Day 3: Mirrors & Memories

The mirror hanging in our nursery is one of the sweetest touches in the room for me.  It serves as a constant reminder to stop and look at the precious face pressed against my shoulder.  During the day, Emmalyn has given some of her best smiles in that mirror, thrilled to see her own reflection or her daddy's silly faces.  But when I trudge up the steps to the sound of her cry, I don't always think of that smiling face.  Sometimes, it's hard to open that door.  And sometimes I'm still overcome by tiredness or distracted as I pick her up.  As soon as I pick her up and she wraps her little body into mine, I remember.  I look in the mirror and see her cuddled into me (something that happens so naturally, as though her little body was made for my arms), and I catch a snapshot of time.  I remember looking in the mirror like that when she was a newborn while she cried for no discernible reason.  I remember looking in that mirror when Eric and I were clueless as to how to help our sick baby.  And just tonight, I remember looking in that mirror and thinking, "I have the best job in the world."  What a divine privilege to get to hold this child and love her back to sleep.



About the mirror:

I have been reading Young House Love since 2009, and was thrilled with the reveal of their nursery for Clara about a year after I started reading.  You can really tell that they inspired some main elements in this nursery (the wall art, and today's mirror).  I saw this mirror at HomeGoods before they posted about it, and loved it.  I didn't buy it because I was trying to be budget conscious.  When I saw the painted reveal of the mirror in Clara's nursery, I started looking for it again at HomeGoods.  Of course - it. was. nowhere.  I finally gave up.  But while shopping with a friend a year later, there she was!  In all her black glory.  I painted her with a sample of paint from Lowe's.  I used a small brush to get in the nooks and crannies, and it took about 6 coats before I gave up.  You can only watch so much t.v. while hunched over with a tiny paintbrush.  People, just spray paint the thing.  Lesson learned.

Day 2: Yellow Striped Curtains

Day 2 in 31 Days to Cherish Our Home

Do you ever struggle to find the right curtains for your space?  I always have the perfect curtains planned out in my mind, and spend hours searching online and in stores for them.  Finally, I find a stunning curtain!  ... and then I realize it's $80 a panel. Um, are you kidding me?  I've learned that ingenuity in the window coverings department is a great way to get what you want - and maybe something better.  Refusing to settle (especially on something expensive) is a great way to cherish what you have.  When I spend a lot of money on something that's just "okay", it leads to regret rather than knowing that I have put myself into something I love.  This curtain panel is just a small example of that. I think it is the perfect touch to bring the room together.

I knew I wanted yellow striped curtains in the nursery, and that something sheer wouldn't do much good.  I found a white grommet curtain on clearance at JcPenney's, and had yellow polka dot fabric on hand.  I measured the length of the curtain, divided it but the number of stripes I wanted and measured away.  I laid out the white curtain on the floor and laid the yellow strips on top (I had already sewed under the edges in oder to get the right width and length. I then pinned the strips in place and took the curtain up to my sewing machine to sew them down.  It was a quick fix to a white curtain, and makes a huge difference in the room.  I think I spent $25 on the entire project.  Below you can see the curtain closed in broad daylight.  Some light still shines through, and I left the blind in place to help with that.  It is a "blackout" curtain, but that only goes so far in white.  So far, Emmalyn hasn't seemed to be affected by it at all, and the curtain still blocks the brightness of the morning sun in her window.

There is a freak-out moment in almost every project I take on (due to my clumsiness or bad math skills or a combination thereof).  As I was ironing the curtain to lay it out perfectly straight, my iron started spitting rust all over the white curtain.  At first I thought I had ironed over crumbs (ha!) and kept going - and then I freaked out when I realized it was rust.  I may have had a little pregnancy meltdown as I thought I had ruined the curtain, but Eric helped me realize that I could just rearrange the stripes to cover the stains.  Good thing his logic is readily available in my projects, and to generally save the day.  

Day 1: The Happiest Place in Our Home

Day 1 in 31 Days to Cherish Our Home

This is surely the happiest - and most complete - room in our house.  Ironically, it's also the smallest.  Who says that bigger is always better?  Eric and I decided that we didn't want to know the gender of our children before they were born, but I feared that would make nursery decorating bland.  Looking back, I can't imagine any other nursery.  I had a friend who said that she felt that gender neutral nurseries were destined to be "John Deere" themed, meaning that green and yellow were the only palette options.  Hopefully, we've proved that wrong (I do sometimes wonder if the room would seem too girly if a little boy laid in that crib though)!  It was impossible to get pictures of this room without the main attraction, so you can play "Spot the Emmalyn" in these pictures.  

The turquoise paint is Olympic No-VOC and we loved it.  We were covering a neon green wall, but it went on beautifully.  We didn't use this paint in the rest of our house, but I was able to paint alongside Eric without worries this way! I wanted to have a subtle elephant theme, and there are a few of them around the room.  I knew I wouldn't be able to find crib bedding that I loved in these colors, and Eric's mom made Emmalyn the gorgeous quilt you see on our brown chair.  I sewed a simple slipcover for the footstool to tie in more yellow and white.  Almost everything in the room had a little home-made flair to it, and tomorrow I'll be back back to begin details on these things:

- The wall art

- Semi-DIY curtains

- The seventeen-coats-of-yellow-paint mirror

We love to sit in this room, and it has worked perfectly for Emmalyn.  Everything in the room is functional, and her little space fits just right.  Maybe I'll just spend the next 31 days sitting in her room and soak up the happiness? (That is, after I empty the diaper genie).