Nursery Mania!

About two weeks ago Tina came down for 5 days to help Mike and I with the nursery.  I use the term "help" loosely, because she basically did most of it and I helped her.  And we definitely needed her here to give us the push to get the whole project underway.  I really had NO idea that it would be as much work as it was, take as long as it did, or be as fun as it was!

Here are some "before" pictures:

The room was a second guest room before we converted it.  Luckily we already liked the wall color, so no painting for us!

The first thing we did was get rid of all of the pictures on the wall since all of the ones that ended up in this room were the ones that I didn't really like, or didn't know what to do with.  None of them matched and it made the room look so haphazard.

The little frog picture on the left is the only one that made the cut to stay in the nursery, because Mike made it when he was younger and it kind of matched our nursery decor.

We obviously got rid of the crappy old double bed that was in there and we gave it to the salvation army.  They came and picked it up, which was nice.  The other furniture stayed in the room and we managed to finally find a crib to semi-match the existing furniture.  The furniture was my Dad's, and then it was mine growing up, and now it will be Addy's too!  There are some scratches and chips, but all in all it's in pretty good shape for how old it is.

Haha, I just realized that I already posted these before pics a few posts back, but oh well, here they are again so you can compare it to the finished nursery.

Now for some nursery in progress pics:

Here is what the room looked like after Baby Shower Number One.  I really wish I would've taken a picture of it after Baby Shower Number Two, because at that point you literally couldn't even walk in there.  It was a giant mess and I had to keep the door closed to keep Mike from going crazy over it!

I was proud of myself at this point because I at least cleaned up the floor.  Tina hasn't arrived yet to really get the decorating in full swing though.  The cradle in the center of the picture is one that my uncle made for me when I was born.... and he was only in high school at the time!  Talk about talent!

Here is a pic of all of the blankets that we received for Adilyn.  It's a combination of my old baby blankets, Mike's old baby blankets, and even my grandfather's old baby blanket!  The pink one in the middle is the only new one of the bunch, and Mike's Dad's dental hygienist made that one for us.  So we are loaded with blankets and we needed to find a spot for them all.

And the work has begun!  Note that Mike is starting on those floating shelves and everyone is still all smiles at this point...

Tina is folding tiny socks and loving it!

 This pic is taken after four consecutive hours of Mike working on the shelves, a lot of cursing, a lot of unnecessarily large holes in the wall, a spilled Bloody Mary on the white carpet.....we decided it was time to enlist help.  But there was no helping this project.  We ended up decided that these shelves were not safe as "floating shelves"....

So Tina and I took it upon ourselves to head out to Home Depot the next day and get some brackets to help stabilize the shelves.  Mike was sooooo over this project so we hung them ourselves.  (Note the sexy belly creeping out). 

Then Tina painted all of the little screws that went into the brackets since they were black and the brackets were white.  We also attempted to find the right paint in the garage to touch up the wall where one of the shelves ultimately fell during the fiasco the night before.  No such luck though.  Wouldn't you know it.  We have paint for every other room in the house, but not this room.  Oh well.

The finished product!  So they are no longer "floating", and I still wouldn't hang on them or anything, but they are up, they are fairly stable, and they look awesome!  We are using the shelves for memorabilia, both new and old, and I think that all of the hard work and frustration was worth it because they are my favorite part of the room!

Remember this sign from the baby shower?  I loved it and really wanted to display it, so although Tina and Mike didn't necessarily agree with me, they got up there and hung it.  And now we all agree that it looks great!

Then we decided to practice swaddling a baby since Mike had never done that before.  Daisy wasn't too interested.

Haha we did it!

And now for the completed nursery..... drum roll please!!!!

Tada!  (The ottoman is where we ended up storing all of those baby blankets.)

All of her precious little clothes!

Daisy and I are so happy with the results!

So there you have it.  All of the sweat and tears (literally) were totally worth it!  I love our nursery and every time I walk by that room I just have to smile thinking of how much fun I had with my husband, my sister, and my dog getting it ready for Adilyn's arrival.  We can't wait to meet you Baby Girl!