Baby A's Nursery Reveal

The day that I blogged about Lyla's finished nursery was the day that my water broke and labor started.  Since I'm getting a little impatient here's hoping that posting about baby girl A's nursery will do the same.  So without further ado here is her nursery:

I am absolutely in love with this room.  My vision of floral and lace came together in this room even better than I had imagined it.  You can read about how I made the floral and lace chandelier here and you can read about the floral letter and the lace frame art here.  So much of the rest of this room was made possible by Target.  Target is hands down my favorite place to shop (and no Target is in no way paying me to say this but if they would like to I won't turn it down *wink wink).  The crib sheet and ruffled crib skirt are both from their new Cloud Island nursery collection.  Surprisingly that crib skirt had some not so great reviews online.  Most of the negative reviews were centered around the fact that it was really wrinkled coming out of the packaging.  There is a simple solution to that though.  I just threw it in the dryer with a wet towel and it came out perfect!  And $25 compared to $80 for comparable crib skirts was such a steal!

I cannot tell you how much I love this crib.  I love the vintage look which is why I picked a classic Jenny Lind style crib for Lyla's room.  For this room I wanted a metal crib but most of them are ridiculously expensive.  This crib from Little Seeds is affordable and I love the color.  I bought mine at Wayfair but I just got an email from Target today that they are carrying Little Seeds products now. You can find the crib here.

You can read about the vintage doily art that I made for above the dresser here.  This dresser is tied with the crib for my favorite piece of furniture in the room.  I found it on Craigslist after months of looking and here is what it looked like when we got it.

I liked the gray but it was too close to the color of the wall so it needed to be painted white.  It is such a gorgeous vintage piece!  I used the same baskets mounted to the wall that was used in Lyla's room at the old house and you can read more about it here.  I found the tray to hold diapers and other things that we need while using the changing pad at HomeGoods.  I made another changing pad cover using extra fabric from the roller shade project and gray dot minky.  You can read more about how to make the changing pad covers here. That toy basket in the corner is from Target from the Pillowfort collection.

Those gorgeous lace curtains are from Target from the Shabby Chic collection.  I found two of the panels on clearance in store.  The other 2 were bought online and I had kind of a funny experience with them.  Instead of receiving the curtains I receive a package full of bras but the packing slip said it was the curtains.  I had to jump through some hoops to get the curtains but it ended up to be a blessing because they actually went on sale which I wouldn't of known about had I received the right order the first time.  You can read more about how I covered the roller shades in fabric here.  I found the curtain rods at Wayfair.  That rocker was thrift store find that I recovered for Lyla's nursery and you can read more about that project here.

The lamb was a gift from the previous homeowners.  I found the pillow and that beautiful lamp at HomeGoods.  The bookshelf was a clearance item from Target.

I found these gorgeous prints on Etsy.  The child of God and Alice in Wonderland printables came from the shop Adoren Studio.  The middle print came from the shop MINTable Printables and it is a quote from a Mumford and Sons song.  I found the simple white frames at Target for $3 a piece.

I found this picture ledge and the hooks at Target.  The pictures in the frames are of baby A's namesake.  There will be more on that once she is here and we officially announce her name.  The Alice and Wonderland print was actually on our porch at our old house but I thought is fit in well here.

Well that's it!  I love this room and I hope you love it too and are inspired by it.  I can't wait until baby A is finally here!

Vintage Doily Art

Happy Labor Day weekend!  I am enjoying this weekend by relaxing and getting some cleaning and laundry done in preparation for baby's arrival.  I can't believe that it is already September and officially my due date month!

I plan to give a full tour of the nursery in my next post but first I wanted to share a couple of diy projects with you.  The first one is this beautiful and simple art that I made out of doilies and embroidery hoops.  I didn't take any photos of the process because it is so incredibly simple.

I found these doilies at a couple of antique stores.  They are easy to find and it was fun looking through them to find a variety of patterns and sizes.  I was especially excited to find that pale pink one because it fits so well with the colors of the room.  I bought the wood embroidery hoops at Joann Fabrics and decided to buy three different sizes.  I put the doilies in the hoops and then carefully stretched them so that they were taut in the hoops.  I trimmed off the excess doily in each hoop and then applied a line of hot glue around the back of each embroidery hoop to secure the doily in the hoop.

I hung them above the dresser/changing station with simple gold nails.  I can't wait to share a full picture of the dresser once I do a nursery reveal.  It is such a beautiful piece of vintage furniture!

I have one more project to share with you today.  My execution on this one wasn't the best so I will share the original tutorial with you.

I fell in love with these beautiful lace curtains that I found on clearance at Target but I knew that I still needed to block the light in the room somehow.  I decided to buy blackout roller shades because I had seen many tutorials on Pinterest of how to cover them in fabric.  The tutorial that I followed (however I did not follow it very well) was this one from the blog The DIY Mommy. It is a great tutorial but I made a big mistake when I installed the shades.  I should of installed them backwards so that the fabric would cover the roll itself.  I tried fixing it but the shades wouldn't  roll up that way. Because of this I was unable to wrap the fabric around the sides of the shade because it would look bad in the rolled part.

It still looks beautiful and the shades roll up just fine but some of the fabric is starting to bubble because I didn't do a good job of applying the spray adhesive to both the shade and the fabric.  It will be easy to fix but I am just frustrated that it isn't perfect.  It's the curse of being a perfectionist.  I know it is still lovely and much better than plain white roller shades though.  I found that beautiful fabric at Hobby Lobby by the way and with the sale on the fabric I was able to cover 3 roller shades for $25!

