It's kind of funny...I started working on the nursery as soon as we announced our pregnancy at week 12. I was so amped to get to work at that point that I figured I'd finish it all within a month. It seems that, if you let it, getting a nursery decorated can be similar to planning a wedding: everything takes more time than you expect, and there's way more than your list makes it seem. I suppose DIYing almost everything didn't help too much with that either. But eventually that list does end, and ours did about three minutes ago. That's right, people: the nursery to-do list is completely done! (The pre-baby list, I must confess, still has two items on it, but hopefully those will get done today since baby could theoretically come at any time and since...well...I'll just say that I feel like go time will be really soon.)
This isn't usually my style (it isn't ever my style) but I'm 9 months pregnant and my alarm went off at 5:45 this morning to get ready for a sunrise maternity shoot and Baby is literally trying to get out of me currently, so I'm not doing my own tutorial on how I made this crib skirt for the nursery. I didn't take pictures along the way and I'm giving no explanation. This is half because of all the reasons I just mentioned, and half because the tutorial I used was perfect and there's just no point in trying to recreate my own. I mean, Young House Love is as great as they are for a reason: they make some pretty great tutorials all on their own. So here's the link to the specific blog post I used as my step-by-step:
The crib skirt was designed to cover the ugly hinges and hardware of the under-the-crib storage drawer.
Honestly, the crib would have been fine if I hadn't made the crib skirt at all. At first those metal hinges really bothered me but over the course of the last 10 or 11 months since we bought the crib they've become much less of an eyesore to me. Some of that has definitely been born from a lack of any kind of desire to actually make the crib skirt, I can't lie. But I'd already bought the hem tape and the fabric, so I did finally feel like it was time to suck it up and just get it done.
I'm not sure why I get so intimidated by new and strange DIY-related things, but I do. Sherry from Young House Love promised that hem tape was super easy and super wonderful for the non-sewers such as herself, but I remained a little unconvinced. Aka: I was scared of the most ridiculously easy DIY project in the history of the world. Pretty ridiculous, now that I've done it and see how simple - and awesome! - it is. Hem tape is officially my new favorite thing. (For details on what the heck I'm talking about, click on the tutorial link above.)
I had such a hard time picking fabric the day I bought this, because there were SO many beautiful patterns that would have looked awesome as a crib skirt if there wasn't that super busy and crazy rug taking up the whole room. (I went through similar heartache when I was looking for new curtain fabric.) But in the end, I'm really happy with this fabric. It does have that subtle pattern on it so it's not a solid sheet above a solid skirt, but it's so subtle it doesn't compete with the rug below. I think it turned out perfectly.
So the nursery is done! Completely and 100% done, folks. I can't even begin to tell you how that feels. As part of the maternity shoot today, we got a lot of detail shots throughout the whole nursery so when I get those I'll post a whole, finished overview of the final product. Everything DIY has been shared on here already, obviously, but there are a lot of details that haven't been documented and I can't wait to show you how it all came together. Also, it should be said that we are besides ourselves with excitement for Baby to finally be able to come live in his or her new room.
Here's the finished nursery to-do list, with links to all the individual projects. It's been super fun and I've loved it all, but I'm also kind of ready to take a DIY break for a little while.
Today was a really productive day for the "before baby comes" to-do list. I was able to finish a small project that I had started a couple days ago, get the car ready, pack about 2/3 of the hospital bag, and make these clothing dividers for the nursery's closet. Not too shabby considering I felt a little comatose the whole time.
I'm not going to claim any credit at all for this project; I ripped it right off of the blog I Heart Organizing. Jen had a guest post last month in which a woman shared the clothing dividers she made for her own nursery, and they were just too perfect to pass up. Or attempt to change at all. I followed her directions pretty much exactly (I even bought the same wooden Os from Hobby Lobby) but for the sake of me posting some pictures and actually writing somewhat of a blog post, I'll do some explaining too.
We started out by buying those wooden Os, which conveniently came in a 2-pack, so we ended up with four. The babe held them up to the hanging bar in the nursery closet and measured how wide of a chunk he needed to cut out (to slide them over and onto the bar). He used a hand saw to cut the wood and then sanded off the edges a little so they would be smooth. Unfortunately, I did a pretty terrible job of taking any pictures up until this point. Just picture what look like four wooden Cs.
My next step was to pick out scrapbook paper to make the little dividers a little bit more pretty. I decided to use four different patterns, none of which too gender specific and mixing it up quite a bit between them all for some variety. I thought about making them all the same, but then decided I wanted them all different instead. No particular reason, just what struck me.
I traced the dividers on each piece of scrapbook paper (twice for each piece, for a front and a back).
