$11 Big Wooden Whale: The LAST (sniff) (at least for now) Nursery Post

I think I first got the idea for making a big wooden whale while I was poking around looking at ocean animal stuff on Etsy and saw a few from various sellers on there. For prices like $80-90 + shipping (and shipping is a lot on a big wooden whale). I was pretty sure that if Dave and I combined … Continue reading

Abe’s Ocean Nursery: A Blue, Orange, and Gray, Not Overwhelmingly Sea Creature-y Nursery Reveal

This nursery has a theme. I know that I’m supposed to be all, “no way. I’M a grown-up, and I’m going to spend plenty of time in this room, too, and the sooner my kid learns that the world doesn’t owe him a whimsical bedroom, the better off he’ll be.” But I am a grown-up who appreciates themes. Seriously, I’m … Continue reading

At Last! Board and Batten, or: Where the Caulk Was: Sort of a Tutorial

I will get to that part–where the mysteriously missing caulk was hiding–later on. I had this idea in my head that putting up board and batten would take up most of a leisurely Saturday, and then we’d be all finished and move on to other exciting nursery tasks like making a whale. I guess all the tutorials I read entitled … Continue reading

More Not Sewing: No-sew Crib Skirt Edition

I tried to finish the board and batten today so that I could tell you all about it–I really did. But I couldn’t find the caulk. Dave and I both keep hoping the other person will finish the board and batten every time we leave the house. Anyway, given this tragic lack of caulk, I made a crib skirt instead. We … Continue reading

Add Legs to a Dresser: Free Dresser Turned…Not as Free (but Better)

I do not, I’m sorry to say, have any whales or squids to offer you today. But I do have just one more article of furniture to share, and despite its lack of aquatic life, I think the transformation is pretty dramatic. We already had one dresser for the nursery, but, while it is very pretty, we thought a little … Continue reading

Ringing in the New Year With a Fancy Fabric-backed Bookcase for the Nursery

(I had sort of hoped to either have a baby before 2012 ended, for tax deduction purposes, or to have the first baby in my city/state/country of 2013, in hopes of getting free stuff. But, as you can see, I am still here. Historically, my babies show up remarkably close to their due dates). So check out how I’m trying … Continue reading

DIY Steps for Amateurs–by Dave!

Dave takes a lot longer than I do to finish a blog post, but he’s also a lot more thorough. These steps were finished awhile ago. And still standing! Who knows if my mobile will have long since fallen on the baby two months from now…. –Gretchen This is a momentous occasion … my very first blog entry!  Gretchen has … Continue reading

Back to work! No-sew curtains for the nursery

No more of this taking time off for Christmas nonsense; I am 3 weeks and 1 day away from my due date. Predictably, doing the board and batten right before Christmas did not actually happen. But we made up for it a bit by spending the evening before Christmas Eve making our very first no-sew (or, umm, any kind of) … Continue reading

DIY Circle Mobile: a tutorial with many pictures

Warning! This post will contain approximately 4 million pictures because 1. tutorial! and 2. mobiles are fun to take pictures of. If one is in search of a mobile for one’s baby’s nursery, one can do a quick Etsy search and find many beautiful and pricy mobiles to choose from. Quite a few of them are made out of colorful … Continue reading

Kvar-FAIL: the story of a room divider

Quick review: when we first realized we were going to need a nursery (and that we didn’t want to give up the guest room for it, at least not right away), we planned to hire someone to put up a wall with french doors, dividing our ginormous (29 by 13) master bedroom into two sections. Then this started to seem….expensive. … Continue reading