Decorated!

This was the fun part of doing the nursery. Decorating! We've been collecting a few items to put up in Elsa's room for awhile, and the day finally came when it could all come together. I went on a rampage yesterday while Jeff was teaching, putting everything in frames, measuring, leveling, cutting out templates from tissue paper to mock arrange on the wall, putting Command strips on everything and then hanging them according to the instructions and then seeing them crash to the floor which could have been the baby's head and then ripping them all off and going with tried and true nails. It was an ordeal. But we really like how it turned out!

Here's her little gallery above the dresser. We have original paintings and drawings from Nathan, John, Brendan, Seth and Jeff, a few prints, and the crocheted name piece I got from etsy.

We found some of Jeff's Winnie the Pooh drawings from when he worked at Disney. I love them, and are some of the few baby-appropriate pieces he has done. Carrothead also went up. Jeff is making prints of this one and will be selling them in his website store once that's up and running. I love the pop of hot pink and black from the flamingos piece that Brendan did. We've had this one for awhile and it's lived in several places in our houses, but I like it here best.

Nathan's piece. How I love it, let me count the ways... The Rifle Paper Co. print went up too, the colors are perfect and the gold frame really classes it up the way only a gold frame can.

Karen and Kim put out these little blank cards at the baby shower for people to write us awesome things for the baby. We got a few awesome ones with drawings from our artist friends, and I think this one from Seth and Mandy was my favorite. Seth drew an amazing Siamese cat with a rattle and says "We hope the baby doesn't barf as much as the cat". ME TOO.

This cat print came from our family friends, the Folkmans, who we stayed with in Grimstad, Norway. I love it. So haunting but sweet, just like black cats.

My Aminal came!! Aminals crack me up. They're made from kids drawings of animals, and are all organic and made fairly etc etc which is icing on the cake. I really wanted Ceeta but Liun was available on Amazon and I had a gift card so we went with him. He's still pretty great. I made the pink floral pillow and the Ugly Doll was a gift from Jeff years ago.

This is one of my favorite photographs ever. I saw it randomly in a Real Simple magazine one day, clipped it, and Jan blew it up and printed it out for me. I love her little dress and the boy's outfit too, and it's just such a great moment of kids acting weird snapshot in time. I wish I knew who took it and what the story was.

Tory the Giraffe finally came in the mail! Plaid Pigeon got blown up all over the blogs so they were swamped with orders and it took five weeks to arrive, but at least it came before the baby!

I was debating for awhile what we should do above the crib until I saw these Sharon Montrose animal photographs. They are so beautiful, but so very expensive. I knew I couldn't afford them, and wanted at least one big one or several small ones, so I pouted for a few days and then realized I had something similar already in the house. I had this book called Animal House which is full of amazing animals photographed against really rad wallpapers, by photographer Catherine Ledner. I pulled out 10 of them, trimmed them to 8x10, and they're perfect!

These are the ones the Command strips failed so miserably at. I would like to avoid them peeling off the wall and dinging the baby in her soft skull so that plan was quickly abandoned.

They look neat though, right? Perfect and colorful, fun, and again with those classy gold frames. A note on the frames, btw: They are from Frames, USA which I highly recommend. I bought 17 frames from them, two in custom sizes (for the crocheted Elsa and the kids dancing photograph), they are solid wood and made in the USA, and were delivered within 2.5 weeks of ordering for a grand total of $140 with shipping. SO much cheaper than anywhere else, and I looked. They are the gold economy frames (which I found from the Lay Baby Lay blog) and I'm really pleased with them. You kind of have to buy in bulk there ($50 minimum order, $15 surcharge if you spend under $100) but in a case like this, it was perfect.

My favorites are between the sloth and the llamas.

And the last piece of decoration, a wood tray to encase the changing pad, because I'm crazy obsessive and it was bothering me how the changing pad cover kind of pulled up at the bottom and looked messy. I just bought a few pieces of precut wood at Home Depot, measured and had Jeff cut them to size, nailed them, and painted the simple box a light pink. It looks finished now and only cost about $20 in materials. They actually sell these things, and have the nerve to charge between $100-300 for them!

And in case you're wondering... we're framing Jeff's bird tree print to go above the changing table, rounding out the artwork in the baby's room. I can't wait to see it up. That and the womb chair really are the last things we need. Well, the baby too I guess.