Check back next week for the full reveal of the nursery!

Floral Letter + Lace Frame Art

Happy Sunday!  I am happy to announce that the nursery is officially finished.  I will share a full reveal in a few weeks but until then I've got a couple more DIY projects to share from the room. Today I am sharing how I created the floral letter and and lace frame art that is hanging above the crib in the nursery.

The floral letter is actually a repeat project from my blog.  Back in 2014, I created a floral letter R for our porch gallery wall in our last house. I created the floral letter A for this room using basically the same steps (and yes we have a name picked out for baby girl that begins with the letter A but I won't be sharing it on the blog for a while yet).

I started by painting the whole cardboard letter (from Hobby Lobby) gold.

I added the texture that you can see in the paint with this stenciling brush.

I used an awl to poke holes in the letter where I wanted to place the flowers.

Then I used hot glue to secure the flowers in place in the holes that I poked with the awl.

Finally I used ModPodge to attach some lace ribbon to the sides of the letter A.

I didn't take any pictures of how I made the lace frame art partly because they are so easy to make.  I found some open frames on sale at Hobby Lobby.  I used some scrap lace from my fabric stash. Actually the scrap lace in the smallest frame came from my mom's fabric stash and was the lace that she used as part of the bridesmaid dresses that she made for my wedding!  I then cut the scraps to roughly the size of the frames and used hot glue to attach the lace to the frames.  They still seemed to be missing something so I hot glued some of the leftover flowers in each frame.

I felt like the arrangement needed one more thing so I also hung this clock up with the letter and frames.  I actually bought the clock for Lyla's room but decided it didn't work in her room so I am glad to finally find a use for it.

I am so excited to show you the rest of this room!  My next post involves vintage doilies that I turned into art for above the dresser. Keep checking back for that post!

Floral Chandelier

Hello!  I am happy to say that the nursery for baby #2 is nearly finished.  Right now I am in the process of painting the dresser.  All I have left is to buy a crib mattress, mount the camera for the monitor, do 1 more art project, finish hanging decor and organize clothes.  Okay that sounds like a lot still but it really isn't!

Today I am excited to share the 1st of the nursery projects with you.  For this room I decided to go with a floral and lace theme.  If you read my blog then you probably remember the Hot Air Balloon Mobile that I made for Lyla's room.

For this nursery I decided to create a floral and lace chandelier to hang over the crib.  Now my dad pointed out that it isn't really a chandelier without light but if you type floral chandelier into Google you will come up with plenty of images and links of floral chandeliers.  They are quite a big trend for wedding reception decor these days.

This project took quite a few supplies.  Some of them I had on hand and the rest I purchased at Hobby Lobby.  Here are the supplies I used for this project:

• two vine wreaths (one should be larger than the other)
• various floral stems in shades of pink and white
• a stem of greenery (I chose one with several long shoots that I could wrap around the wreaths)
• fishing line for connecting the two wreaths (I didn't have any on hand so I just used jewelry wire)
• lace trim and lace ribbon
• scissors
• hot glue gun and glue

I started by wrapping a stem of the greenery around each wreath.  I used the glue gun to tuck it into different parts of the wreath until I got the look I wanted.  

Next I took the flower heads off of the stems and glued them onto the wreath.  I then connected the two wreaths with the jewelry wire (fishing line).  I made sure to secure the knots with hot glue.

Next I tied pieces of lace ribbon in varying lengths to the bottom wreath.  I had 4 different kinds which really created a nice look.

Finally I attached four pieces of wide lace trim (I had this on hand from another project) to the top wreath and secured them with hot glue.  I tied them together in a knot at the top.  I hung the wreath above the crib from this ceiling hook.  

It was a project that went together fairly quickly and I love the way it looks!  

Thanks for reading my post and I hope it inspired you!  Next time I will write a post about the decor that you can see hanging on the wall behind the crib in one of the photos above.  Have a great day!

PVC Pipe Water Table

I've been making some great progress on the nursery this week and I can't wait to share some really cool nursery projects with you.  Tonight I was going to hang 2 curtain rods and install a hook in the ceiling to hang the floral and lace mobile that I made over the crib.  It turns out that I need an 1/8 inch drill bit for both projects and I broke that bit awhile ago so instead I will write a blog post.

I love making gifts and it has been fun making some large gifts for my little girl.  You may remember this teepee from her 1st birthday:

This year I tackled a slightly less complicated project and made her a water table.  There are lots of tutorials out there for this project so I won't give you one now but I will give you that links to the tutorials that helped me the most.  This tutorial from Frugal Fun for Boys and Girls and this tutorial from Moms Without Answers  gave specific dimensions for their tables and this tutorial from My Life With the Littles gave a lot of great advice on building the table with a suggestion for a PVC pipe cutter that I ended up buying for my project as well.

The biggest thing that all of the tutorials suggested that I didn't follow was using PVC glue.  I would of used it but my 10 foot pipes were left over from a summer theater production and were partially painted so they fit very snug in all of the fittings.  That is why you can see a little bit of bowing in my pipes but trust me it is very sturdy.

It was a big hit at her birthday party.  I put collapsible measuring cups, a collapsible colander, foam letters made for the bath and bath crayons in the water for the kids to play with.  I plan on putting different sensory things in it each time she plays with it.

Later a toy truck also joined the water party.  When we played with a few days later, Lyla thought it would be fun to use her toy shovel to scoop water out and dump it on me.  Fun times ha ha!

My next post will most likely be on a nursery project but I just can't resist giving you a little sneak peak of some of the things I have been working on!

The theme this time around is floral and lace and I love how it is coming together so far!