I cut them out...and then decided I wanted to deviate slightly from the inspiration blog post. I was a little concerned about the bare wood showing on the edges of the dividers; it would work in some cases but considering the loud scrapbook paper I'd chosen I thought it would just look unfinished. So I grabbed some paint, mixed up a green color, and painted the dividers. Like a dummy, I didn't bother to take any pictures during this phase either (although I have already mentioned that I was basically asleep doing all of this, so...). But after the paint dried, I cut out strips of the scrapbook paper that I had already cut and Modge Podged it to both the fronts and backs of all the dividers.
Once again, no pictures. I'm not sure why I even bothered to have my camera out of the bag today. But after the Modge Podge dried, I applied the appropriate sizing stickers (0-3 months, 3-6 months, 6-9 months) and left one blank because I didn't think it was necessary to use all the letter stickers required to write "Sleep Sacks," and stuck 'em in the closet. Thankfully, I had the clarity of mind to take pictures of the finished product, at least.
I don't currently have any 6-9 month clothes, so that's why you see one of the dividers way on the end of the rod. But the rest are all set and will be added to tremendously once the baby grows. For now, it's just one more thing crossed off the list, though, which is pretty awesome. There's literally only one project left in the nursery, and even though it should be incredibly easy I'm pretty intimidated by it. I've actually put it off this long because of how intimidated I am by it, but this week is the time. It's time to make a crib skirt, people. Anxiously await my blog post.
Here's the nursery to-do list now:
1 Samuel 1:27-28 chalkboard
quote for inside side table frame
hang all pictures
turn green bottle into a lamp
recover lamp shade? new lamp shade?
prime dressers
sand side table
sand cube organizer
paint dressers white
paint side table white
paint side table drawer pull silver
paint cube organizer
make mobile for over crib
paint metal pail for books
clean out closet and closet drawers
clean out dresser drawers
line dresser drawers with contact paper
organizers for inside of dresser drawers
storage system and bins
basket(s) for cube organizer
get small lamp for changing table
metal trash can for diapers
basket with liner for hamper
shelf over storage system?
new overhead light?
art piece above changing table
hang large frame for showers
set up baby monitor
make crib skirt
buy new blackout curtains
Yep, there's three things on that list and I said there's only one project left. Since the babe is hanging that frame and he needs to help me set up the baby monitor, I'm not counting them as things on my personal to-do list. And technically they're not projects anyway. They're items. So there.
There's only two blog posts left in the nursery, though: the dreaded crib skirt, and then I'll do a big detailed look at the finished nursery as a whole, talking about some of the little details and things that haven't been mentioned on here already. And soon...there will be an actual baby on this blog! Crazy. We couldn't be more ready.
It was probably close to a year ago that I saw this picture on Pinterest and decided I wanted to do something similar in our nursery.
taken from Pinterest.com
Instead of having the cloud and raindrops over the changing table, though, I always envisioned it as the mobile above the crib. My first plan for the mobile - formed more than a year ago when we were pregnant with Sam - was to make it entirely out of cardboard, using boxes we already had in the basement from when we moved to Berryville. I was also going to use white and blue paint that we already had, resulting in a free mobile other than fishing line and hanging hardware. This remained the plan for a long time, since we weren't really working on the nursery for a long time and then since I saved the mobile for (basically) last.
I grabbed some cardboard from the basement and drew out my cloud, using the crib as a loose reference for how big to make it and tweaking a lot as I went.
When I read Young House Love'sblog post about making Teddy's mobile, though, Sherry mentioned that she actually laid down in the crib after they had hung the mobile to make sure that it looked interesting from the underside (what would be Teddy's view). I never crawled into our crib, but it did make me rethink the completely flat - although free - cardboard design I'd been planning. The point of the mobile is to give the baby something interesting to look at while he or she falls asleep, after all. So I started thinking again.
My second plan was to make the cloud out of fabric, filling it with poly fill like a pillow, and to make the raindrops out of blue string that had been decoupaged and allowed to harden around a balloon that was later popped. I decided to use a thick white canvas (purchased from Hobby Lobby, of course), and used the cardboard cloud as a template to cut out my fabric. I contemplated using a friend's sewing machine for a few minutes, but since neither my friend nor I have used a sewing machine since the 7th grade, I decided it wasn't really the time to relearn that skill on such small, tight curves. So I opted to hand sew, and it looked AWESOME...
...until I flipped it inside out and stuffed it with poly fill. That didn't look awesome. That looked...that looked awful.
As it turns out, I didn't do such a great job keeping my stitches tight or following the curves of the cloud. There was stuffing sticking outside of holes where there were gaps in my stitching, but the bigger issue was that it didn't even come close to keeping its shape. And I was not a fan of this new shape it had taken on. The real killer is that after I decided to chuck this guy and start over with a different route, I saw a million examples on Pinterest and such that didn't have the fabric turned inside out and instead just left the flat, rough edges. So I probably could have kept it that way and been fine, but once I turned it inside out and stuffed it it was clearly not fine.
