set of built in bookshelves.  Not bad for a starting block.   We have focused mostly on the "dining" part of the room.

The hutch in the upper right-hand side and the horseshoe wine rack on the left-hand side were our first furniture purchases here.  Belgrano Street in the Centro neighborhood is knows for it multiple blocks of furniture shops and we found a gem in there called Rincon de Campo, Belgrano 2459, which is where we bought both pieces.  All furniture items are made by hand and they sell quite a few "one of a kind" unique pieces like the wine rack.  I love the rustic look to the piece and then to use horseshoes to hold the bottles in place is genius.  The hutch is handmade but we've seen other very similar items in the same store.  The display case is great and it serves as extra storage for serving dishes as well as a place to store our Spanish books (of which we have many). 

The next item, in my opinion, is the hardest item to choose for a household, a rug.  Standing in the Bazhars showroom in the Buenos Aires Design Centre trying to imagine what the rug will look like in our place made Jon and I both virtually crazy.  I think we did a pretty good job, as The Dude would say, it really ties the room together.

The most recent addition to this room is that ficas tree in the corner.  A friend has recently moved back to the US and needed a home for four trees, and I was more than happy to take them off of her hands.  Aside from the drama getting them to our house and the dead worms that we found near the pots afterward (apparently they were outdoor plants...) they have been a nice addition to the space.

Next up, our new guest room bed!