Nearly all the furnishings in the room were either mine and Edward's from our childhood, bought from thrift stores or Craigslist, or were hand-me-downs from friends. (Only our lovely bassinet/cradle and our Pack-n-Play are brand new.)
I made bumpers for the used crib using left-over fabric from an abandoned project I started for my and Dave's first apartment:
The curtains were made by my grandma for the guestroom in their Alabama house. They were badly mildewed so I washed them with Oxyclean, which definitely worked. The white backing was stained by the sun so I had to completely dissect the panels, bleach the crap out of the white material, and then put it all back again. I also made them longer.We bought the rocking chair back in the fall from a consignment store while shopping for replacement furniture for my parents' house (Dave, my dad, and I madly cleaned out and updated my parents' house while my mom was in the hospital). I always knew this chair would be perfect for nursing a baby...I just had no idea it would be so soon! Maybe this purchase jinxed us into getting pregnant...
The rooms in our house are so small that we've taken all the closet doors off and put up a curtain instead. Dave made shelves in each closet (which I realize you can't see), while still having a rod to hang clothes on:
This is my old dresser from high school:
The little matching bookcases were a free addition to our couch purchase from Craigslist a few years ago. They were originally blue and without decorative trim. Dave added the trim and I painted them before they were in our dining room for about a year. Now, instead of holding wine and cookbooks, they hold all the books from my childhood (and all the new ones we were happy to receive from our baby showers) and lots of stuffed toys:
This toy carriage was my mom's Christmas gift when she was about 6 years old. That same year her twin brother received a cork gun. They apparently got into a fight on Christmas day and he poked his gun through the shade out of frustration. The duct tape my grandfather covered the hole with is still there!
I bought these items from the local SPCA thrift store for close to nothing. All totaled, I spent $22 on this stuff--amazing, considering it is all in like-new condition. I get a kick seeing the price of this stuff when I'm stores. That swing alone retails at like $150...insane!
This giant "E" was originally a rectangular quilt of Beatrix Potter story pictures that my grandma made when I was born. Sometime in the last 27 years it got a huge black ink stain on it, which was permanent and really ugly. So I refashioned it into an E, which almost totally removed the stain. I'd never worked with quilt binding before, so it was fun to see how that stuff works (I'd recommend starting with a project that doesn't have so many inside and outside corners, first...and not doing any hand sewing when your fingers are numb from being so swollen!):
We hung pictures of both me and Dave as kids in the room. The ugly 1980s frames are pictures of me that I found while clearing out my grandparents' house. I wanted something more updated but couldn't find small collage frames like this anywhere. So these ghetto ones'll have to do:
My mom's friend's husband made this cute moon quilt for us and the cow was made by my Aunt Virginia for my second Christmas. Now if only I had a dish and a spoon to hang on the wall...
This is an old baby scale (dates from at least the 1940s) that was given to me by a family friend when I helped her clean out her parents' house in San Francisco. Back then people had scales in their homes to track the babies' weight on a daily basis. This one was stuck in the damp basement for decades and is in poor condition, but still works. Since I don't have the expertise to clean it up properly in time for this baby (and because it looks neat and antiqued) I just washed it off and made a padded cover for the tray that holds the baby. I chose fabric from my stash that looks sorta old fashioned:
While the nursery is a bit old fashioned and a little girly, it is perfect for me. I really don't like nurseries that are overly feminine or super boyish--those ones that are painted and decorated entirely in pink or blue. Be original! And don't get me started on indoctrinating your children with gender stereotypes with their surroundings, toys, and clothing at such a young age...Anyway, I figure I might as well decorate it in a way that calms me since little Eddie won't even have an opinion about his surroundings until he's about 2. I'm the one who will have to look it for hours on end of rocking him to sleep, nursing, etc.
1 comment:
very cool and I love his bumper!
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