Daniel's Nursery

Sooooo, a post I've been meaning to put together for, well, let's just say awhile (given that Daniel was born over 10 months ago and his room was ready a couple of weeks before that) is about Daniel's nursery. The only thing knitted about it is his Solar System mobile, but thanks to my mom and others, we did end up with quite a few other handmade crafty items. So I thought I'd give you a little tour.

Let's start with the neat side...



The geniuses who built our place made the fantastic choice of creating a closet that is too narrow to fit a standard-sized coat hanger. (And it's not like it was built before there were modern coat hangers. It was built in 2003.) So with anything useful hanging in the closet, the doors would get pushed outward and be hard to open and close, something that has irritated both Neill and me since we moved in. So our first order of business was taking off those doors and replacing them with curtains. The fabric is Zoom! from Spoonflower and, oh, do I love it. It has rockets, stars, a pretty blue, and lime green (love). It's good for a baby (I think) without being too baby-baby. Now get this. After putting in the order for 7 yards, I got an email from Spoonflower saying that after about 6, the printer would go on the fritz and stop printing the blue color. Would it be ok if they printed it in two pieces and send me all the extra? Um, ok!! So we ended up with several extra yards, which was later put to good use.

A couple other items of note -- the space collage hanging by the door from my uber-talented art-teacher friend, the "May the Force Be With You" pillow from my in-laws (so awesome), and my very first quilt hanging on the back of the glider, which I have an in-progress blog post on dating back to February of last year.

Now, I know we're not supposed to use bumpers anymore, but that Zoom! fabric was just too tempting. Many thanks to my mom for designing and whipping it up in about a day.

A note on the artwork behind the crib: instead of purchasing prints, I ordered a lightly used copy of Eric Carle's Papa, Please Get the Moon for Me (sort of in keeping with the space theme), ripped out the pages, and framed them with materials from Cheap Pete's in San Francisco. I think the whole set of 6 cost about $30 when all was said and done. This was a very easy DIY!

Ok, back to the bumper. The green lining is the fabric from the curtains...

...which are AMAZEBALLS and which were also courtesy my mom.


Now on to the messy side...

This room was our office before Big D came along, and that prior incarnation has unfortunately lingered for awhile in the form of the filing drawers, printer, boxes of toner, tax records (so appropriate for a nursery), etc. etc. Our ugly storage thingy in the corner has also lingered, but Neill and my mom had the great idea to put a "cozy" on it. This was made by a woman in my home town who sews custom quilts, bedding, and baby things. She incorporated the Eric Carle artwork and matched the blue of the Zoom! fabric perfectly. I feel bad that this is Daniel's view from his crib...

...but he doesn't seem to mind too much!