Connor's Nursery

So. Connor's seven months old now, and I'm finally getting around to posting photos of his nursery. I have a really good excuse for my tardiness. Connor was born three weeks early, so I didn't have time to finish it before he was born! 

Just kidding. I was sort of expecting him to come early, but I still didn't finish it on time. The real reason is that I committed to doing too many sewing projects for his room and I'm not actually a very good sewer.

Actually, that's not quite true either. I had all but one of the projects finished before he was born.

The real reason is this cloud and star mobile.

I saw one I wanted on Etsy and thought to myself, "This is $68... but I want three of them and I really wish the stars were a little puffy and came in coordinating colors. Paying over $200 is insane when I could just make it myself!"But then I spent nine months of my life making them (which I just realized means I was making the mobile for longer than I was "making" Connor), and in hindsight, I probably should've just (a) paid the $200, because it's probably worth way more than that, or (b, the more likely option) accepted the fact that I shouldn't embark on a sewing journey toward something that someone else is selling for $200.

Anyway, mobile done and $200 saved (except not, because I never would've spent that in the first place) and many minutes lost to sewing little stars, and now I can finally call the nursery "finished" (although no room is ever really finished in our house) and show off some photos!

Welcome to Connor's nursery!

The paint color is Valspar's "Distant Valley." I had it picked out before we knew that Connor was a boy. If he'd been a girl, I would've added purple and white accents, but since he's a little boy I went with navy, yellow, and white. I love how calming and cheerful it feels!

This dresser used to be in our guest room. Jeff painted it white, and I put new knobs on it. I bought this changing pad and sewed a yellow cover. The drawers hold blankets, burp cloths, all the clothes that currently fit Connor, and extra wipes/diapers.

The navy basket holds diapers, diaper rash cream, and hand sanitizer, and the little white box is a wipes dispenser that we LOVE. The prints are from Katie Daisy (navy mats from Hobby Lobby), and the growth chart is also from Hobby Lobby (a gift from my brother-in-law and sister-in-law).

I sewed the curtains with pom pom trim from Etsy seller ichimylove. They're pretty much purely decorative and don't actually block much light, and I thought we might have to add blackout shades at some point, but so far Connor has been sleeping just fine even when it's not perfectly dark in his room. 

Jeff installed crown molding in the room, and I think it makes such a huge difference! We had already installed some in our master bedroom, so doing this smaller room with lower ceilings seemed pretty simple, comparatively. We kind of want to go crazy putting crown molding in the rest of the house now!

I saw this crib on a blog years ago, and I've loved it ever since. I wasn't one of those people who had a whole nursery planned out before ever becoming pregnant, but I did definitely have that crib picked out! I love it. Sometimes I notice that other people we know have the same crib, and I always feel like we're kindred spirits or something. Crib twins! Haha.

I made the crib skirt with fabric from Hobby Lobby (it's pleated, which makes it the most complicated thing I've ever sewed... my sewing skills are very limited), and simple yellow sheets finished it off!

We don't actually use the Sleep Sheep for white noise anymore (its battery ran out and Connor did just fine without it, so we just stopped using it), but it looks cute so I'm leaving it there. I swapped its ribbon out with some navy ribbon.

The elephant hamper was a gift from my sisters. It's the perfect size and I just think that little elephant looks so cute!

Here's the mobile again. Despite my frustrations with it, it ended up being just what I pictured in my head. We screwed it into a stud in the ceiling behind the crib (we don't want any falling stars hitting Connor in the middle of the night), and this is how it looks from Connor's viewpoint:

This is the nursing/reading corner. The side table was also from our guest room and re-painted by Jeff. The rocking chair was the only piece of furniture we actually purchased for the room (from Hayneedle). Jeff was on a business trip when it arrived, so I assembled it by myself while hugely pregnant and got all weepy because I was putting together The Chair in Which I'd Rock My Baby. Hormones are crazy things, y'all.

The elephant bank was a sweet gift from my grandparents, and the perfect little lamp came from HomeGoods (I added the pom pom trim).

Shelves! They're from Hobby Lobby (and they taught us that our wall is definitely not flat in that spot... it was a fun time hanging those shelves). The bottom shelf holds photos and gifts from Connor's baptism (and an aqua hourglass that used to be in our guest room).

The top shelf holds some wooden animals that Jeff bought on a business trip to Africa while I was pregnant and the signature canvas from Connor's baby shower. The "You are Loved" cross and the "Be Brave, Strong and Courageous" canvas are from Hobby Lobby.

That trio of storage boxes was in my bedroom in middle school/high school, and then they lived in my craft room closet for a long time before I pulled them out to use in Connor's nursery. I bought them with my own money from TJ Maxx in sixth grade. Who knew I'd one day be using them for my son! The "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" print is a freebie from here.

