If you follow us on social media, on My Kabuki Girl, you might have noticed in a few videos the 3D butterfly wall stickers that we have in the kitchen, going towards the dining table.
It's more than 90 butterflies of all sorts of colours that I sticked on the upper part of the wall right below the ceiling, and that I arranged by colour; so they start from brown, then white, then they move into yellows, then orange and red, and then pink, purple, blue, finishing with multi colour.
I will leave a link below, if you want to buy them.
You might think that I wanted to add a splash of colour to my very white, very boring kitchen; but you're wrong!
I love how plain my kitchen is, I chose the colours and the materials to make it a Japandi kitchen.
I love Japandi, and if you don't know what Japandi is, it's basically an interior design style that mixes the neutrals of the Scandinavian style with the sleek and Zen look of the Japanese style.
So why did I put those butterflies there?
It was the very first days of Beatrice’s life, she just got her open-heart surgery, and, during the weaning process from the morphine, she was unsettled for most of the time.
We had to rock her in our arms for hours and, especially at night, we didn’t want to stay close to the cot all the time; partially because it gets very claustrophobic to stay always in the same teeny tiny spot in those hospital rooms; but mostly because we didn’t want her cries and screams to wake up the rest of the newborns and kids around us.
So we used to rock her up and down the corridors, back and forth, back and forth. That was calming her a lot.
Plus, since it was Christmas time, all the hospital wards were dressed up with Christmas decorations and hundreds of lights on the corridor ceilings. Each ward had a different theme.
I remember that the Neonatal ICU had the animals of the forest, the PICU had the jungle, and the Edgar Stephens Ward, the ward for cardiac kids, had the space theme, with plenty of stars, spaceships and astronauts.
Which worked perfectly because Bibi was mesmerised by all those lights on the ceiling.
I spent countless hours rocking her in the middle of the night, softly singing to her “A whole New World” from Aladdin, while she was staring at those lights above us.
And I thought “Once we’ll bring this baby home, she won’t have anything to stare at! We don’t have long corridors at our home, it’s going to be very boring”.
So I decided I would get something inexpensive and easy to install, and put it on the walls or on the ceilings, so that she could still be distracted and entertained if we had to keep rocking her at home.
Once I saw these butterflies on Amazon, I immediately knew it: this is exactly what I was looking for!
They are colourful and so pretty, yes, but they also symbolise the fact that, after a beginning spent moving slowly as a caterpillar, they transform and eventually become gorgeous butterflies who can fly anywhere they want.
Now, after 2 years, I have to take them down.
Our kitchen ceiling got some water damage from the latest floods we had here in Sydney, and we need to repaint the parts that were spoiled and now fixed. But because we have a sort of open space between kitchen, dining and living room, this means that most of our ceilings have to be repainted.
And this is a little bit sad, for me, because Bibi has spent so many hours staring at those butterflies, we created so many memories around those butterflies, that now I don’t want to part from them.
I like the idea that I had to adapt and forget about having a clean, Japandi kitchen, to accommodate for our new, beautiful family.
And, after all, these butterflies have become part of our daily life.
But it’s also true that they have fulfilled their purpose and now we don’t need them anymore.
Bibi is so active now, that she’s more interested in what she can reach on the floor or in the drawers; sometimes she looks at them and complains because she would like to reach them and play with all of them.
We can move on.
So now I ask you all: what should I do? Should I put them back up, once we have repainted the ceilings? Should I just move on and put something else there?
Let me know!
Either way, I’m happy, because just like those butterflies my baby girl has survived the phase of the caterpillar and she is now transforming into a butterfly who, one day, will be able to fly freely and show to the world her beautiful colours.
🔗 Link to the butterfly stickers
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