Happy Birthday Week: Daddy's Labor of Love

From the moment we found out that we were having a baby boy, Carl started planning the nursery. It truly was his labor of love.

He started with a blank canvas; a spare bedroom with carpet, white walls, standard lighting and ceiling fan. To even get to scratch, he ripped up the carpet, the base boards and the ceiling fan. Then he put down hard wood floors, hand scraped them (yes, you read that right) and stained them to match the downstairs floors. Then he put up white bead board around the whole room. Painting was next; he painted the stripes in the room by hand and they could not have beeen more perfect. Lighting followed, and proved to be a bit more labor intensive then originally planned. He hung a chandelier in the middle of the room and sconces on the wall where the crib was going to go. He had to drop and rewire the electricity in the room to get these both to work on independent dimmers. Pretty cool and very useful!

When the backdrop was done, it was on to furniture and bedding. I stayed out of the nursery (fumes, saw dust, etc.) up until this point. We made a 1st time parent mistake (although I think it was a pretty fun mistake) and spent WAY too much on bedding. We got it from "The Magic Moon" in Plano and had it custom made with monogramming and all! (Note: the bumper stayed on the bed all of 1 night, the crib sheet was uncomfortable, so that came off pretty quick and the skirt went into storage at about 5 months). We also bought extra material of all the different fabrics in the room and then Nana's labor of love started. She made us a blanket that has seen a lot of late nights. She also made the window valance which completed the room.

The furniture came from "Baby World" in Dallas. We searched high and low and went to every store imaginable but we kept coming back to this one set that only Baby World had. So we knew it was the one. The 2 recliners came from there as well. We decided on 2, thinking that there would be several times that we would both be up there at night and need to lay down. Uh... NO.... but it is still nice to have extra seating.

I am not sure why Carl and I started calling John our little "monkey", but that was his name from the beginning (and still is), so we decided to go with a monkey theme in the room for all the accessories.

See pictures below, although the pictures do not do it justice; it is an amazing room. It is incredibly peaceful and functional; what more could you ask for.