In this day and age, it seems like everyone is just out to make a buck. People design a product with the question in mind "What's the most I can charge for this?" Thats why its refreshing to meet a group of people like the guys over at tenbills.com who are asking "What's the least we can charge for a fresh looking original t-shirt?" The answer of course is $10! They were nice enough to send me a couple of shirts, and I have to say I am very impressed. The designs are great, and the shirts are a quality cotton/poly blend that fit just the way I like.

Check out all the other great shirts at tenbills.com all for just $10.

This blanket was the first handmade blanket that we received. We absolutely love the asian inspired print of this blanket and the minky back is super snuggly. I was just thinking this morning, if I was Arri, and I had to choose a favorite blanket, this just might be the one. It was made by one of our good friends Lyndsey, who is now a mother of two beautiful twin girls. She did a great job, and even included washing instructions. Thanks Lynds!

Once you have a baby, burp cloths are one of those things that you absolutely can't live without. It seems like half the time I am at home, I am walking around with one of them on my shoulder. Lucky for me we have some great looking burp cloths. Before we had Arrrington, we sent my mother in law home with a big package of cloth diapers, and instructions to find some nice fabric to sew onto them. She came back with some beautiful, functional, and inexpensive designer burp cloths. These really only require very basic sewing skills, so they make a very good DIY project.

With the birth of our child, we had so many generous people give us gifts. This week, I wanted to feature some of the wonderful things that were hand made especially for Arri. Its funny how even though we didn't know the sex of Arri until he was born, most of our gifts were blue. This chenille blanket was made by my mother. It is actually made by placing 6 layers of fabric together and sewing parallel lines every 1/2" or so. After it is all sewn together, you go back and cut through 5 of the 6 layers of fabric. When you throw it in the washing machine, the 5 layers curl back on themselves creating a heavy chenille look.

He loves it as much as we do.

I have always loved EQ3. Besides Ikea, they are one of the few "modern" companies that consistently make good looking stuff at a good price. This Hexagon Duvet set is a great example. While the 210 thread count is not the greatest, the design is nice, and you can get a queen sized duvet and two shams for $90. The only thing that I never understood is why it seems that there is no one selling EQ3 online. Anyone have any good leads? In Utah, make sure you check out Modern Material and Design. They carry almost exclusively EQ3 products.

It seems that recently there has been a new trend of more organic design replacing the rigid graphic design of last year. This plate from CB2 features a subtle metallic organic botanical set on a bright white twice dipped porcelain plate. It's just one of a series of appetizer plates, all featuring similar organic prints on delicate white 5" plates. They are conveniently priced at $2.50 each. Available from CB2 for $2.50

The design is simple and yet quite elegant. The Ply-Bak Line is little more than two sheets of plywood mounted to a steel frame with a small cushion to make things a little more comfortable. The lines that they were able to accomplish are pure mid century. It is available in either Walnut or Birch, and depending on your budget you can choose between the vinyl and brushed steel shown above or premium leather and stainless steel.

Available from Lunar Lounge from $349 - $999

Etsy has become a wonderful resource for people with incredible talent to get their stuff into the hands of the public without going through a middleman. Skinny Laminx is definitely taking advantage of that to make some of her beautiful goods from South Africa available to us. Shown to the right is her Eep Tea Towel which is a beautifully designed and handprinted towel for only $10. That is just one of the great things I found over at her Etsy shop, the more I looked around, the more great things I found. Available at the Skinny Laminx Etsy shop. Skinny Laminx Blog is worth checking out too.

At Grassrootsmodern, we have always believed that it's possible for modernism to be affordable. Although there are some big corporations like Ikea that make affordable modern furnishings, for the most part it is the little guy making the difference. Such is the case with Modmom Furniture. Started by Kiersten, a mother of two, Modmom makes great modern children's furniture at a price that is quite reasonable. Plus you can feel good buying her stuff knowing that the money you are paying is going directly to the artist/builder and not some middleman. Kiersten personally designs and builds the entire Modmom line. The furniture is made of Baltic Birch and assembled with biscuit joinery, so it's sure to last for a long time. The Mod Box toy box and library bench shown here is $375. Available from the Modmom Etsy shop.

