Done and Done

The baby quilt is FINALLY done!

Nevermind the fact that I started this sometime back in March of this year.

This is my very first quilting project ever and even though my mom/expert quilter extraordinaire coached me along through many many phone calls and emails, I am proud to say I did it all by myself.

Here she is in all her glory.

The nursery was originally planned to be all white (because I'm crazy like that) but when I found these fabrics for the quilt, I was inspired and that's where all the color in the nursery came from.

Binding this sucker gave me blisters.  I did not expect to have to hand sew to finish this thing!  (I hate hand sewing)  But one of my favorite parts of this pattern is the prairie points along the interior border.  Even though I hated sewing those too.

Her lovely backside.

Now I can proudly say my pile of unfinished projects is rapidly depleting.

Nursery Reveal!

The nursery is finally done and ready for Baby P to move in!

There's a few little things here and there that I'd still like to do (i.e. finish that dang baby quilt...) but I think it's as good as done for now.  This room is seriously the smallest room in our house and it's been my biggest headache trying to squeeze everything we want in there without making it feel too crammed. 

All in all, I'm proud to say we did everything in the nursery for pretty dang cheap.

That's how we like it!

Most of the stuff in the room was revamped from things we already had, found at yard sales, or were hand-me-downs. 

View from the door.

Our biggest splurge was the crib.  We bought a used crib and mattress from some friends (hi Jamie!) but when we went to put it together it was missing some bolts.  Sad as we were, we kept the mattress and fell in love with this Jenny Lind crib for $160.

The painted chandelier I got at a yard sale for $10 and spray painted white.

The mini bunting I made from fabric scraps I already had.

Next to the crib is a teal plastic bin we are calling the laundry basket: $6

And a lidded diaper pail from IKEA for $15

Oh I can't forget (Kyle's favorite) the rocking horse we found at a yard sale and cleaned up for $5

View from the rocking chair

The lime green vintage arm chair was Kyle's grandma's and is in the most perfect condition ever.  And it was free!

The little wooden chair next to it was my dad's when he was a baby.  Also free.

The square purple shag rug came from IKEA for.. I think $20

You might remember the IKEA spice racks we painted for our bookshelves.  They were $4 a piece, making the set $16  (The books were all gifts, hand-me-downs, and a couple of yard sale finds)

The batik print on the wall was done by a high school friend of mine and I have always loved it.  It says "When twilight drops her curtain down and pins it with a star, remember that you have a friend though she may wander far."  It has a new home in an old frame I've been storing...

The pink retro clock was a gift from my mom several years ago.

The floor lamp (you can barely see) belonged to my parents.  I am still thinking about painting it...

The guitar is mine.  It probably won't stay in there for long, but for now it's a nice spot for me to sit and serenade the baby.

View from the green chair

Kyle's parents gave us the rocking chair when we moved in last year and the blanket on it was crocheted by my late grandma a long time ago.

My favorite thing about the room is the pink mirror!  It was $8 at D.I. and was uuuugly.  I painted her up good with a $2 sample paint from Home Depot.  Total: $10

I got the ledge shelves at a yard sale a couple of years ago and never quite knew what I wanted to do with them.  I painted them the wall color and now they hold some of my favorite toys and trinkets.

The dresser was an old nightstand Kyle has moved around for years.  We painted it the same color as the walls and covered it in about 5 or 6 layers of poly to make it shine.

The milk glass lamp I scored on ebay awhile back and I made the ruffled lampshade with some muslin I had on hand.

The paneled mirror was second hand from somewhere and I've carted it around for a few years.

Hanging above the mirror are tissue pom poms from one of my baby showers.

I made the crib skirt from some clearance fabric I scored at JoAnns.  It is the exact match to the color of the mirror and I about peed my pants when I found it--and for $2 a yard!  Woohoo!  I bought 3 yards but I still have a bunch left over.  Total for the skirt: $6

We started out with just the purple sheer curtains from IKEA ($7 for the pair) but they turned out a little more sheer than we'd expected and looked a little brown at night.  So we snagged the white pair, also from IKEA ($15 for the pair).  The white curtains were tabbed and the sheers were not, so I sewed the tabs down on the back of the panels so the two sets of curtains hung the in the same style.  (If that makes sense...)  Adding the white curtains also helps block out a lot of the light during the day, which I'm sure will be handy for naptime!

Grand total for the nursery: $270

Considering more than half of that was just for the crib, I think we came out pretty good!

Alright, that's probably way more than you wanted to know about our nursery.  I only wish I had a finished baby quilt to blog about!  Someday...

Oh is it Friday? I had no idea.

Today is probably the best I've felt in over a month.  To celebrate, I dragged my sorry butt to my sewing room and finished up a couple of nursery projects.  After all, the clock is ticking and this baby is going to be here before I know it.  (Although that clock could tick just a little faster, if you ask me)

I finally fancied up the little lampshade for my beloved milk glass lamp.

