Baby Room Progress Part 2

Last week, I had some time off and I felt as though I had an extra spurt of energy and productivity! So, taking full advantage of this, I did some work on the baby's room. I already wrote a post about some of the work we had done, like painting and putting some furniture in, but we've now also got some other details added to the room. We're operating on a very tight budget, so nearly everything we have added over the past few days have been things we already had. I just poked around in some of our storage, or in some other rooms for items that might work in the nursery.

Anyway, here is the nursery before again:

And here is the nursery (still in progress) as it looks today:

Here is a picture of the room where we last left off...

So you can see we have added a lot! The first thing we did after this point was put up the shelves above the dresser. We have had these shelves for several years now, they were purchased at Ikea for our first apartment and we had them above the couch in the little cottage. 

Right now the shelves are displaying a little assortment of some baby things and art that we have collected, but it will probably still change a bit. I just love the little owl! My sister hand felted this little guy for me a while ago and I thought he would look perfectly at home in here.

The next detail we added was a cute little hook in the opposite corner of the room. This was something that we didn't already have, but we picked up at Ikea when we bought the dresser. It was just too cute and I thought it may come in handy for various purposes.

Another thing we put up was the little branch with birds hanging in the corner near the crib. I got this idea and free pattern from here. It was so easy to make and I absolutely love how it has turned out. I have seen some  people add leaves, so I decided to sew and add some to mine as well. 

To hang the branch, I simply put two little hooks in the ceiling and used some white thread to hang the branch from the hooks. I think this could be my favourite project in the room so far!

Next, we added a little art. One of the very first things we bought after we found out I was pregnant was an adorable set of alphabet cards. We were browsing through Chapters and I came across them and thought they were too cute to pass up. Originally, I had plans to hang all of them in rows from twine with some clothespins, but after trying that, I realized that it would take up too much room on the wall (each card is 8x10).We're still planning to hang up more, but for now, we decided to frame a couple. The frames I already had. I painted them blue a little while ago and I think the colour looks so cute next to the green walls. However, I didn't have any mattes for the frames, so I improvised and used some cute fabric scraps to go behind the cards.

I love how it turned out! The second frame is currently sitting on top of the dresser, but it won't stay there. I'm just not sure where I will hang it yet. Oh, and in case your wondering, the little pennant banner is one that I made a little while ago and thought it would look sweet in the room. At the other end of the nursery, I added some embroidery hoops with some cute fabrics, both of which I already had!

Finally, we added a rug to the room as a well as a little table lamp. Both of these items came from the computer/spare room in our house. I actually had a rug that I wasn't using that worked better for the spare room, so it worked out perfectly.

I am really happy with the look of the natural jute rug in the space and it feels like a good size! I think I might have a bit of fun with the lampshade, but I'm not sure what I'll do yet. Maybe add some cute trim? 

Anyway, that pretty much covers everything that we have done so far in the room! I still need to hem the curtains (the heater is just below the window, so they will have to be above that) and I'm thinking about dressing them up a bit too, so they aren't plain white- still not sure about that though. The crib bedding is still to be made, but you can see bits and pieces of the fabric we will be using because I used some of the samples to sew a few of the birds on the branch. We will also be adding a chair to the room and I will be organizing the closet. I'm probably forgetting a few things, but that's what I can think of for now. Oh, and I definitely will still be adding some art and some other little details to the room. Before I go, here is one last look at the room...

I'm really enjoying putting all these things together and making the room ready for our little bean! Anyone have some good ideas for organization for the closet? I'm going to start some brainstorming soon....

Pants!

I've been having the urge to sew lately, so when I stumbled across this free pattern for some baby pants, I knew I would have to give it a try! I made a quick trip to the fabric store, picked out some cute fabrics and set to work. The pants are super easy to sew and before long I had a couple of pairs of pants sewn for our little one.

The first pair I sewed are for 0-3 months, though I think I made the elastic a little tight, so I will have to adjust that. I just love the pea pod material and I had some leftover that I was able to use for a little project in the baby's room.

The second pair I made are for 6-12 months, but I can adjust the length by rolling down the little cuffs (the cuffs are rolled up in this picture). I also added a little pocket on the bum- so cute! Our little one should be able to wear these in the fall, so I used the fun autumn leaves pattern for this pair.

I think I'm going to have to make some more of these pants! I'm thinking I'll make some in a solid colour and maybe some corduroy for something a bit dressier.

Enjoy your weekend! 

Baby Room Progress

It's hard to believe that we are already halfway through August! I feel as though time has been flying by so fast lately. I am also just about halfway through my pregnancy. In less than a week I will be 20 weeks and that seems so crazy! We have started to work on the baby's room and I am excited to show you some of our progress! There is still work to do, but I'm glad we have made a decent start.

So, here is the room before...

We were totally blessed and given a crib and the curtains we already had, so we could check those off of our list right away. Our next step was to paint the room. Since we aren't finding out if we are having a boy or a girl we needed to choose a neutral colour and we decided on green. After comparing some paint swatches we picked out a yellow-green called 'Cabbage Patch' by CIL. However, we had it colour matched and mixed into the Behr paint and primer in one. Here is Patrick at work painting the room... (there was one dark chocolate brown wall, but since we used the paint and primer in one, it only took two coats to cover).

And here is the room after two coats of paint...

I am really happy with how the colour turned out. I feel like it isn't too bright, but it is still such a happy shade of green! The next thing we added to the room was a dresser/change table. My parents very kindly decided that they would like to buy us a change table. So, we started to do some research and after looking at several different change tables, we decided we would like to go with a dresser from Ikea. The one we picked is the 3-drawer Hemnes and it looks like this...

The dresser is big enough that it will fit a change pad mattress on top and we will also have a decent amount of storage in the drawers (there is also a large closet in the room). Plus, we can use the dresser as our child grows up. Another big plus of this dresser is that it was very reasonably priced at $169. A lot of the change tables we looked at were upwards of $250. Anyway, so we picked up the Hemnes on our way home from a visit to Kelowna a couple of weeks ago. Here is a picture of Pat setting it up...

And here is the dresser all set up. You can also see that we changed the layout of the room. We liked the way this looked a bit better.

I think that is where I will leave things today! We have actually done some more work to the room, but this post would definitely be way too long if I included them all- I've had a productive last couple of days! Let's hope it keeps up!