Tour of Daniel's Nursery - Rocking Chairs

You saw the rocking chair I showed in Tuesday's Tour of Daniel's Nursery. Here's the scoop!



The little chair on the left is my little rocking chair from when I was a little girl.  It's still a work in progress as it was recently repaired and still needs to be repainted.



The big chair on the right is a chair that has spent the last decade or so on a porch at my parents'.  My dad painted it fresh for us.  My mom recovered the pad using the dinosaur print and a print from my stash.

I had planned on spending a lot of time nursing and rocking Daniel in this chair.  Turns out we nurse in the living room most of the time and he prefers to be bounced on the exercise ball, so it doesn't get as much use as I had thought.  



Before we figured out he liked to be other places better, I had decided we would need several things right next to me.  We searched and searched for a lamp for his room.  Finally, we were on a stroll at Target and spotted this gem.  It's shade was the perfect combination of colors for the room.  How awesome is the pterodactyl pull chain?  We had to have it.

To have a lamp, one must have a place to put it.  We bought this little bookshelf to house some books for the little guy, hold the lamp, and have a spot for a glass of water for mama.  Remember the rug?  Well, we ended up with a few spare tiles and I decided this one would be used for a coaster.

Tour of Daniel's Nursery - Rug

Jason and I struggled and struggled with our search for a good rug for in Daniel's room.  We didn't want to spend a lot of money on something we knew wouldn't last for very long.  We shopped high and low for something that would be the right size for the room, would be a good place to play with our baby, and wouldn't cost a fortune.

We found a white shag rug that was the right size for the room at Home Depot.  We bought it and brought it home.  Jason carried our rolled up rug into the room and it hit me.  This was the worst rug we could have possibly purchased.  All the furniture in the nursery was white.  What were we thinking dragging home more white?  We needed some color!

I tried to come up with a way to either paint or dye the rug.  Then it hit me...



Why don't we use carpet tiles?  Jason works for an architect, so we were lucky enough to have the hook-ups.  We picked out a few colors that we thought would work nicely with the dinosaur fabric we had for the curtains and crib sheet.



I used duct tape on the backside to attach the tiles to each other.  I used 2 strips of masking tape along each edge on the back because we were worried the duct tape might damage our floor.  We weren't worried about the tape in middle of the rug because we put a non-skid pad down underneath so the tape wasn't going to come into contact with the floor.



It took about an hour for super pregnant me to tape it all together because I had to stop periodically to catch my breath.  We're really happy with the way it turned out.  We love the price of it (free!) and love the smiles we get from this little guy when he plays on it.

Tour of Daniel's Room - Curtains

My mom and I made these curtains for the little guy's room.  We used the same fabric that the crib sheet and skirt are made from.



All we did was match up the fabric so we had 2 fabric widths per curtain.  I used a glue stick to line up the dinosaurs perfectly.  Then we made some piping out of the bright orange and sewed it to the lime green.  We lined it with a light grey marbled print I had laying around in my stash.  Made a tube for the rod to go through and presto!  We had cute little curtains to match the crib set.

Tour of Daniel's Nursery - Changing Table

In the Tour of Daniel's Nursery I posted on Tuesday, I showed you the changing table we use.  Here are the details:


These two little dressers have been around.  I believe they were initially purchased from the goodwill to be used in my room when I was a baby.  Back then they were white with red and blue pinstripes outlining the drawers.  The knobs were those big wooden ones and I'm not sure what color they were painted.

I believe they were used for both my sister Katie and my nurseries.

I remember them being white at one point with peach colored knobs and used as end tables next to a futon in the basement.

Katie painted them a chocolate brown with turquoise knobs and used them in her apartment in college.  Possibly in one of her dorm rooms, too, but I'm not sure about that.

After she was done with them, they retired to the basement again.  My dad (also known as the grand master to some) sanded them up for me.  I painted them white and replaced the knobs.  Kind of fun how they have been used over and over again don't ya think?



The changing pad I found at a garage sale over the summer for a few bucks.  It's nothing fancy, but it does the job.

I made the cover that is on it currently from a bath towel I found at Target for under $4.  It was a piece of cake!  I just measured my pad, cut the corners off to the right size, serged the corner seams together, serged the edges, and added elastic.  It took me maybe 20-30 minutes from start to finish.  So much better than spending $15 or so on a pre-made one.

The drawers are filled with our diapering supplies.  We are cloth diaperers at home, so several of the drawers are filled with prefolds.  Another with covers.  We haven't gotten brave enough to do cloth outside of the home.  Mostly, I'm worried my diaper bag isn't big enough to hold the cloth diapers since they are significantly larger than the disposable ones.  



I also made some of these little guys.  They're made using make it and love it's tutorial.  They are easy to make, not so easy to use.  My little guy wiggles out of them so fast I've found it's better for me to risk it and use both hands to get a diaper in place than to try to diaper with one hand and hold the little shields in place with the other.  Jason uses them, though, and doesn't seem to have the same problems I do, so maybe it's just me.

That's how we diaper around this house.  Baby seems happy to be on the changing table, so we must be doing something right. :)

Tour of Daniel's Nursery - Crib Set

I've mentioned once or twice that Jason and I don't like to spend a lot of money, right?  Well, this crib and the small bookshelf are the only new pieces of furniture we put into this room.



I made the crib skirt from my own head.  It's made from a lime green striped fabric.  The orange accent is kind of splotchy.  I just made a strip of bias tape (minus the bias, so that'd be straight grain tape, perhaps?) to accent the skirt.



I made the crib sheet you see Daniel lounging on here.  I used this awesome tutorial to make it.  I'd use the same tutorial again to make others, but next time I'll do something different with the elastic.  It doesn't really pull the sheet tight along the bottom like I think it should.  That's an easy modification though.  :)

The sheet took less than an hour to make.

It's made from a really cute dinosaur fabric I found at JoAnn.

Tour of Daniel's Nursery

Jason and I don't love spending a lot of money on things we can make for a lot cheaper, buy used, or reuse something we already have. Daniel's nursery was no exception.  We were able to reuse several pieces of furniture that were hanging out not being used at my parents' house.



These two little dressers were the perfect size to put next to each other and top with a changing pad.



The rocking chair was one of several my parents had to choose from.



Jason made this print in a college printmaking class.  We thought it was little guy appropriate.



Mama and gramma made curtains.



Crib set made by mama.



Rug made by mama.



Happy baby also made by mama.

Check back over the next several days to see more details about some of the things shown today.