Bringing the Garden Inside through Earthy Linens

I love being inside our home— I do. But I’ve found that, in this time of far-reaching, heightened stress, being outside works wonders on my attitude. 

I’ve been testing out ways of bringing the feeling of being outdoors into our bedroom to help counter the spike in anxiety I feel overnight. 

We have windows in our headboard, so I trained the grapevine to run along the wall behind the bed, where its bright, wide leaves brush against the glass beneath the trailing plants on our built-in bookshelf. 

The greenery continues on the other side of the room, where trumpet vines spill from an overhead living canopy just beyond the French doors. 

To visually connect all of these elements throughout the bedroom, we added 100% linen sheets in this Earthy green hue. So far I’m enjoying how it unites this small space without visually cluttering it.

I always prefer linen sheets. First of all, they’re breathable (which helps, as we have no AC here in our tiny, coastal home)

Additionally, they don’t cling to dog hair as much as other fabrics seem to.

They get softer with every wash, and they line-dry quickly, helping us cut back on energy usage and costs.

Lastly, I find them simply beautiful.

West keeps saying, “Mom— I love our new bed!” (So do I, West.)

Note: This blog post was not sponsored, but the sheets were gifted as part of a paid partnership with Brooklinen on Instagram. As always, a portion of the income my small company earned from the collaboration will be donated to The RightWay Foundation. 

Built-In Bed Refresh

Now that West is accustomed to sleeping in his “big kid bed” (wail!), Adam and I felt like it was time for a refresh of our built-in bed. All of the linens here weather a daily storm of heavy use— in part due to the realities of life with a toddler and two pups, but also due to the small size of our home. As inches decrease, use of each and every space increases. As such, the bed takes on numerous roles throughout the day before being slept in all night, so our bedding has to be durable as well as beautiful.

Additionally, we strive to use ethically-produced and natural products as often as possible, so we also wanted to modify our bedding with this in mind.

In our search for the perfect fit for our needs and preferences, we decided to upgrade our bedding with Rough Linen.

I’ve purchased a few items from Rough Linen in the recent past. After years of using the same two traditional bath towels, Adam and I finally needed replacements, so we purchased and fell in love with Rough Linen’s waffle-weave towels.

We also got a linen runner, which fits our compact table like a full tablecloth, and a child’s apron for West.

After feeling and using these items in the kitchen, bath, and living room for a couple of months, I knew I also wanted to introduce Rough Linen to our bedroom. We started out with a lightweight, Raw Edge Linen Summer Cover, which we thought would work perfectly for our SoCal home. (And we soon discovered during a rainy day that the cover doubles splendidly as a toddler fort with the help of some oversized wooden clips.)

We added some standard pillow shams with invisible zippers, which I prefer over buttons or a typical envelope-style version. The design is so clean and minimal, which sings to me.

Lastly, we got a linen coverlet. (I’m not a fan of duvets.) The coverlet is simple but elegant, rich with texture and slightly naturally varying tones It’s dry clean only, but I expect that its high quality combined with the ease of washing the summer cover that we drape over it will make it easy to maintain.

We added some more variegated english ivy plants to the bookshelf to bring the built-in to life. I simply placed a slim porcelain plate beneath each to collect water and protect the wood.

The central plant in the Ollie Ella Hanging Book Basket on the headboard is still snug in its nursery pot, and wrapped in a waterproof liner.

I miss how West used to fall asleep with us here every night. I don’t think I would have ever been ready for that to end, but HE was ready.

He’s so happy in his big kid bed. And Adam and I are delighted with our newly upgraded bed, too.

Overdue Addition to the Bedroom

This post was sponsored by tulo. 

Today I’m focusing on my favorite 60” x 80” of the Cottage: the bed. I’ve always loved so many things about it— its tall height, its headboard windows, its built-in bookshelves and drawers, and its nightstand cut-outs. The one thing I’ve not loved about it (until now) is the actual sleeping surface itself. And that’s because of our old mattress.

When Adam, Stanlee and I moved into the Cottage nearly 7 years ago, it was our first home all together. At the time, I had a Full-sized mattress from my previous apartment, and Adam had a King from his house. Naturally, the Cottage bedroom accommodates the size in between the two— a Queen. I adamantly refused to buy a third mattress. It seemed wasteful when we already had two on-hand, so I insisted on making one work somehow. First, we tried the Full. Obviously, it was too small for the frame, and constantly slid away from us when we climbed in and out of bed. At some point, my mom visited and noticed that I’d stuffed random linens into the gaps between the mattress and the bed to make it work. She kindly told me that I was being ridiculous, and that I should just cut Adam’s basic memory-foam King down to size. To my surprise, it worked with a simple bread knife. But it certainly wasn’t a clean cut. For years, foam flew everywhere whenever we changed the mattress cover.

