Project Nursery: Final Reveal

Over the past few months I've been able to make a lot of great changes to the nursery to get it ready for our baby girl's arrival. In the original post, I shared that I wanted to make the following changes to take the room from baby boy to baby girl. The items with a star are things I wanted to DIY, and I'm happy to say I accomplished it.

• Storage bins

• Crib skirt* (tutorial here)

• Curtain*

• Laundry hamper* (I didn't share a tutorial, but click here for the one I used)

• Changing pad cover* (tutorial here)

• Mobile* (tutorial here)

• Crib sheets

• Artwork* (tutorials here and here)

As a reminder, here is what I started with.

Bright and light pink storage bins, a new laundry hamper liner, and new changing pad covers (I ended up making two) added some much needed girly color to the changing station.

I also re-covered the picture frame mat above to go from green to pink.

The crib got new sheets and an adjustable length crib skirt that will still work as we adjust the height of the mattress. The window got a new super-easy curtain, and the corner got a fun new mobile.

The part of the room near the door is home to the hair bow and headband holder, and the baby book I made adds another splash of pink.

Overall I'm really happy with how the room came out, especially since I didn't replace any furniture and we didn't repaint the walls.

As they say, all that's missing is the baby. We're ready and waiting!

Project Nursery: Hairbow and Headband Holder

With a little girl on the way, I know I will want a place to keep hair bows and headbands. I've seen several ideas, but really liked the concept (though not so much the style) of this one.

While I don't love the style of the ribbon or the baby pink color, I like the idea of using ribbon for clippy hair bows, and the hooks along the bottom for headbands.

First, I picked up supplies:

- 12" x 18" frame (must be wooden, not plastic)

- pink spray paint

- coordinating 1" wide ribbon

- cup hooks

The first step was to measure out where the hooks should go along the bottom. I started an inch in from either side, then put a pencil mark every 1.5 inches. You could put them an inch apart if you want more hooks - I just preferred the way this spacing looked.

Then I screwed a hook into the center of each line.

Next, remove the glass and spray paint the entire frame and hooks. After that it's time to attach the ribbon. The original tutorial called for using a staple gun, but I was afraid it would splinter my frame, so instead I used thumb tacks, but it didn't work so well.

Can you tell how loose the ribbon is? Especially the dark one on the far right. Not ideal. Also, I didn't like that I could see the little hooks on the inside of the frame. It just looked too unfinished.

So I removed the ribbon, and grabbed the cardboard that came with the frame. I decided to cover it with white fabric, and then attach the ribbons on the back side of the cardboard with hot glue.

It looked MUCH better. I like that it looks more finished, and the ribbon is also more taut. I loaded up the hooks with headbands...

and we're done!

I'm working on some clippy bows, which will find a happy home on the ribbon. Here's one so far. Cute, but lonely all by itself. :-)

I'm excited to have a system in place for all of the cute headbands and bows in MZ #2s future!

$2 Freezer Organization

I suppose you can say I've been doing a bit of nesting lately. When I had MZ #1, I didn't even know what freezer cooking was. Somehow we managed to eat without too much trouble. But this time around, I know someone else will have to be providing meals for him for a few days, and with two kids, I imagine dinner time isn't going to get any easier! As I began working on meals for the freezer, I realized how disorganized it is.

I decided I could easily inject some organization for myself and also for the family members who will be staying at my house to help out with our little man. The awesomely talented Jen at iHeart Organizing provided my inspiration with her freezer organization system.

She is lucky enough to have a Container Store in her town where she picked up the clear storage bins. Unfortunately, the closest one to us is about two hours away :-( I decided to search for other options. As I was measuring the space, I happened to glance upon the little "clean" and "dirty" baskets I use for bibs, wash cloths, dish towels and rags.

I had recently decided that they didn't work so well because of their curved shape - I can't really fold anything. On a whim I tried putting them in the freezer to see if they would fit. Lo and behold, they did. I decided I would go out looking for baskets to use as new laundry baskets. Dollar Tree came to the rescue with these fun green baskets.

I simply moved the tags and the towels over, and they were good to go!

Then it was time to put the white baskets to use in the freezer. I decided the two items that needed the most help were bags of veggies, and packaged foods like chicken nuggets and frozen tortellini. They went into the baskets and I added labels.

I also designated new homes on the door for breakfast and breads, ice packs, and sauces. This makes breakfast items easy to grab, and it's a much better use of space in the door with stacked sauces (I always freeze them flat so they take up less space).

Overall the freezer is much more organized. I'd ultimately like to get the bins from Container Store or something similar - the white ones aren't quite as big as I'd like, and I do have a few things hidden behind them in the back.

But for a total of $2 for the new little green baskets, this is a definite step in the right direction!

Project Nursery: DIY Baby Book

OK, so a baby book isn't exactly a nursery decor project, but it's still baby-related! My Mom found a great baby book when MZ #1 was born, but it came from a specialty shop in Texas. I looked around a bit on Etsy, but couldn't find exactly what I wanted, and they were quite pricey. After a little searching on Pinterest, Young House Love came to the rescue. I read their blog every day, but had forgotten about the baby book they made.

