Nursery Update

I was hoping to do a "Nursery Reveal" post of the finished nursery, but I just can't wait anymore! :) So instead I am posting an 85% finished nursery update.

Once I had the basic color scheme and theme decided, my biggest inspiration for each element was the cheap factor. Even though we became DEBT FREE--except the house--earlier this month (this topic definitely deserves its own post), we still have some big financial goals to hit and so are working hard to live as frugally as possible. This means I didn't really have a budget for decorating the nursery, aside from a little bit of "fun" money I had saved up and what I could squeeze out of the household category in our regular monthly budget. It's a good thing I have a huge stash of fabric people have given me, Pinterest, and an obsession for awesome deals. :)

As you walk in the doorway you see the crib area. The first thing I made for the nursery was the crib bumper & skirt. I ordered the fabric from fabric.com (there went that "fun money" I mentioned) and just happened to hit Hancock Fabrics on a huge sale weekend when I went to buy the batting and a few other materials. (Yay!) The colors are so bright and cheerful. I love them!

Here is a close-up of the mobile. I made this using the idea posted here, but with some modifications. (For example I did NOT hand-sew each bird--no thanks!--and I hung it with skinny grosgrain ribbon instead of clear wire.) I think the mobile is my favorite element in the room so far. :)

I couldn't resist using the header from the blog as the inspiration for the wall art behind the crib. (Who knew I was this drawn to birds??) As I pondered what to put on all these blank walls, I was really trying to avoid spending $3-4 each on canvases, but it seemed all the DIY wall art I was finding started with a canvas as a base. Of course $4 is better than the hundreds you could spend on buying wall art, but I kept stubbornly searching for an alternative. Eventually I found this idea. I decoupaged scrapbook paper on as the base of my "canvases" to give it a softer more whimsical look than the paint used in the original tutorial.

I decided it was finally time to recover our yard sale rocking chair. The original English farmhouse upholstry didn't match the nursery at all and was wearing very thin. I thought this would be a pretty quick project, but it ended up being a 2-man, lengthy ordeal. Let's just say upholstry tacks aren't the easiest thing in the world to pound into a piece of hard wood. Thankfully Seth saved the day with his handy dandy drill and precision drilling skills. Thanks, Babe!

I still need to make a pillow for this chair. I'm thinking a taupe pillow with a bright yellow rick-rack flower in the center.

I saw an adorable bird painting for sale ($110--ack!) and immediately thought, "I could totally do that!" The way the birds were depicted reminded me of thumbprints and an idea was born. Here is our version featuring the thumbprints of baby girl's 3 older siblings. I didn't keep track of who's prints are who's, except that the dark pink, light pink, and medium pink birds at the bottom of the tree were stamped by Benj, Talia & Leila, respectively.

I made these little birdhouses just for fun (I found the pattern here) because who can have a bird nursery without birdhouses? I also saw some adorable tiny wooden birdhouses at Michael's that I was sorely tempted to purchase, but since I could make these for free I exercised all my willpower and went with this version. I'm thinking about hanging a branch on the wall above the changing table and hanging or propping these in it with some birds dangling from the branches.

Lastly, here is the shelving under the changing table. Never having had an actual changing table before (we have always used a long dresser with a changing pad on top), I was not sure what to do with all this shelf space. After perusing lots of nursery decor blogs I decided that baskets were really the only option. Of course, you know me...I was not interested in spending the money to buy 4 large baskets so I set about searching for an alternative. I orginally found an idea to cover diaper boxes with canvas, but I had a huge piece of taupe cotton fabric in my stash that I wanted to use instead of buying canvas. So I found a slip cover for plastic crates and modified it to fit diaper boxes instead of the crates. My friend Stephanie found those cute magazine boxes at the dollar spot at Target. I have no idea what to put in them yet, but I think they go perfectly! :)

I still need to paint and hang some shelves to go above the rocking chair, find a lamp & a clock, and figure out what to do with the window, but it's definitely coming together!

Thanks for looking/reading!

Decorating Projects!

My "nesting" phase seems to be manifesting itself in decorating projects this time around. Of course, that is largely prompted by the fact that we have majorly changed the room arrangements in our house over the past couple of months.

Talia and Leila are now sharing the bedroom in the basement. When I started looking for ideas for a sweet, girly room I was enthralled with this. We are not really wanting to paint at this point, so I went about recreating the color scheme with fabrics instead. Here is the first installment:

I made the duvet cover from some clearance sheets I got at Wal-Mart. I got 3 sets of full-sized sheets for a total of about $10! I made all the throw pillows from tutorials I found on Pinterest and modified another throw pillow tutorial to create the shams. I love the way they turned out!

My next projects for this room are tall, skinny bookshelves on either side of the bed (any ideas for cheap??), something to frame the head of the bed (still trying to decide what I want to do), and some button wall art.

Meanwhile, I am also working on the nursery. Believe it or not, we have never owned girl crib bedding (for a normal-sized crib). When both of the other girls were born we were in our teeny, tiny house and the kids were sharing one teeny, tiny bedroom so we bought a mini crib (the size church nurseries usually have) and I made bedding for that. Since we can use our normal sized crib again and this baby will have her own room (praise the Lord!!!), I was excited to be able to finally decorate a girly nursery.

Early on when I was trying to decide what I wanted to do I got stuck on the idea of having a bird-themed nursery. Later I decided on a pink, yellow and taupe color-scheme. This is what I have done so far:

 
I made the crib bumper and crib skirt using Benjamin's store-bought crib bedding as a pattern and sort of making it up as I went along. I still need to add ties to the bumper and some big, pink bows at the tops of the box pleats on the bumper (can't really see from this picture).

My next projects for this room are: faux canvas wall art (SO excited about this!! cute and cheap!) and recovering the rocking chair with an awesome white & yellow damask print.

What else would you do in these rooms? All you decorating-savvy friends out there, I welcome your input!

Talia's Quilt!

Talia's "big" birthday gift from Daddy & Mama this year was a quilt for her bed. (Daddy paid for it and Mama made it. :) ) I got started a bit late, but I found this super easy, cute pattern so I decided to go for it.

I had never ordered pre-cut fabric before, but I decided there was a first time for everything since the pattern was written for use with a "honey bun." I ordered my fabric in an online quilt shop and a few days later I received this in the mail:

Fascinating!

In about 7-8 hours I completed the quilt top (for those of you who are not quilters, that's a pretty quick quilt)! I still need to finish putting it all together, but it was "together" enough to present her with this on her birthday:

Happy Birthday, my big 4 year old girl! Mama loves you.