Every fall I send a shoebox full of art supplies, a bible, and other essential items such as toothbrushes and socks to Operation Christmas Child which distributes thousands of gift-packed shoeboxes to kids all over the world.  If you do this too, consider this your reminder to stock up now! All the great basics are cheap for back-to-school so you can give more creativity bang for your buck!

So, at last, here are the before and after pictures of the baby’s room. I’m learning that having an infant means even a blog post takes weeks months to complete. She’s 8 weeks old today!

Removing the multiple layers of wallpaper wasn’t as much of a bear as we were expecting. We used Chomp, a hand scorer, putty knives and elbow grease.  Eventually we’ll refinish the floor but for now its fine.  And now the afters:

From the start we knew we wanted an understated space, focusing on black, white and red, since they’re colors infants can see first, and the rest of the house is based on a black/white/gray palette, so it it just made sense. Our infant doesn’t yet spend much time in her own room, so she may not appreciate the aesthetic. More on what she does like to look at in our house later.

We knew we were having a girl but an overload of pink and frills is just not us. When she’s old enough to have some say about her space, we’ll bring in the pink and frills if she wants them. The above collages are by me, frames from Ikea. Its hard to see them in this photo, but the white hanging drops are made out of a gauzy fabric, also by me, cast neat shadows on the wall.  The crib is a previously used Jenny Lind that was given to us, and the gorgeous red knit blanket is the handiwork of my aunt.

An antique Hoosier Cabinet serves as the changing table, diaper, bedsheet and some clothing storage.  Our house is 101 years old, so I love that this piece is about as old as that. Formerly it stored the cereal and snacks in my parents’ kitchen growing up. The rocker is Ikea’s Poang.  The curtains are also plain muslin panels that we already had. I dyed them gray and hemmed them so she won’t try to use them to pull herself up. I don’t love them, but they were basically free.

A few winters ago I took a photo of some tiny red moss growing at my father-in-law’s house.  We had it printed poster-size through Shutterfly put it in another Ikea frame.

Considering I work at The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art and Bob and I both studied illustration in college, books are important in our house. Once we got the large furniture in the room though, there wasn’t room for a bookcase or even shelves. After some idea hunting on the web,  Bob made these picture rails so that a selection of picture books will be within her reach. Overall, we’re happy with the space and with how much we spent on it.

…so will our first child! Bob and I are expecting a girl, who we affectionately call Bunny for now, though I think I will always call her that.  She’s due toward the end of March, which is really not that far away.  Thus, the reason for my even more infrequent posting. Early in my pregnancy, I hoped I’d be posting every other day about all the fab things I’d be making for our kid, her room, etc. Truth is, getting your life ready for a kid is busy enough. Regular blogging about the process  and crafting my socks off was just not going to happen. That’s okay. This print and pillow cover by Jaqueline Bos (via Aesthetic Outburst) would be perfect in Bunny’s room.

So here’s the collection. The colors are a little softer than I was expecting, but not bad for the first go-around. I think the palette is more spring than summer, so that gives me time to make something seasonally appropriate with them. I’ll probably stack and re-stack them in different combinations before I ever put a pair of scissors to them.

Thanks to  my friend KeriAnne, her set of Pro MX reactive dyes, and a little advice from The Lazy Dyer I’m hooked on hand-dying fabric.  These are from my first-ever dye party. Potato chips, good music, good company and amazing colors.  Sweet!

I’ll show the results sometime soon.

A classic navy linen clutch that goes with everything. Learn more about it in my shop