So I went back to the drawing board yet again after some Pinteresting for thoughts and inspiration...and ended up in a place similar to where I had originally started out. Here was my inspiration picture:
taken from Pinterest.com
For my third plan, I went back to the cardboard, this time making two clouds that I would fit together origami-style like the clouds in the inspiration picture.
Once I had two identical clouds (I used the first one as a template to draw the second one), I grabbed some white paint from the basement and painted them. It took several coats, but eventually I had two really pretty white clouds.
To cut the slits that would fit the clouds together, I used the ruler to find the halfway point from top to bottom, and cut one cloud from the bottom up and the other cloud from the top down.
It took some wiggling and manhandling to get the pieces to fit together, but eventually they did and I loved how they looked. When the babe came home from Florida, though, his reaction went something like this: "I love this! It looks so good! You know what would make it look even better and last longer? If we made it out of wood instead!" I'll be honest...my first thought was something like this:
But my second thought was that he was definitely right, and that it would be really cool to have him be a part of one of the nursery projects. So...we started again.
Our fourth plan was to make two clouds that would fit together origami-style just like the cardboard ones, but this time out of a very thin plywood we found at Hobby Lobby. Unfortunately, wood is a little bit trickier to cut and deal with than cardboard. The babe used his Dremmel tool to cut out the clouds - after I drew them, using the first cloud as a template for the second once again - and then sanded them all down so all edges would be rounded and smooth.
Many acrobatics were used.
Once they were both cut out, we measured again to find the spots to cut the slits...but this time the babe put a lot more thought into it than I did with the cardboard and made sure that slits were cut in a place that would allow the clouds to hang evenly and balanced. That meant that the slits weren't necessarily in the center.
I forgot to take pictures of the clouds painted white, because at this point I was lucky to remember to take pictures of anything. Several coats were used once again, as well as quite a bit of touching up, but eventually we had pretty white clouds once more. We super glued them together and then used wood putty to fill in any gaps, painting over the wood putty once it dried.
Next step was the rain drops, which had always been planned but just never had gotten a chance to exist.
I mixed up some glue water, covered the string with the mix, and wrapped it randomly around the little balloons the babe blew up for me (fun fact: I lack the skill of blowing up balloons). I'll be honest, even though this had been my plan all along, once I got started on it I wasn't really too sure whether it would work. I wasn't convinced they would look like raindrops once we popped the balloons. And then I wasn't sure the string would dry to a hard enough consistency to maintain shape very well without the balloons. After letting them sit overnight, though, they were plenty hard enough and with some careful wiggling and gentle scootching, the babe was able to pop the balloons and pull them all free from the string. They weren't the most amazing looking things in the world, but they would work just fine.
Next step was to drill very tiny holes along the bottom of the clouds, one for each of the raindrops, so we could tie fishing line through. We also drilled holes at the top of the clouds (two on each cloud, for four contact points total) to string fishing line through to hang the whole mobile. The babe knotted each piece of fishing line after stringing it through the holes and then super glued each knot for added reinforcement (this isn't something we want falling once it's hung). He then super glued each piece of fishing line to a rain drop and they were done! All that was left was the top.
He tied all four pieces of fishing line that had been woven through the top together in a knot, and then super glued it for added reinforcement. We still needed something to hang on the hook we bought for the ceiling, so he tied a second knot, super glued it, and waited for it to dry.
We used this hook - white, to blend into the ceiling a little bit better - and followed the directions for screwing it into the ceiling once we measured the spot that was dead center above the crib and also in a stud (because, once again, we don't want this thing falling on our child). Once that was done, we got to hang it!
I'm not sure that those raindrops were really what I envisioned - even though, to be fair, they're actually exactly what I envisioned - but they do the trick just fine. And, like the babe pointed out last night, they're super glued to the wood so I'm stuck with them. And I'm fairly confident that they look pretty sweet from the crib view (I'm not climbing in to see for myself though). Truth be told, I really do love the mobile. The babe's idea of switching to wood was great; it's sturdier and looks better and will last longer than the cardboard.
There's really not too much left to get done in the nursery now, which is awesome since we are now officially less than a month away from the due date. I can't even tell you how great it feels to cross this guy off the list!
Here's the nursery to-do list now:
1 Samuel 1:27-28 chalkboard
quote for inside side table frame
hang all pictures
turn green bottle into a lamp
recover lamp shade? new lamp shade?
prime dressers
sand side table
sand cube organizer
paint dressers white
paint side table white
paint side table drawer pull silver
paint cube organizer
make mobile for over crib
paint metal pail for books
clean out closet and closet drawers
clean out dresser drawers
line dresser drawers with contact paper
organizers for inside of dresser drawers
storage system and bins
basket(s) for cube organizer
get small lamp for changing table
metal trash can for diapers
basket with liner for hamper
shelf over storage system?
new overhead light?
art piece above changing table
hang large frame for showers
make crib skirt
buy new blackout curtains
There's a couple other odds and ends that are left, but those last three are the biggies. So ready to get everything crossed off my master "before baby comes" list, but we're getting really close! Only a handful of things left and they will hopefully be knocked out in the next week, leaving the last couple weeks wide open to relax and wait for Baby!
