In love with my nursery!

BEFORE

AFTER!

It's funny – in some ways it's similar to the virtual nursery I made a while ago, but in other ways it's completely different.

I didn't put the finishing touches in there until a couple weeks after the baby came home.  I took a look around and instantly thought, "vintage!"  It wasn't really my goal, but it totally worked out that way and I love it.

Shall we take a tour?

This mirror came from my grandma's house.  My aunts gave it to me when she passed away.  It's made out of plastic.  I love the gaudy gold pop it gives the room.

The craft hoops are filled with leftover fabric I had after making the birds you'll see below.  The silhouette is of my mother-in-law at the age of 6, I believe.  I used a stamp to paint the face of that hamper, which I've had for a long time. If you can see the ivory pillow on the bed, that's made with with two Pier 1 napkins sewn together.  The little white shelf holds a bud vase of my mom's and my dad's silver baby cup and rattle.  The infamous sewing table sits beside the bed and is normally stacked with dirty bottles!

I spy a baby below!  Above her hangs my homemade mobile.  It turned out completely different than I intended, but I like the dimension that the branches add to the room.  I found the pattern for the birds here.

Like the crib skirt?  The look was inspired (stolen) from this website, but the pattern on that site made no sense to me.  A gal from high school emailed me a step-by-step of how she made hers, and I found that much simpler.  Not simple, but simpler.

This hand-stitched quilt is more than 60 years old!  It was my dad's.  It's pretty worn, but it's (mostly) clean and soft and has held together beautifully.

Here we have a gift from Kate's great-grandma, an owl from Pier 1 that I am obsessed with, and a little lamb from my friend that prays "Now I lay me down to sleep" when you squeeze it.  Kate doesn't sleep in the crib often.  Once she starts, I'll clear this stuff out.

 Here are my beloved grandparent photos!  I love the way the concept turned out, even though we're still missing one.  Workin' on that!

Austin made the little K above the dresser.  Before she was born I handed him a wooden block, a wooden K, fabric swatches, scrap paper, Mod Podge, paint, a staple gun and more.  He was instructed to do something -- anything -- to contribute a personal touch to the nursery. (Other than replacing that awful brass ceiling fan. PTL!)  He chose a sparkly gold knit to cover the block and painted the K yellow and gold.  Cute!  I wish the lampshade showed up in the photos.  It's killer.

And that's it.  What do you think?

A year's worth of birthdays

Hi, handful of blog readers.  I'm back!  It's been more than a month since I've posted anything, and for a good reason: motherhood!

Now that my little bitty baby is one month old today (which is the purpose of this blog post!) I'm a little more comfortable putting her out there, so to speak.

So since the trend these days is to take a picture of your baby holding a sign for how many months he/she is turning, I decided to take it a step further and whip up a little birthday outfit.  And by whip up, I mean labor over it for 30 seconds at a time all day long.

Since this is my first craft project since she was born, I wanted to make it special... so I went ahead and created all the numbers for up to 11 months now for both consistency's sake and to save myself time in the future.

I made number outlines in Photoshop and printed them large enough to fill up these little 4x4 fabric swatches that I received from Land of Nod.  I KNEW they'd come in handy one of these days!

I then ironed the swatches on to Heat&Bond and taped the pieces up to the front door to trace them, a la third grade art class.  I'm sure there was an easier way, but mommy brain got in the way.

Plus, I had a human strapped to me.

I cut out the one, ironed it on to a newborn onesie that's almost too small and sewed a zigzag stitch around it.  I saved the rest of the numbers in an envelope in my sewing box so they'd be easy to find and place on whatever size white onesie fits her on the 21st of every month.

And, without further ado, here's my beautiful one-month old!