The Nursery Lamp

So, I said in my last post that I was going to get this lamp to transform for the nursery. I like to change my mind, though, so I ended up bringing home this white lovely on Friday.

Last night, I got the urge and just ran with it. I scuff sanded the ceramic base so the spray paint would stick better and taped off the cord and light socket.

In between coats of paint, I ironed my fabric and cut it in the shape of my shade. At that point, you're supposed to use spray adhesive to stick the fabric to the shade, but I was feeling lazy and didn't want to deal with the mess that spray adhesive creates. So, I used elmer's stick glue, the kind that goes on purple and dries clear. I figured, if it didn't work, no harm done and I'd get out my spray adhesive. It worked! Saved me a bunch of time, too! Then, I cut the top and bottom edges of the fabric to about a 1/2 inch from the shade and hot glued the edges down.

Here it is in all it's girly glory with our green nursery walls behind it:


And lit...
The base is actually a bright yellow (the same color as the yellow flower in the fabric), but the green wall makes it look greenish. I love how it turned out! I can hardly wait to get our white dresser/buffet moved into the nursery so the lamp has a place to sit up off the floor.

I've also worked on a couple of other things, too, but nothing else is finished. I did make some tissue paper balls, but they turned out a bit small, so I'm going to do them over again. Tonight is my husband's weekly Cub Scout meeting, so I'm hoping to get a bunch done while he's gone.

Two Week Deadline and Progress Report

I decided towards the beginning of this month, that I have until April 9th to get my nursery done. I work better with deadlines and I figure the last month of my pregnancy should be organizing and getting clothes - not decor - for my little girl. I realized yesterday that I only have 2 weeks until my deadline! Here's my ambitious to-do list and what I've gotten done so far:

I wanted the nursery painted a different color and painted the whole thing on Wednesday. I was over the lemon sherbet color it was (way too bright, I thought) and wanted something darker. My husband went for it because I already had the paint leftover from the kitchen. The green in my kitchen matches my green paisley nursery fabric (long story) and we over bought by almost 2 gallons when we were painting it.

Here's the before:

Here's the almost after:

We need to go over the edges one more time and my husband should be doing that today. (I'm done going up and down a step-ladder.) We're also going to be adding a window sill around the window and painting that out before putting anything back into the nursery. Hubby volunteered to do that too. We're hoping it gets done this weekend. Then we'll be installing the new white faux-wood blinds and hanging the nursery curtains back up.

I've been working on the pendant light and I'm getting faster. Still quite a ways to go though. Here's what it looked like as of last night:

This is 650 coffee filters. Any guesses as to how many it'll eventually need? I'm almost out of filters and will be picking up more later today. Hubby again volunteered to do the lighting aspect of this project, so that'll be done after I get all the furniture in the nursery and I know for sure where I want to hang it.

I'm also going to do some tissue paper balls (in black, yellow and dark pink) to hang from the ceiling in another part of the room. We just have to get a few more things done before I can make them.

Here's my fabric for my crib set. I'm not the fastest (or best) sewer, so I need to get started on this soon. I'm planning on making a bumper, crib skirt and 2 crib sheets from this fabric. I have all the supplies, I just need to DO it.


Here's my girly fabrics for the nursery. What looks like pink in the picture below is actually a dark coral color. LOVE it! Everything I make/do with these fabrics will eventually get moved to the "girls" room when #5 comes along. I'm going to be picking up this lamp today. It'll get painted yellow and the shade will be recovered in the floral print below. I got some chicken wire from a friend and I'm planning on making a hairbow organizer like this one with it and the large polka-dot print fabric below. I hope it turns out like in my head! I'll be making curtains for the girls room out of the floral print and the small green polka-dot fabric below. That's not by my deadline, just soon (I hope!).


I also still need to repaint the rocking chair and find a new cushion for it, along with a few other finishing touches. And we need to put everything in the nursery. Hopefully, it'll all get done by my deadline (or at least close to it).

The Buffet is DONE!

I finally put the finishing touches on my "ugly" buffet. Here it is all finished up and in my bedroom. It was actually moved up to our room during our great furniture move to get the boys in the same room. It's just been sitting in our room empty for the last couple of weeks waiting for me to put in drawer liners.

Here's my lovely drawers. After a lot of thought, I decided that I wasn't up for refinishing another dresser before this baby comes (I'm feeling my 7+ months pregnant). Since this dresser is the same white I'm painting everything else in the nursery (and it fits on the right wall), it's getting moved to the nursery. So, I used the same wrapping paper in the drawers as I did on the side table I finished last week.