It's been a pretty slow couple of months on the blog and an even slower couple of weeks since the babe's accident. But we're starting to be productive again (or at least, a more tangible, cross things off the pre-baby list productive) and have a couple of projects to share with you. Nothing huge, but things that I've been excited to get done.
The first was to line the dresser drawers in the nursery. I bought the contact paper months ago because I felt like the old particle board wouldn't be ideal for tiny, fragile baby clothes. In the months since then it's occurred to me that there is a ton of storage in this room and that clothes probably won't need to even go in the dressers; since the dressers are going to serve as the changing table I'll store mostly changing and bathing things in there. I was tempted to just skip the whole step of lining the drawers but since I'd already bought the contact paper...I had to bite the bullet and just do it.
The babe helped me get the first couple drawers done and I was able to take it from there. It was pretty straight forward, but we wanted to avoid air bubbles if possible which made the technique a little more complicated.
First, I measured out the inside of a drawer and cut a piece of contact paper to size. Instead of using the ruler and measuring for each of the eight drawer liners, I just used the first one as a template and cut all eight to size.
Then, we peeled part of the backing off of the contact paper and got the exposed end stuck in one side of the drawer, using a wooden ruler to smooth out any air bubbles as we pulled the backing off the rest of the paper slowly and stuck it down with the ruler.
When the piece would be secure with air bubbles smoothed out (there was a definite learning curve and some drawers came away with a lot less wrinkles than others), we used an Exacto knife to cut away any overlap paper that had made its way up onto the sides or in the corners. Sometimes this happened because it got laid in there slightly crooked, and sometimes it was just because I had gotten a little uneven when I'd originally cut out the piece, but it helped give a more clean look to trim it all down.
You're welcome for the road rash cameo.
It wasn't too difficult once we figured out the method that worked well, and the perspective we kept in mind is that this is for the bottom of dresser drawers. There will be things in each drawer and the drawers will be closed the majority of the time. AKA: it doesn't have to be perfect, and air bubbles are unavoidable. It was a little tedious doing this eight times, but in not much time there were all done and looking really good.
I just love how clean they look now, and how dramatically different they have come since they were black a couple months ago.
We also added some new frames to the gallery wall in the family room. I woke up one day while the babe was in Florida and decided that it was time to add some more to the walls. We had always intended for more to be added gradually over time. So I walked around the house and rounded up some more frames/photos that could be added, and snagged a couple more photos from Shutterfly and frames from Hobby Lobby. We hung them Monday, and I'm loving the additions.
On the left side of the map, we added a Wicked playbill from when we were dating, a "Bless this Home" print from Etsy that had been given to us as a housewarming gift last year by a dear friend, and a new picture taken in Memphis this summer when I was visiting my sister. The photo is of a painted wall mural in the city that says "Invest in Good Times." We also moved the "All I need today is a little coffee and a lot of Jesus" print to the top of the collage. I'm still deciding whether I'm liking the new arrangement on this side of the map...the babe hung them all where I asked him to but then I just wasn't sure whether I liked them all like that or not and decided to live with it for a while and see if it grows on me. So that's where I am with that side. The other side, I'm definitely in love with.
On the right side, we added a post card of The Little Grill, one of my favorite restaurants in Harrisonburg, VA where I went to college, a sweet photo of Zuriel from this summer, a greeting card (totally ripped off one of my friends because she had hung it on her own gallery wall and when I oohed and ahhed over it she gave me one as well) featuring an adorable giraffe in glasses and a sweater, and a photo of the babe and I from when we were engaged. I love all the individual additions, and I also love the frame layout. Now I just need to figure out what I don't love about the other side...
With the dresser drawers lined, I've finally been able to start organizing and putting things in their actual homes in the nursery (rather than continuing to have a floor full of baby shower bags). The nursery looks a little bit like a bomb has gone off in it right now, but its definitely going to get worse before it gets better. It's probably going to be like a puzzle figuring out the best way to organize everything, and even though I'm so excited to work on it I'm feeling pretty bad this week physically (baby growth spurt? I'm not sure...just a lot of nausea and weakness and fatigue). So we will see how much I'll be able to tackle in the next couple of days. But either way, things are getting done and the list is getting smaller. I'm not gonna lie...I'm a little bit ready to just snap my fingers and be done with the nursery and all the house prep work for the baby. I've loved it so much, but these last couple things are wiping me out. Soon enough though, it will be done and we'll have our actual baby. We can't wait!
