Nursery Pictures!

I had a lot of fun decorating the nursery, and could not be happier with the way it turned out.  My sister got the artistic and creative genes in the family, so when I work on something and it actually turns out, I shamelessly pat myself on the back. I love the colors, I love the style, and I love how almost everything has a story behind it.  So without further ado…

View from the door

We got the crib from CraigsList on our adventure-filled Dallas trip.  My friend Heidi made both the sheet and the crib skirt- isn’t it awesome?!  She is a nurse by day but would like to start a side business making custom stuff like this.  Let me know if you’d like her contact info!  The mobile was a cheap Hobby Lobby find.  I am quite proud of the frames behind the bed.  The husband wasn’t a fan- he calls them frames of nothingness- but I think he secretly likes how they turned out.  To make them, I scoured thrift stores to find the ugliest, cheapest, most gold-plated frames I could find, spray-painted them black, and then put in some of my favorite fabric swatches.  Cute and super cheap- I probably spent $20 total.

My next project was this rocking chair.  I am very close with my grandma, and she passed this chair on to me.  I liked the idea, but it didn’t really match anything in the room….so I took matters, and a sander and spray paint, into my own hands.  And then I begged my mom to help me sew covers.

Before

After- rocking area with book basket. Many of these books are from my book shower!

I had two other significant projects.  The first one was the curtains, which I sewed myself- with a TON of help from my friends Lainey and Kelly.  I don’t really sew.  If you look at the stitches closely, you might mistakenly think I sewed them while drunk.  They were a little shorter than I intended them to be, but that’s what the curtain hangers are for!  They’re perfectly imperfect.

Finally, the toy box.  Oh, the toy box.  As usual, none of my little projects were quite as easy as I thought they should be.  But the toy box was really something else.

This was my childhood toy box.  It started off looking like this:

I got the brilliant idea to refinish this.  Then I had another brilliant idea to finish it with chalkboard paint.  And then I had yet another brilliant idea to use magnetic primer.

Here’s what my hands looked like when we realized magnetic primer was not water-soluble:If Nugget comes out with brain damage, it’s because of the chemicals we used to get that stuff off.

And here’s what my parent’s utility sink looked like:

 I owe a huge amount of thanks to my dad for all his help with this.  Here’s the finished product:

I love it!

Here are a few more pics of the room:

All in all, I really love it.  It’s not too “baby” and will be good for either a boy or a girl.  If we have a girl we will add some bright pink after I get over the shock.

Now the only thing we’re missing is a baby!