Our New Little Man's Home

This may be the last post I have time to write for a while, because tomorrow's the big day! I'm almost a week past due at this point, despite the fact that my doctor told me almost a month ago we might be welcoming Tiny Timmons any day. He's displayed surprising tenacity for so small a fellow, and since we can't wait any longer to meet him, I'm going in tomorrow morning to be induced. (Kind thoughts and prayers big and small are welcomed.)

But I wanted to show you, before it's thrown into disarray by the stresses of caring for a newborn, the (mostly) finished nursery. We don't have all of the bedding ready for the crib yet, so you won't get to see photos of that, unfortunately, but you will get to see everything else we've done, including the mobile I made with an old lampshade frame and hand-punched paper bits. I love the way everything turned out -- I wanted this room to feel bright and cheery but not too babyish, which I think we accomplished by staying away from a "theme," on the whole, and just using splashes of color against primarily white walls. I hope it will be a happy place for our little fellow to become acquainted with the world, and I hope you enjoy the tour as well!

Here you'll see the vintage turquoise dresser which was the jumping-off place for choosing colors, and the adorable "chalkboard" banner made by my lovely friend Evan.

The room has a small 3x4 foot inset alcove, in which we placed an old dresser for additional storage, and rigged up an easy-reach "closet" for hanging other clothes. This area can be screened off from the rest of the room with handmade floor-length curtains on rollers.

Here's the rocker and ottoman in which we'll probably spend a lot of time, an old telephone table that was in terrible shape initially, but was stripped and painted to match the vintage dresser, and a cubby storage unit which holds Tiny's books and toys (in the baskets). I recovered the lampshades in our yellow zig-zag accent fabric.

And on the right is the mobile I made by undressing an unused lampshade, covering it with fabric strips in an aqua dot pattern, then rigging up a fishing-line structure from which to hang colorful paper punches in different shapes and sizes. I used the beautiful piece on the left (created by Dottie Angel) as inspiration, but wanted my paper bits to hang more or less horizontally, so that the baby can see the shapes and colors when looking up at it from his crib below. It took A LOT of hours from start to finish, but I'm really pleased with the way it turned out.

I hope at some point in the not too distant future to be back with pictures of our newly-arrived addition, who is, as yet, still unnamed. He can't wait to meet you all!