A Nursery Project

We have been ever so slowly continuing to work on our room redo. Chaos has been moved to his big boy room (though not the big boy bed) even though the room isn't completely finished.

With the nursery freed up, it's left room for me to start working on a few little projects. When I bought Wild One's bedding set, it came with one matching valance. I knew I had no plans to use it as a window cover since 1) there are two windows in the nursery and 2) we prefer full length drapes for a darker room.

So...how many things do you think I can make from this one valance?


My first is a nightlight. We had an old Dora nightlight lying around that had long ago lost the picture insert. I cut a small piece of the valance to fit inside and now I have a cute (free!) matching nightlight for Wild One's room.


More projects to come...

Room Redo Cont'd - Chaos' Nursery

The (current) final installment of my room redo series.

Chaos' Nursery:
Long before we ever became pregnant, we knew that if we ever had a little boy we would have an airplane themed nursery. Thankfully while we were expecting Chaos we found a great bedding on clearance at Pottery Barn and from there the room was born. We kept the layout the same as with Pinky's nursery, but the feel to the room is much different.


Airplane bedding in the crib and a small chair from our local consignment shop.


Scanning left from the crib. We think every bedroom should have lots and lots of books!


The glider and side table. We spent many, many sleepless nights here with Chaos. The shelves about the glider are the same from Pinky's old nursery.


The wall opposite the bookshelf holds the dresser which doubles as a changing table and the shadow boxes I featured in another post.

Since we are currently in the midst of redoing all the rooms, this is the final installment of my room redo series for now. I hope to be back soon (at least before the baby is born) with pictures of our new family room/playroom, Chaos' big boy room, and Wild One's nursery. Thanks for looking!

Our "Room Redo"

You may have noticed that I haven't posted very many craft/activities that I've done with the kids lately. The truth is, we haven't done much this summer. Part of the reason is because we've been gone for most of it on vacations and such, but the other part is that our house in a state of upheaval right now.

Preparing the house for Wild One's arrival is no small feat. Our current playroom is an extra bedroom in our upstairs. We plan to finish our basement (a HUGE undertaking) into a new playroom, move Chaos into the old playroom, and redo the nursery for Wild One. Things are constantly being moved from place to place, and there are boxes in temporary storage all over the house. One such place is the craft closet in the playroom. It's nearly impossible to get to our supplies these days.

While I do hope that as we continue to make progress and get more and more into our old routine that we will have more crafts and activities to post about (I have some planned for this week), I thought I would share some of our kid room decor with you in the meantime.

Decorating kids' rooms has always been fun to me. They're the rooms in the house where you can get away with bright, bold colors and funky accents. I feel like a kid again when I'm planning out the rooms.

I will post highlights of the kid rooms we have done. Originally this was to be one giant post, but it was just too large. I will post the rooms one at a time, in the order we completed them. I hope you enjoy looking at them!

Pinky's Nursery:
Inspired by a photo I saw online, I knew I wanted pink and yellow stripes throughout Pinky's nursery. Though I had many naysayers when the project started (especially from my husband - here on in this series known as Mr. Handy), they agreed that the room turned out pretty well.


Her crib, placed kitty corner on the wall. The bedding is Amy Coe's Pink Sorbet Splash from Target. I believe it is discontinued now. The shag rug in front of the crib is a Mary Kate & Ashley rug from WalMart. It sheds terribly, but it's cute and cozy. It's in front of her bed in her big girl room now.


The glider area. Mr. Handy made the shelves on the wall above the chair. To the right, just out of view of this picture is Pinky's bookshelf with her name spelled out in wooden letters above it.


The dresser that doubles as the changing table with shadow boxes (featured in another post) above it.

This room took so much time and effort. Mr. Handy had to measure and tape off all of the stripes on the wall and hang the chair rail. Now, you don't know this from the dates on these pictures, but he did all of this when we first moved into our house - when I was 8 months pregnant with Pinky. He was 2 months into his chemo treatments for Hodgkins Lymphoma and still managed to get all of it finished in time (don't worry, I helped too).

That's it for this first post. I will post a new kids' room each week until I've finished them all. Thanks for looking!

New crib bedding

I wanted to share our plans for Wild One's nursery. I found a great bedding set at a garage sale for only $10. The set included the comforter, crib sheet, crib skirt, bumper and window valance. I had hoped it would work for a boy or a girl, but I think we will go with a different set if Wild One is a boy.

The patchwork comforter

Close up of the fabrics. The skirt and valance are done in the green print while the sheet is the butterfly print. The bumper pad is patchwork like the comforter.

For a boy, we really like this bedding set, though I'm not 100% sure it's "the one."

Whichever bedding set we choose we will paint the walls cream on top and green on the bottom with a white stripe dividing the two colors. I can't wait to start work on it! I already bought supplies to redo the shadow boxes in the room too. I already found a great green and cream paper and brad set.

I will post pics of the nursery (and the new playroom and Chaos' new room) as we make progress!

Baby Shadow Boxes

When Pinky was born, I wanted to make something special for her nursery. I found some cute white shadowbox frames on clearance at Michaels, and set right to work on 3 of them.

They looked adorable hanging above her dresser. When she made the move from the nursery to her big girl room, I took out the contents and put them in her baby scrapbook (right along with the pages I scrapped about her nursery).

I knew that I wanted to make a new set of shadowboxes for Chaos as well, and I think his may have turned out even better.

Here are the pictures of both kids' shadowboxes. I made Chaos' shadowboxes for free since I already had the supplies on hand. Pinky's were made for the cost of the shadowboxes (I think they were less than 5 dollars each).


Pinky's shadowboxes. The first has her footprints, bassinet card, and newspaper announcement. The second has our hospital bracelet and her photo birth announcement. The last has the knit hat she wore in the hospital, the measuring tape used to measure her, and her first professional picture.


Chaos' shadowboxes. The first has the newspaper announcement, his stat card from the hospital and his footprints. The second has his photo birth announcement and his hospital bracelet (I didn't notice until just now that the bracelet had fallen in the frame, it belongs at the top and has since been fixed). The third shadowbox has his hospital hat and his first professional picture.