I love this wall. On the left is a "C is for Connor" print (a freebie from here that's customizable for any name and colors!). The middle one is a Lindsay Letters print from Hobby Lobby, and on the right is a ceramic cross with his name on it from one of my favorite ever Etsy sellers, SashleeCeramics.

Let's see... because this post isn't long enough already, let's talk about the closet too. My initial plan was to buy a bunch of baby hangers (because CUTE) and some of those little dividers labelled with baby sizes (because PINTEREST). But Connor has a nice, big dresser with lots of drawers to hold clothes, so I really just needed a place to store the things that don't fit yet. The solution: a couple of sweater organizers from the clearance shelf at Bed Bath & Beyond + chalkboard tags. I can re-label the tags when I reorganize his clothes as he grows, and I can cram way more into these things than I could fit on a bunch of hangers.

How about some before-and-afters? It's hard for me to believe this is the same room!

So that's the nursery! I think it's the happiest place in our house, and I had a lot of fun putting it together! Oh, and Connor seems to like it too. :)

New Light Fixtures!

When we bought our house, we really liked most things about it, but it's impossible to find "the perfect house," so there are a few things we don't love. For example, I really wish we had a second oven, and we'd love to have a fireplace.

The biggest issue though, by far, was the light fixtures. Excluding the ceiling fans and the dining room chandelier, we hated every single light fixture. Luckily, light fixtures can be easily changed!

We replaced the light in the piano room (our formal living room) with a black chandelier right after we moved in. Soon after that, we upgraded the lights in the three upstairs bedrooms by replacing them with ceiling fans and a sparkly chandelier in the craft room. But then we started focusing on other things, so for a couple years now we've been living with lights we strongly dislike in all of the bathrooms, the entryway, all of our hallways, and the exterior of the house. I recently started to focus on the horrible lighting again though, and one-by-one we've been ticking through the lengthy list of lights to replace!

We took one big trip to Home Depot and Lowe's and came home with lights for the upstairs bathrooms, the downstairs half bathroom, and the front exterior of the house.

First up, the half bathroom! Before...

These bulbs are so bright and they're HOT.

So, so ugly.

And after!

We have two exterior lights on the front of the house, and they were both these puny little tiny black lantern things:

They actually weren't that bad, but they were so small and the scale seemed off, and we really wanted to upgrade to something that we could program to turn on at night or when it senses motion. So we switched them out for these:

I love the seeded glass!

The new lights are bigger and prettier, and they automatically turn on when the sun goes down (and turn off when the sun comes up!). They also automatically get brighter when they sense motion. We love them!

While we were messing around with all the lights outside, we figured we'd switch out our doorbell as well! Our old doorbell was pretty ugly...

Ick.

But now we have a pretty oil rubbed bronze one!

Such a quick and cheap fix... why didn't we do this three years ago?!

The upstairs bathrooms had similar lights to the downstairs half bath, just bigger (and worse).

But now they have pretty little lights with actual shades!

We still want to get new lights for our entryway, our master bathroom, and the backyard patio, but we're making progress! If anyone wants a bunch of used, ugly light fixtures, let me know. ;)

DIY Lace Heart Garland

Today I'm sharing the easiest Valentine's Day craft you'll ever find. This is DIY for lazy people, y'all. Or busy people who feel like they don't have time for Valentine's Day decor. Or people who think they lack any sort of crafting ability. It's almost not worth a blog post, but I think it turned out cute, so here goes...

Lace heart garland!!

Here are your supplies... twine and two sizes of lace paper hearts.

Basically, just string the hearts onto the twine and that's it!

Easiest. Decoration. Ever. :)

Happy Valentine's Day!

Connor's Newborn Photos

Our wedding photographer, Kelli Nicole, has transitioned into doing mostly newborn photography, and she's absolutely fabulous (seriously... just click over to her blog and ooh and ahh at the adorable babies), but oh boy y'all... newborn photography is expensive. Since we only really needed a few decent shots for his birth announcement and a few for us to have, we decided to try to do DIY newborn photos of Connor rather than paying for a pro photographer to do them. So it was up to me and my (greatly improved but still not anything close to professional-level) photography skills with our DSLR camera.

Kelli has a super-helpful tutorial on newborn photography on her blog, so I used a lot of her advice, picked a day when Connor seemed to be in a good mood, stuck my baby in our laundry basket (seriously!) with some blankets, and spent an hour or so snapping photos of him! Here are a few of my favorites:

I'm really pleased with how they turned out. They're obviously not the sort of quality you'd get from an actual pro photographer (although I do think these are way better than the images we bought from the pro photographer at the hospital), but they were good enough for our purposes, and now we'll always be able to look back and remember what he looked like as an adorable little newborn! Plus, the DSLR camera has basically paid for itself now with the money we saved on professional newborn photos, right? :)