I’m genuinely embarrassed to admit that, until this month, we STILL had that jagged, hand-cut slab of ugly foam on our bed… 

We waited THIS LONG to replace our mattress because, frankly, the process always kind of seemed like a time-consuming pain. (Going to a store and trying out models, paying to have one schlepped to our place, hauling it into our tiny house, and then hoping that it felt juuuuust riiiiight in our bedroom, night after night.) But now that we’re co-sleeping with our 1 year-old son (plus our two year-old beagle, Sophee, insists on sleeping at our feet at night), we simply need a proper mattress. 

 I was a bit overwhelmed by the numerous “bed in a box” mattress options out there. I knew I wanted to try one, but I also wanted the option of selecting the level of mattress firmness that best suits our sleep style. I also wanted someone drop it off at the Cottage, AND pick it up for exchange if need be. 

We decided to try out a tulo, mainly because we could choose between soft, medium or firm mattress models. (We went with medium.) We could’ve visited a Mattress Firm store, but the process of selecting a delivery date and time was so easy that I couldn’t resist just having the mattress dropped of on our doorstep. 

Also, their delivery boxes are less wasteful by being mysteriously small for what they contain. Despite knowing that the tulo box was smaller than one would expect, I still cleared a path from the gate to our bedroom for the delivery team. When they arrived and unloaded a single, compact box from their enormous delivery truck full of massive mattresses, I legitimately laughed out-loud and asked them where the rest of our bed was. They pointed to the pink box and claimed it was all right in there. 

I struggled to figure out how on earth a Queen-sized mattress was crammed in there. (Turns out it wasn’t crammed at all— apparently tulo uses a unique compression and folding process that doesn’t damage the foam in order to efficiently transport their mattresses.)

It took about 5 painless minutes to get the mattress set up— from unboxing, to unrolling, to cutting off the air-sealed bag around it. It was wild to see such a strong and durable mattress slowly rise from the pancake it was when in its packaging.

The first night we slept on it, I knew we wouldn’t have to exchange it. Our son was sick and had been sleepless and sweating for several nights in a row, but the first night with the tulo he stayed cool (as did we), and caught up on sleep by our side for 12 hours, with only one typical mid-night wakeup. And a happy baby meant a happy mom and dad— we slept better than we had in months.

So, tulo: thank you for this wonderful mattress, and thank you for the decadent level of sleep it has provided us. As new parents and small business owners, we really, really needed this.

For those who are interested in trying a tulo, visit a Mattress Firm store or order online at: www.tulo.com. (You have 120 days to decide whether or not you love it. Hopefully you’ll have the same experience as we did, and fall in love with it immediately.)

Cottage Bedroom and Closet Nursery

Here are a few updated photos of our closet nursery now that it’s been in use for several months. When it’s not in use for sleeping, the crib becomes a storage space for his diaper caddy (which is a garden trug). Overall, this is a happy, useful lil’ space.

Double-Duty Drawers

In the past 4 months, Adam and I have given away about 1/3 of our belongings. It feels so wonderful to create more room for our new lifestyle with baby West! Here are a few little modifications that we made that really helped us free up floor space, and eliminate clutter:

1. Built-in Pet Toy Storage
For the past 5+ years, these four drawers on my side of the bed were filled with my socks, underwear and swimsuits. I'd placed an open basket at the foot of the drawers, and that's where we stored the dogs' toys. But the basket got in the way a lot-- mainly when I was trying to access the storage under our bed, or when I'd groggily wake up in the middle of the night to pump.  I realized that I could easily get rid of one drawer of accessories, and then keep the puppies' goodies in the bottom bin. Now I can easily tuck the toys and container away: 

2. Extendable Nightstand 
We have wonderful little built-in nightstands on the sides of our bed. But lately I've been wanting a bit more surface space at night so I can keep West's books and toys at the ready (we're currently co-sleeping). Rather than buying a new piece of mobile furniture to wheel in during the evenings, I opted to make a cover that I can slide over one of the open drawers at night:

Luckily the removable lid to the basket located one cubby up worked PERFECTLY for this project. But had it not, I would've simply had a lightweight piece of plywood custom-cut at the hardware store that I could use in the same manner. During the day, I would've stored it on the shelf alongside the books. In this case, I just replace the basket top during the day. This little extra table-top space is so helpful!

3. Trundle Storage for West's Toys
As West's toy collection grows and evolves, we'll need a big, easy bin in which to put everything. However, there is no room for an additional large catch-all basket or box in our house. So I decided to donate all of the clothes I kept stashed in the trundle-drawer on my side of the bed. (The neighboring bin is for laundry.) Now every bit of clothing I own is stored in our garden wardrobe.

My hope is that this easily accessible, oversized drawer will be a handy tool in the future, when West is able to pick out and play with his toys on his own.