El Casa de Baby Alston

I know you have all been eagerly awaiting this!

First - disclaimers:

The room is not "done". I took these pictures while the room is still in progress. That means that this post will take some of your imagination :)

And, the pictures were taken in sections. There is a lot going on so I will explain as we go. Enjoy!

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Putting together the room for our soon-to-be son or daughter has been a lot of fun. Since we are currently living with Jon's parents it was a challenging collaboration of putting in things I always wanted to have in our baby's room, as well as our own personalities, while including all of the grandkids (since we won't be living here forever) and I also wanted it to be something that Jon's parents would love and be able to easily change, should they ever want to.

The best parts though were tapping into one aspect of my personality and not knowing the gender of our baby. I LOVE color and the combination of chocolate brown, avocado green and deep orange has always held a special place in my heart. AND I never ever ever wanted to do pastel colors for our children's room. I wanted something fun and bright that they can grow into. Pink, blue and baby circus animals are not my thing.

So here we go! When you walk into the room, the wall directly ahead is the blue wall. This wall has a big window and a twin size bed that my niece sleeps in when she spends the night at Grandma and Grandpa's. The quilt on this bed is where I pulled the color inspiration from the room. As you can see, it is Margo's new favorite place to chillax :) This room used to be just plain white. Jon and I picked all the colors and Jon painted all of the walls. (His parents helped with the edging and ceiling work). Jon made sure that I got a chance to come in and quickly paint a little bit of each wall so that I could say I participated :) He is so sweet.

To the right of the bed, there is a glider chair (thank you Mike and Amanda!) as well as a lamp for nighttime reading and nursing. On the wall above the chair is this super adorable BABY picture frame made by one of my SA coworkers, Kacy :) The colors are PERFECT! The picture in the top is our announcement of our pregnancy, the second picture has since been added which is one of my maternity pictures, the third picture will be the baby, and the fourth picture will be all of us as a family with Margo. There is a basket of blankets on the floor between the glider chair and the bed for easy cuddle access during rocking time, and the afghan there on the arm of the glider is from my cousin, Megan :) We were so spoiled with homemade blankets and snuggly-cuddly soft things!

When you walk into the room, the wall to the left is avocado green. I mod-podged the light switch plate with fabric that shows up in other parts of the room. The picture to the right here shows 4x4 canvas blocks painted in the colors of the room - each one with the initial of the grandkids on it.

These letters are hanging up above the window on the blue wall. The yellow block is blank for when we name our baby.

(The other grandkid's names are Kassidy, Audrey, Isaak and AnnMarie)

Here is a closer shot of our neice's bed quilt with her posse of animals. Behind the head of her bed you can see the orange wall.

Aw, Margo pup!!

When you walk into the room, the wall to the right is a golden yellow. The baby dresser and closet are on this wall. Above the baby dresser is this picture of Christ giving light to a little child and I hung this leafy wall sconce next to it. To keep with the leafy/earthy feel of the room (you will see more coming up).

Here is a picture of the baby dresser on the yellow wall (it was my baby dresser as a kid and I knew that I always wanted to keep it and have it in my baby's room.) It has moved with us to Utah and back. I love that now it really is officially part of our baby's room! And the picture to the right shows baby Alston's already good sized collection of toys and plushies from various friends and family members. So spoiled!

When you walk in, the wall to the left is the green wall and the crib is on this wall. I'm a little biased, but this crib is my FAVORITE part of the room. I made the bumpers for the crib with the help of my bestie, Breanna. (yes - I know all of the regulations on bumpers) We used breathable mesh bumpers that go all the way down to the bottom of the mattress. They are not pillowlike and they are more firm than regular old-fashioned bumpers. These bumpers are super secure and tied so tightly, they are not going anywhere.

PLUS being able to pick my own fabric made them fantastically customized :) The outer bumper fabric is green with white circles/polkadots and the inside bumper fabric is golden yellow with branches and leaves all over it.

This was all inspired and pulled together by the AMAZING quilt that Jen's mom made for Baby Alston for my Fair Oaks baby shower. I mean, just look at how cute that owl is sitting on the branch! It came together better than I ever could have pictured it.

Also, to the right here you will see another shot of the blue wall. The space to the left of the window has a double shelf (which was a re-purposed find by Kacy and Alex!) and a framed quote by Ghandi (made by Jenae Payne!) which reads: "Be truthful, gentle and fearless." The items on the shelf include plush owls, made by Raya Durling in our old ward as one of her YW projects, and a large mason jar with a needle-point top that says "Welcome to our World" which was also in my room when I was a baby. It is something I always held onto and wanted to include for our children.

One of the things I am most proud of in the room are these hanging fabric bookshelves I made:

They are hanging on the orange wall as you can see. The fabric print is green on green leafy trees (keeping with the earthy/leafy/owly theme here). I found the tutorial online here. This is probably one of the easiest projects I have ever done.

Here to the left you can see the double curtain rod brackets holding the wooden dowels. The fabric creates a "hammock" for the books to sit inside. The picture to the right shows how the hanging shelves look from the doorway when you are looking to your left over the top of the crib:

I just love how these turned out! The idea is that the children can more easily see the covers of their favorite books instead of seeing the books on a traditional bookshelf which only shows the spines.

I also made curtains for the closet on the yellow wall with this same green tree fabric. They are not hanging up yet, which is why there aren't any pictures :) I promise you don't want to see the mess inside the open closet! I will get pictures once the curtains are up.

Above the hanging fabric bookshelves are Alston family pictures with everyone from Steve and Chris, to Steve and Jackee with their kids, Mike and Amanda with AnnMarie, Dave and Beth and me and Jon. They were just hung up today, so I don't have pictures of that part yet.

Last, but certainly not least, is the collage wall! This was the brain-child of Amanda Gray. Instead of making ONE thing for the baby's room, she went for an entire wall. This is directly above the crib. Unfortunately this picture doesn't show the wall totally finished. There is a big missing part above the SHH sign, but I really wanted to get this blog up. We actually finished the rest today, putting black and white pictures in the little blue, yellow and orange frames, and the part missing above the SHH sign is a blue doggy needlepoint that was hanging in my room when I was a baby. It really brings it all together. I LOVE LOVE LOVE IT! And of course, Coldplay is my favorite band. Had to have a song quote from them in the room...

So, that may be the end of the room tour for now, but that's not the end of my recent sewing projects! I also made this baby blanket for a dear friend of mine. She hasn't received it yet, so I won't tell who it is for. But I was SO excited about the flannel prints! The orangey/red print was so fun and the backside is chocolate brown with polkadots. It is the first baby blanket I have made all on my own.

Jon helped me decide on the stitching for the top-stitch. My machine can do some fun stuff :) Hopefully you can see it ok in these pictures below!