And, just as a reminder, here's what this beauty looked like when I first brought her home:

She's come a long way and gone through many transformations (in my head, anyway) before becoming the perfect dresser for my nursery.
In case you're curious, I posted here, here, here and here the different stages I went through to arrive at the lovely piece of furniture above.

Nursery Side Table

I've been looking for a couple of months for a nice curvy little side table for the nursery. I wanted it to sit next to the rocking chair and have some storage for diapers and wipes. After searching Craigslist for something nice (and not finding "it"), I finally headed to Home Goods and found this little cutie. I was able to get an extra 10% off because of a few dings in the finish, so I was super excited about that.

The inserts in the cabinet door and the drawer front were a different shade of white than the rest of it and once I started painting everything else Heirloom White, I realized it was the wrong shade of white. So, I painted it out to match. I first primed the black/white parts and then sprayed it Heirloom White, but it needed a bit more.

I bought this green damask wrapping paper on clearance at Hobby Lobby last summer to use in my nursery, so I measured and cut it to fit the inset part of the cabinet and drawer. I used double stick tape to secure it on the corners and in the middle.

I also took all the hardware (originally antique brass colored) and spray painted it oil-rubbed bronze. This entire remake probably only took me 1 1/2 to 2 hours tops. It was great!

Before (I'd already taken all the hardware off)

After

All I have left to paint now is the rocking chair. I'm almost done with the furniture for the nursery. I can hardly wait to see everything come together!

Coffee Filter Pendant Light

A few months ago, I saw a really cool pendant light made from a paper lantern and coffee filters. I recently saw it again linked to on another blog and decided a smaller version would look great in the nursery. I bought this 8" paper lantern on Amazon.com and a bunch of "mini" coffee filters at the grocery store. About 4 hours of Pride and Prejudice and 250 coffee filters later, I'm about halfway done, I think. It's looking really cute. I'm just hoping there's enough room at the top to stick a light bulb when I'm done.

Nursery Bench

I bought this bench a year and a half ago while my husband was on a business trip. You can see that post here. It's the first piece of furniture I'd completely refinished.

I originally painted the bench an ivory color (I had an aversion to white at the time). However, once we moved it to our lemon yellow nursery, it looked awful. I've been planning on repainting it Heirloom White ever since. I finally did a couple of a days ago. It only took about an hour.

Before

After

I know, you can't really tell a difference in the photos, but it looks much better in the nursery now. I'm much happier with it and that's what matters.

Dinosaur curtains finished and hung and boys bedroom so far...

Last week, I finished up making my boys' new bedroom curtains. My husband and I didn't get around to hanging them until the day before our great furniture move last week. Both panels have 6 inches of stripes at the top and 12 inches of stripes at the bottom. I made the curtains floor to ceiling in length and clipped them to curtain rings. The top of the curtains wouldn't stay up straight so my husband folded the top over and we decided that looked really nice. Here they are hanging in my boys' bedroom along with my 5 yr old who thought I was taking pictures of him.

A few things I've learned with making various lined curtains for my house.

• If I don't plan on moving the curtains back and forth, I really like the hidden tabs like on my loft curtains.
• I prefer the grommits I put in my nursery curtains over the rings on these curtains. They slide easier on the cafe rod. So, for the rest of our bedroom curtains, I'll be adding grommits to the top.

On Tuesday last week, we had our home teachers* over to help my husband rearrange furniture. Between the 3 of them, they moved 14 pieces of furniture in an hour! Boy, were they fast! The biggest change was combining all 3 of our boys into the biggest bedroom upstairs. Here's what their bedroom looks like so far.

This is the view from the door, looking left. The closet is around the left side, but full of food storage so they don't use it.

This is looking straight in their room on the right side.

So far, it's a little crowded, but we've got some ideas to help with that. I haven't really started decorating yet. I've got plans for some fun dinosaur vinyl stickers on the wall, among other things.

Where things came from: The bunkbeds came from the older boys' bedroom down the hall. The toddler bed came out of the nursery. The tall dresser in the corner has been sitting in the garage since I finished it over a month ago and the double dresser came from the master bedroom. We put the white buffet (I'm almost done with it!) in our bedroom.

*Home teachers are congregational ministers assigned to meet the needs of church members in their own homes.