Cute, right? They have a free printable available with all of the pages they used, so all I had to do was get a scrapbook album and some cute paper. I headed to Michael's where I got an 8" x 8" scrapbook for just $9 with a 40% off coupon.

I raided my scrapbook paper stash for 10 sets of coordinating paper.

I did look briefly at the 8" x 8" packs of paper they sell at Michael's, but didn't really like any of them, so I decided I would just cut down the 12" x 12" sheets I already had. After cutting the scrapbook paper to 8" x 8" squares, I cut the printable sheets in half, and simply used a glue stick to attach them. Then they slide right in!

I played around with the Word document to customize the different milestones just a bit, and I left some blank pages for pictures, hospital bracelets, and foot prints.

I'm excited about how it turned out, and even more excited to be able to start filling it in soon!

Project Nursery: DIY Mobile

I made the mobile for the nursery before MZ #1 came along, so this time would be no different. For his, I basically made little stuffed felt elephants and hung them from a small grapevine wreath. Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures, so you'll have to use your imagination. I knew I wanted something simpler for MZ#2 - I didn't want to dedicate the time to cutting out elephants, stuffing them, sewing them shut, adding eyes and tails, etc. So where else to look besides the fabulous Pinterest for inspiration? I really liked this one (found here)

and this one (found here)

I like the striped look of the first one, but decided to go with the second one as my model. First I gathered my materials:

- 6" embroidery hoop

- strips of fabric 1" wide

- 8 sheets of coordinating scrapbook paper

- 3/8" ribbon

- glue stick

- sewing machine

- hot glue gun

- 2" circle hole punch

I didn't like the natural wood look of the embroidery hoop, so I decided to cover it with some scrap fabric from another nursery project. I hot glued it on the inside, and then just began wrapping, slightly overlapping as I went.

I glued at the end of each piece and the start of the next, being sure to always glue on the inside.

I originally had the strips about 2" wide, but found that they didn't lay very well. The 1" width worked better. I think I used 3 or 4 strips that were 23" long, but depending on the size of your embroidery hoop, this will vary.

Next it was time to cut out bunches of circles. I love my circle hole punch, and you definitely need one for this project. I cut some out and determined that I wanted 10 strands to hang. I planned to alternate rows of 6 and 7, so that meant I needed a total of 65 circles.

However, I also wanted the pattern to show on both sides, so I actually needed 130, which I used a glue stick to put into pairs. I think I used 8 sheets of 12x12" scrapbook paper (sorry, I waited too long to write this!), and I was able to get about 20 circles from each sheet.

Then I started stitching them together into chains! I laid them out as I went to be sure I didn't put two of the same pattern right next to each other, but I'd actually suggest doing this before you even begin.

Using a sewing machine on paper is really easy. If you don't have a machine, the original tutorial called for using double-stick tape to attach the two matching circles on either side of fishing line, so that would certainly work too.

I was sure to leave extra thread at the top of each chain to use for attaching it to the hoop, which was the next step. I simply tied the chains around the hoop at equal intervals and cut off the extra thread. I did a triple knot in each to be sure they were secure and did a "tug test" at the end too". If you realize at the end that two of them are too close to each other, you can scoot them around a little bit.

Then I took 3/8" pink satin ribbon to use for hanging. I hot glued two pieces of ribbon "across" the top that were 11.5" each. Then I took a third piece and looped it through the two, up to the ceiling, where I put it on the hook.

And that was that!  I never hang anything above the crib, but the mobile injected some much-needed pink to a corner of the room.

Overall I spent just a few dollars, since all I had to buy was the embroidery hoop and a few sheets of scrapbook paper. I already had some paper on hand, the ribbon, the fabric, and all the supplies to use. Even if you don't have any of the materials, this could still be done very inexpensively, and it's an easy way to add some fun color to a room!

Project Nursery: Cover a Picture Mat

One of the items on my project nursery list was artwork. I'm doing a few different things, but one of them was a super simple update to something I already had in the room.

I love this sheep picture. With a light green mat, it was the perfect fit in the nursery for Micah. But with the changes I'm making to pink instead of green, I needed to change the mat color, too.

I didn't want to do anything permanent like painting it, and I had heard of covering picture mats with fabric. Following this tutorial, I updated the picture in about 10 minutes.

I found this fabric in my stash that has a small subtle pattern on it, so I felt like it wouldn't compete with the artwork.

I cut it down to size, about 1" around all sides.

Then I folded the edges in nice and tight and used masking tape to keep them in place.

Next I cut out some of the bulk of the fabric in the center.

Then I made diagonal cuts into each corner, just about 1/8" from the actual corner.

Then I folded these over tightly and used more masking tape to keep them in place.

I taped the picture back onto the mat, popped it into the frame, and hung up my re-designed picture.

I think the pink actually nicely picks up the pink in the sheeps' ears, and certainly goes better with the rest of the room!