Kristiana Parn

One day while surfing around on Etsy, I came across the simply whimsical drawings by Kristiana Parn. I ended up purchasing this sweet little print for Anastasia's future bedroom:

I completely love it!! I love the Japanese feel it has as well the simple yet adorable picture. I like having something as a cenerpiece to base a room off of such as a painting or a fabric print. I was torn between a forest animal theme and a polar animal theme for a baby room so I felt that this was a perfect blend of a wintery forest for my January Girl.

Parn has plenty of other darling pictures (as you can see) that I would also love to add to my collection as space provides.

So the big news in our family is that we put an offer on a small mountainy cottage near Front Royal. The house is rather small (less than 1000 Square feet) but a perfect size for our small family. The yard is what won our hearts as it is a grassy little knoll with a crick and mountainous views surrounding. Every time we look at a home, the wheels in my head start turning with ideas on how to decorate, organize and functionalize the space. There is a show on HGTV that is called "Small Spaces Big Style", and while most of the style is modern and sterile looking, they have awesome ideas for making small spaces totally functional. Thanks to IKEA functional is relatively affordable.

My favorite things about the house are definately the old, open kitchen (with a gas stove!!!!), the aforementioned yard, the quaint and bright living room and the sunny mud room that could be my very own craft room. If anyone knows me at all, you probably know that I am a crafting FREAK. I have several projects to do at any given time and most of my personal belongings consist of craft supplies. So having a functional crafting space would be so ideal for me. I love this one from IKEA that I found at Cottage Magpie:

In case you didn't notice, I love Ikea.

My other hope for if we get this house, is to get a few ducks. I used to have ducks several years ago that I picked up in Manassass as an impulse buy. They were darling little birds and ate bugs out of the garden and weren't noisy and stupid like the chickens we had previously. Perhaps if I didn't spend my teenage years having to march out into a mud and poop filled coop everyday to get eggs that had been pooped all over I would have more of a fondness for chickens. Ducks lay HUGE eggs, but perhaps not as frequently as chickens. They just don't seem as dirty either. So there is my plug for duckies... now I just have to get my husband's gracious approval. Being that he wants another husky... and huskies like to eat small animals... perhaps I will have to choose between dog or ducks. Either way... if we get this house, (as we are praying) life will definately be more interesting. Just watching Anastasia play in the huge yard surrounded by trees and mountains sold us both on the fact that we want to raise our daughter outdoors in the country and this house is well suited for that--ducks or no ducks.