With ruffles!

To make the shade, I ripped 2 inch strips of plain white muslin, ruffled each strip and hot glued them onto my yard sale shade.  This was much easier and faster than the coffee filter shade I attempted for the floor lamp not too long ago...  that is still hanging out, unfinished, in the sewing room (aka failed project storage).

And then I dug through some fabric scraps from the baby quilt (which is still not quite finished...  noticing a theme here?) and made some mini buntings!  When the rest of the room is ready, I'll show you where I decided to hang them.

Progress!

We got our new bookshelves painted and on the nursery wall!  I have to say, I really love them.  And whoever thought of using Ikea spice racks as book storage is genius.  (I wish I could say it was me)  We will probably add another set at the bottom, but I have to regain mobility again.  Apparently it only takes minimal effort these days to render my body completely useless. 

I also sewed up a quick crib skirt, I am *this close* to finishing up the baby quilt and I am halfway done with a less sucky ruffled lampshade for my beloved milk glass lamp.  I'd show you now, but I think it's so much better to see them finished, don't you agree?

I'm now 30 weeks pregnant and working on the nursery helps to dissolve the anxieties I have about giving birth in two months.  I will be spending a lot of time in here...

Shady Business

Maybe you've been noticing, but sometimes my great ideas don't always go as planned.

link

Awhile back I saw this ruffled lampshade made from coffee filters and decided it would be the perfect, inexpensive way to revamp the awful shade in the nursery.

I spent 4 days hot gluing 600 coffee filters to the lampshade.  Even Kyle got in on the coffee filter action.  (He is such a good assistant)

And then I got this far and reaized how ridiculously massive the shade had become.  It was already pretty big to begin with, but the coffee filter ruffles added a good 4-5 inches to the diameter of the shade and when I plopped it on the slender lamp base, it looked ridiculous. 

See?  Ridiculous.  Better yet, it didn't even fit in the corner for which it was intended to reside.  So I stopped gluing and contemplated the shade's fate.  And what to do of the naked lamp base?  I had pretty much resigned to forking over $15 for a new shade when I happened upon a like-new condition one at a yard sale for $1.50.  It's a plain, gathered shade, but it's petite and matches the lamp's scale much better, in my opinion. 

The lamp actually fits in its corner now!
I think the lamp is still a little too boring for my taste so I'm contemplating a pom pom fringe and painting the lamp base.  Is it a sin to paint brass?  'Cause I'm pretty sure this thing is brass.  And I'm pretty sure I'm gonna paint it. 
Mom, close your eyes!  (She's a purist)

But now what to do with the behemoth of a half-ruffled lamp shade?

Kyle just laughs and rolls his eyes at my clever suggestions:

1.  Cover the ceiling fan lights with a new ruffled dome shade!

2.  Add a bottom to it and turn it into a storage bin!

3.  A Halloween hat?

4.  Cat toy?

Okay, it's probably just going in the trash.

I never liked that stupid shade in the first place.

I'm kind of striking out on my DIY projects this week.

First the bookshelf and now the lamp?

Pray for me.  I still have a lot of projects to screw up finish.

p.s. do you love the old green arm chair?  it was Kyle's grandma's :)

Something Even Better

I'm a little sad about it, but we've decided to get rid of the $5 bookcase.

Here is my reasoning:

1. We do not really know if it is lead based or not, but since it'd be going in the nursery, we want to be 100% sure everything is safe for the baby.  A home lead test kit costs more than we paid for the bookshelf so it's really not worth it to us to even bother with.

2. It was only $5 so no hard feelings

3. Not having it in the nursery will make for more space in the tiny room

4. One less thing for me to paint

5. I listed it for sale on ksl's classifieds just for fun and within 10 minutes I had a buyer!  That buyer never showed up, but I now have two more vying for the bookshelf and I should have it good and sold this afternoon.  And we'll make a profit! :)

As a further update, I have confirmed that even if I was sanding a lead-infested bookshelf, the limited exposure was not significant enough to cause any harm to me or the fetus. 

(You can breathe easy now, Mom) 

Better yet, we found a book storage solution that we happen to like even better!

link

link

Ikea spice racks.

As bookshelves.

It's genius, I tell you.

I wish I could say I came up with it myself.

But I did find it on Pinterest all by myself.

That counts for something, right?

We picked up four over the weekend and I am so excited to get them on the walls!