When my wife and I started looking for a crib several months ago we weren't too optimistic. It seemed like the words "affordable modern" and "crib" just weren't compatible. We knew we had the choice of settling for something that was less than what we really wanted, or splurging and getting something beautiful that would hopefully hold up for a long time. The truth be told, due to budget constraints we probably would have ended up getting a crib from Ikea, and painting it white. Luckily for us, the folks at Nurseryworks were kind enough to help us out, and support Grassrootsmodern by sponsoring our nursery. We ended up getting the Aerial Crib with a diamond end panel, all white except for the light pine rails. While the price tag for this crib is out of our meager budget, it is pretty close to the price of most of the other modern cribs. The quality is truly exceptional. We have been totally impressed by the finish on entire crib. It will without doubt last us for a long time to come.

I posted last week about how we were trying to choose the perfect stroller for our little guy. What I didn't tell you, was that really we had already bought our stroller. We ended up getting the BOB, and like everyone said in the comments, it is hands down the best. I really liked the looks of the others, but in the end, the BOB was just way more practical. It only weighs 22 pounds, with the 12" wheels all the way around it folds nice and small, it is easy to fold, and unfold. It really is just a great stroller. We have yet to take the little guy out for the official test run, but I am sure it will do great.

Little Arrington Raymond was born 6/4/07 at 10:28 PM. He weighed in at 7 pounds 10 ounces and was 21 inches long. He was born with a full head of hair, and a deep rooted appreciation for classic modern design . . . or at least a good binky. He is of course perfect for us in every way, and I am perfectly happy staying up at night with him. It's great to be back in our house again, and so far we are all doing great, and loving the new nursery.

We have been looking for the perfect stroller for some time now, and we managed to narrow it down to three top candidates. They are (from left to right) the BOB revolution, the Britax Vigour and the new kid on the block the Micralite Fastfold. The one that is not on the list, but we were very interested in is the Quinny Buzz. It looks like a great one, but I hate to buy something I have never seen, and there are no brick and mortars near me that carry it. Luckily for us, there was one local store that carries all three of these strollers, Buga-Boo Childrens furniture in Park City. This week we took a trip up there to try them all out to see which one was the winner. I'll give you the full story next week, but before we got there, it was pretty much a head to head race between the Britax and the Micralite, with BOB trailing pretty far behind.

I don't know if you have been keeping track, but we certainly have. It has been four days since our little countdown widget turned to "0 days until Turnip Heads B-Day". In fact we had to switch out "B-Day" for "due date" since things weren't moving along so quickly. Luckily things are starting to happen, and we should be going to the hospital today. Posting may be a bit sporadic for the next couple of days while our lives readjust to the new schedule.

It's hard to say anything to critical about a sofa that only costs $369. Even if this loveseat was a couple hundred dollars more, it would still be a nice couch for a good price. It has a hardwood frame and legs that have a 12-step stain on them, and lightly textured upholstery that is like a soft tweed. I like the lightness of the arms and the nice straight lines, all of which help to make it a nice clean sofa with a touch of class. There is also a matching chair which is available from overstock for $189.

Available from Overstock.com for $369.

I have had a couple questions about some of the detail in our addition, and I though I would take a minute to answer some of them. First off, the wood paneling in the hall.All the panels are made of 3/8" baltic birch plywood. Baltic has a much lighter appearance compared to normal birch, but in my opinion it's worth the extra money. I had a great theory on how to hang it (courtesy of Chris from Gleason Woodworking Studio) and it kind of worked. The idea was to use a keyhole shaped router bit to route out a channel on the back side of all the panels. Then you screw a normal drywall screw into the studs on the wall at the same height. The head of the screw fits just perfect into the fat part of the keyhole and the shaft fits in the skinny part. That allows you to just slip the panels on and they are securely fastened with no exposed nails anywhere.

