Little Girl Room

Room is ready ... just missing the little girl! No rush on that, by the way.

Ellen moved into this room last summer, but it was really just her furniture. We never did anything to make it hers, knowing that she would be moving rooms and hoping that we would have another occupant for this one.

A before picture:

And, of course, lots of projects. I already had black-out roller shades in the windows (critical), but wanted a nicer looking window treatment. There are tons of tutorials on Pinterest and the like for roman shades, but they are all inside mount and I needed outside mount. With some assistance from Martha Stewart and some old instructions my mom had, I made these "easy" balloon shades. Turns out, not so easy. I fully intended to do a detailed write up on these, which I will be skipping.

Basically there was fabric purchasing, liner purchasing, ring tape purchasing, more measuring than I care to admit, mediocre sewing and then quite a bit of cursing.

 I also made the crib skirt, inspired by this one at Urban Grace Interiors. The way the crib is set up in the room, you can really only see the skirt on the front side, so I didn't want to invest the money or effort in making a full crib skirt (and heaven forbid I use the perfectly good one we had). I got a nice full size flat sheet at Tuesday Morning. It is pre-hemmed and just the right width for a ruffled panel.

I cut another rectangle from the sheet and hemmed all the edges. This top portion is the exact length of the crib / springs. Then I pinned the full width of the sheet to the skinny rectangle as evenly as possible, building in the pleats / ruffles, and sewed it all together.

The bottom of the crib skirt is the top portion of the sheet that would show if you made a bed with it. 

I embellished it with grosgrain ribbon in a coral color that I just glued on with fabric glue. In retrospect I wish I would have sewed it, but I was ALL DONE with the sewing. I also sewed some ribbon ties on the top to attach it to the crib springs.

Raise the crib springs to the highest position and just tie the panel on. Easy!

 

And then realize that when the spring is raised to the highest position that you can see through the end of the crib, necessitating another small panel. I just hemmed this one and added ties - it won't be visible for long. 

 The baby furniture only fits in this room in one way and I really needed a side table next to the rocker, but it had to be a very specific size. Ideally, it would also have some storage capability, but as I searched (and searched and searched) online, I just couldn't find anything that I thought was worth the money.

Enter ... the Mission Road Antique Mall! My mom helped me scout out this table and the floral lamp you'll see in a minute. Very affordable, maybe $100 for both. This table is nothing fine, but the perfect size and has some interesting details. It got a good coat (several, actually) of spray paint (lemongrass color by Rustoleum), then a couple of coats of polyurethane and I had a new piece of glass cut for the top at Westport Mirror and Glass.

 Ta-da!
The glider is exactly what it was in Ellen's nursery. The rug is Dash and Albert from the great August sale at Stuff in Brookside. 

 

 These little prints are cards from Rifle Paper Co. that I've had for quite awhile, just waiting for the right spot. "Custom framed" (as in, I did it myself) with little frames from Target.

 Orange basket peeking through is another strapping basket from Land of Nod, yet again corralling stuffed animals. You can't really see the crib sheet, but it's a brown diamond pattern that I got on super sale from the Dwell Studio outlet sale (follow them on Twitter!).

 And these acrylic shelves are really great for book storage, as there was no room for a bookcase in here. I got the idea from the Effortless Style Blog and I even emailed her and she said they had held up really well in her son's nursery. Very easy to install and certainly sturdy enough to hold kid books.

I'm really happy with how it came together, and really happy it's DONE. Pretty soon you'll be able to find me and Baby Sister here most hours of the day. And night. Stop by for a visit!