The Nursery

Lela's room is finally revealed! The room was NOT at all ready by Lela's birth, though to be fair, she came a bit earlier than we expected. At least I had started thinking about the room by July.

Here's what it looked like a week after she was born:
And these pictures were taken after we had an emergency trip to Buy Buy Baby to buy necessities like diapers and after my mother started unpacking all of the stuff and washing clothes, sheets, etc. It was pretty sparse before. But at least we had painted and hung the blinds.

Here's what the room looks like now:
If you look close, you'll see how we managed to decorate on a major budget. As in, we bought a crib and a chair and very little else.

This dresser/changing table has been re-purposed so many times I've lost count. I bought it for about $50 from a sorority sister when I got my first college apartment. It is ugly. It's original form was a faux bamboo, lacquered monstrosity that would be at home in an old lady's Florida condo. We removed the attached vertical mirror (trimmed in more faux bamboo), sanded and painted the dresser "heirloom white" and presto! It looks kind of cute! I picked up that mirror for $27 and spray painted the trim to match the dresser. The white basket holding the bouquet of burp clothes is actually a gift basket from a co-worker's baby present (thanks Lauren & Jerry).

For a total of about $2, I stole and spruced up Babak's old laundry basket with a pink ribbon.

There are a lot of handmade touches. My mother made the bed skirt several months ago using fabric I selected. At Thanksgiving, she gave Lela an early Christmas gift: this beautiful quilt! And pillow! Both are made with the same fabric as the bed skirt and complementary fabrics by the same designer. My mom is a quilting maniac and I'm so happy Lela has this wonderful keepsake quilt made with love by Gran. Shohreh made the little blue pillow in the background. Our mothers are so crafty, it puts me to shame.

The art montage above the crib is also homemade. My extremely talented sister-in-law Laura painted the butterflies. We found the dressed-up squirrel print at the DC craft fair in October and paid around $5 for it. Lastly, I made the hippo out of wrapping paper and a stencil I made from a picture on the internet. I call Lela my Hungry Hungry Hippo, so we had to have Hippo art.

Besides hippo silhouettes, my crafting is otherwise confined to lamp covering. I covered the lamp by the rocking chair in a fun pink floral fabric.


And added pink pom poms to the lamp by the bed. What little girl's room is complete without pom poms?!

We (I) had a great time pulling this room together. Little girl stuff is so fun!