Decorating

After months of patiently and impatiently waiting, our crib arrived! Dave and his dad put it together last night.

It is gorgeous and fits perfectly in the room.

Dave made the bed, with the skirt and bumpers. Perfect!

And here’s Henry’s new stuffed lion, courtesy of Granma Sue.

Because I can’t stop obsessing, why should you?

We hung the curtains! Here is a bad panoramic of the room, sans crib.

Sorry for the scroll, but whatcha gonna do with a panoramic like this?

This was another good weekend for getting the nursery prepped! It looks like the crib won’t be here in time for the shower, which is disappointing, but that’s OK. The baby won’t need it when he comes home as he’ll be in the pack and play at first.

Our big project was adding more shelves to the closet in the nursery. We really needed a better way to use that space, so we added more ventilated shelving to the single full length shelf that already existed.

We also hung this fabulous mirror that my brother gave me when I was in college. It’s a gorgeous grain and color of wood, and I think it’ll match the crib really well.

Then we hung up the shelves that I painted last week. This picture doesn’t show everything, but you can see a few of the shelves. The glider, from Tyra, looks great after I steam-cleaned it last weekend, too. And the red shelves that make up the window seat are almost completely finished.

The changing table is all done, too, and I’m really happy with how it turned out.

I think things are really coming together! I also washed a bunch of laundry this weekend - baby clothes and burp cloths, etc. I had an entire laundry basket full of baby clothes courtesy of Jan, a friend at work. She gave them to me in little increments over time, so when I put them all together, I was stunned at how much there was! And there was another full laundry basket of baby clothes and blankets from our first shower. We have all these adorable baby clothes now, it’s crazy! Thank goodness we have someplace to put them all.

I’m nearly done painting everything for the nursery, but it seems like I’ve been doing that for some time now. I must finish this weekend!!

We got our first shower gift! How exciting! We asked for the Margo Pack N Play from Graco because it was well reviewed, affordable, and cute! It’s sage green with teal blue accents, and includes a bassinet as well as a changing station. We’re expecting this to be the baby’s temporary home between birth and whenever we put him in his crib.

I set it up all by myself and figured this would be the first in many experiences of “Insert Part A into Slot Z.” We’ve had it inspected by the cats and they seem to approve. I wonder just how much they’ll be in it once the baby arrives? They didn’t seem to want to stay there when we put them in it.

We also cleared out the room and tried to get a feel for how we’ll lay out the furnishings.

The shelves I painted will probably end up acting as a window seat to store books and toys.

We got our crib set! It’s gorgeous and includes a bumper, skirt, quilt and crib sheet. And look at these cool plant stands Dave found that match the pattern so perfectly!

we also got the crib mattress! When we bought the crib from ChildSpace, we got a credit towards the purchase of a mattress. We choose the highly rated Classica II foam mattress by Colgate. With our credit, we got a good deal on it.

Our crib will hopefully be in by February, but I’m still not getting my hopes up.

We got a changing table today for cheap off of Craig’s List.

It’s in really good condition but could use repainting, which means more fun for me. Interestingly enough, the people we bought it from are from Lakewood and Westlake (Ohio), which makes them practically neighbors to Dave’s family. In fact, the guy remembers Dave’s sister from grade school. Why is EVERYBODY from Cleveland?!

Last, but definitely not least, Tyra gave me her glider and ottoman as an early shower gift. It’s gorgeous and matches the room perfectly. I will have pictures to post soon.

All in all, things are coming along pretty well!

There was just a little more to do in the living room to be considered officially done. We needed pillows for the chairs, so I picked out some fabulous gold-colored fabric and had them made by Tracy. I also installed some hold-backs for the curtains. I think everything looks really nice! And now it’s officially done! Well, excepting the art for the wall…

Granma has graciously offered to get our crib for us, and we all went out on Black Friday to shop around. We thought we had found the one we wanted, but on a return visit this weekend, we found one we liked better.

And on Saturday we placed the order for our crib! Not sure when it will be here, they quoted 8-12 weeks to arrive. It’s by Baby’s Dream and it’s the stationary Infinity crib. We got it in the Chestnut color, shown below.

Andy put up his photos of the tile installation on his website.

Been meaning to post a picture of our new bookcase for a while now.

It’s enormous, and gorgeous, and flawed in subltle ways that only loving craftsmanship can manage. It’s amazingly heavy. It’s got almost an entire shelf dedicated to sci-fi paperback novels. I love it!

We had it handbuilt by a guy named Jon Shriver. I will give you his number if you want him to build a beautiful bookcase of your very own.

We put the final coat on today, then peeled off all the tape, touched up all the trouble spots, and cleaned up. It looks great!!