It probably would have worked flawless if I had bought a slightly thicker panel1/2" or even better 3/4". The problem was with the 3/8" I had to keep it pretty shallow, so they were kind of prone to ripping through. Problem number two is it becomes real hard to slip the panels on unless the wall is dead straight, which of course mine wasn't. I ended up doing a combination of keyhole channels, and nailing them from the front on the edges. For all the joints, I routed out a tiny 1/6" groove half way down on the side. That way when they butt together you get that nice 1/8" deep reveal, which looks a lot nicer than a plain old butt joint. I also held the bottoms of the panes about 3/8" above the finished floor (the concrete) to match all the drywall.

Windows: The casing on the louvers and doorways is 3/4" baltic birch. I left all the raw plywood edges exposed instead of putting edge banding on. It's a lot more honest look, and it makes it a lot easier to do as well. The louvers themselves are made of the same 3/8" baltic birch as the panels. I built the boxes that they go in first, and then just nailed all of them from the outside. That proved a lot more challenging than I thought it would be. Hitting a 3/8" target 500 times in a row just wasn't happening. I had quite a few misses, but in the end they turned out all right.

Drywall: The drywall didn't turn out quite as clean as I had hoped. If we weren't on such a timeline (our due date was yesterday) I would have called them back 3 or 4 more times until it was nice and smooth like I wanted it. The did do a good job on some things though. Instead of baseboard we just floated the finished drywall 3/8" above the finished floor. They used a tear away L bead from trim-tex to finish all the bottoms. See the zoomed in picture above. It ends up leaving a nice clean edge all across the bottom. The look is really nice on the eye, and we'll see if it becomes a cleaning nightmare or not.

Lighting: Besides our fans, and some sconces we still haven't gotten for the hall, most of our lights are 4" eyeballs. We just bought the standard Halo cans, and then some after market eyeball lights to put in them. The good thing about using a very standard can like a 4" Halo, is that you can easily change out the trim anytime in the future. There are some off brand eyeballs that are nice, but they are not standard sized at all, and if they ever died on you for some reason, it would be very hard to replace them.

Since we are planning on only using passive cooling in our house, it was very important for us to have some good ceiling fans. Anyone who has looked for a modern fan knows that The Modern Fan Co. pretty much has the market cornered. We were looking for something clean, simple, and of course affordable. We ended up going with a Cirrus Hugger in white with a light on it. We have had it installed for about a week now, and we absolutely love it. The look matches our room prefect, the light with dimmer offers some nice light, and the fan keeps us snuggling under our down comforter all night long. We purchased it from a local store the Light Spot for $383 each. They are also available from Y-Lighting for about the same price. Available from Y Lighting for $384

With the popularity of green design increasing, it is becoming easier to find environmentally conscious products that look good. Take for example this Swissmar Bamboo 2 Bowl Dip Set, which is not only eco friendly, but chic too. This aprox. 12" x 10" serving tray has two porcelain bowls inset on the side, and is balanced out by a cut out section to hold whatever it is you plan on dipping. At only $27 for a cutting board and two bowls, the price is just as friendly on your wallet as the bamboo is on the environment. Available at Kitchenzing for $27.

There is a new trend in design that is less modern, and more luxury. Many of the traditional modern designers have followed this trend and are incorporating more lavish prints and colors in their textiles. Echo Design is right on board with the rest of them with their Modern Paisley Pillow. This classic black pillow features a single embroidered paisley crest on the front. Part of the Modern Paisley bedding set, pillows are available in either 18" square or 15" x 24" and are priced at $40. Available at Echo Design for $40.

Modern baby goods is a hot new market, but there have been surprisingly few new players. True Modern is the new kid on the block, and they are doing their best to shake up the market a little with their affordable modern baby furniture. Founded by Edgar Blazona of prefab fame, True Modern has a solid history of modern design that fits the common budget. For example the Changing Table Dresser shown to the right is only $699. Reminiscent of Blu Dot this simple furniture is a great deal, it features simple lines and birch veneers with accent colors to spice things up a little. Besides their furniture line, they also have bedding which is similarly affordable.

Available from True Modern for $699.