Serenity Now

There is peace again in my universe and all is right in the world because I have finally mastered the nursery furniture layout.  Is it wrong for me to spend most of my waking hours re-arranging furniture in my mind?  Because I do a lot of that these days.  I draw little floor plans on napkins and receipts whenever a clever idea happens to strike.  I mean, you never know when you might be inspired to put a cabinet in a closet and move a bookshelf behind a chair, and that is exactly the solution I needed.  I feel triumphant!  Victorious!  Relieved!  We finally have a nursery floor-plan!  And I'm pretty sure it's going to be functional!

Truth be told, we picked the very smallest of our rooms to serve as the baby's room.  This only because it is the room that shares a wall with our bedroom and that just seemed like a good idea. 

At first I felt a little panicked that the room was so empty.  We needed furniture! And accessories!  Pronto!

And then all of a sudden we had way too many things and way too few spaces.  It was really the $5 book shelf that threw everything off.  So that's when I had to put a little creative thinking to use.  But now...  now things are just right.  Proportions feel right, spacing is good, and even in the tiny nursery, we managed to fit one Jenny Lind crib, one old rocking chair, one repainted nightstand/dresser, one $5 bookshelf, one vintage arm chair, two lamps, and one old tv-stand-turned-storage-cabinet. 

(do you feel like singing the Twelve Days of Christmas yet?)

Pictures coming soon, I promise.

In the meantime, I will let you in on a few secret projects I have in the works for the nursery.

One butterfly mobile

link

Four felt dahlias

One ruffled crib skirt

A few fabric buntings

One baby gallery

link

Two ruffled lampshades

And then there's the lamps to paint, the baby quilt to back, curtains to adjust, and $5 bookshelf to refinish.

Good thing I have 18 more weeks!

Project!

 

I have been anxiously waiting to find out Baby P's gender so I could start on a baby quilt.  You know I love a good project!  I picked up these colorful Moda prints to bring some color (and life) to our currently all-white nursery.  I think they will match our vintage lime green arm chair perfectly!

This is the quilt pattern I'll be using from Moda Bake Shop and I can't wait for the weekend to come so I can get sewing!

Gallery Stroll

I'm so in love with the etsy shop The Wheatfield. 

The colors are just the palette I'd been imagining for the nursery! 

And the prints are so whimsical and fun.

It's like springtime up in this blog!

Please enjoy the following eye candy, if you will.

I squealed a little inside when I saw this darling pig!

I think he is fantastic.

Love the colorful alphabet, and it's perfect for a nursery, no?

Both our parents live in Idaho, and with Kyle being a Boise-area native, he pretty much has a crush on the potato state.  Oops, I meant the gem state.  I think this would be a nice homage to our roots.

 Love love love this. 

Please can I have a girl so everything can be pinks and yellows?!

This was one of my great-grandmother's favorite songs.  

And it's so beautifully illustrated!

 I think I'm in love with yellow.

If I don't have a girl.... I wonder if Kyle would mind a pink and yellow nursery?

{he would}

 

Rest assured {Kyle, I'm talking to you}, if we are having a boy, I'll go easy on the pink.

Nursery Prep: Part I

I never expected to marry a man who had opinions about how I decorate.  The good thing is, Kyle has good taste and we generally agree on what we like (and if we don't, I do what I like and Kyle usually comes on board later) :)  So I was especially excited that we both loved the look of an all-white nursery. 

 These nurseries were our inspiration for re-doing our nursery.  We are going for a mostly all white look, but with some color here and there.  I just love how clean and peaceful they look.

We ordered this crib way back in December and it finally came!  We both loved the Jenny Lind style and it proved harder to find than we thought.  Everywhere we went it was sold out or had been discontinued.  We finally snagged it on JCPenny.com, although now I can't even find it there.  Kyle painted the once bright pink/purple nursery a white-gray and added some Boise State baby clothes to the crib so they could get acclimated.



And then one day I finally got ambitious and attacked this $10 chandelier I found at a garage sale last year.  Kyle was hesitant to remove the existing ceiling fan in the nursery, so I took it down by myself one day while he was gone :)  This is the chandelier before I painted it white, but after I had removed all of the beading.  And believe me, there was A LOT of beading....

Here she is in a new coat of white!  I re-strung all the beads and while it was painstakingly ridiculous, I think it was worth it.  But believe me, I had many thoughts of just leaving the beads on there and painting it all white.  I'm so glad I didn't though, I love that they are still clear.

I'm getting really pretty handy with electrical wiring these days, if I do say so myself.  The hardest part was getting the ceiling fan down.  Alone.  Without a ladder.  When the chandelier was all finished, we hung it up (in the dark. with a flashlight) and ta-da! It didn't work.  I was so deflated, it took a few days before I was ready to try again.  It turned out that the wire nuts had come off while we were shoving the wiring back in the ceiling.  The second time around however, she worked like a charm.

And I have to say, as disappointed as Kyle was that I took down the ceiling fan, he really, really loves the chandelier now.  It's so nice to agree on things :)