Final baby prep

A long, long time ago, I wrote about how my mom and I were planning on sanding and restaining the family crib. We did that last August, but lining the inside of it (my grandma is great at all things concerning fabric so I entrusted her with this task) took a little bit longer because I had to find fabric I liked. I also wanted to decorate the wall above the crib a little bit, which we only did last week. So I guess I can now show you some pictures of the process!

This is what we started with.

There were some tiny holes in the wood that had to be filled first, hence the gray smears.

I didn't really like the fairly light color of the wood and wanted something richer, so we started sanding.

The old lining had been glued to the wood for some reason, so my mom removed the remainder of the glue (and some staples that were in there too).

For some reason, I don't have any pictures of us restaining the crib. I think maybe we did this when Klaas wasn't home... Anyway, we went with a dark stain, a lot richer than what was on the crib before. When that was finished, I picked fabric (it was actually this throw from IKEA) and went over to my grandma's to think about how we'd use it to line the crib and to make a canopy. In the picture below, the crib is already in our living room.

 

I didn't like the bare look of the wall above the crib (although there was a frame of the Brooklyn Bridge up there) so I bought some frames to create a tiny timeline of our baby's life.  

 

The picture on the left is the first photograph taken of Klaas and I after finding out we'd be having a baby and the one in the middle was taken during our maternity shoot. As you can see, the frame on the right is still empty. This will house (one of) the first picture(s) of us as a family of three...

Because of that Brooklyn Bridge frame that used to hang there, there's quite a large hole above the frame on the right. Klaas photoshopped it out of the pictures above, but it is an eyesore and I see no way to close the hole again. Our best option is to just cover the hole with another frame, but for the look of the wall and the frames to remain symmetrical, it needs to be a very wide frame. I've started a DIY project to eventually put in the frame, but it will take some time to complete. And even if it were finished already, I still couldn't show it here yet, because it contains the name of our baby...

Sooo. Aside from that final DIY project and making our baby's bed in the bedroom, there's nothing left to do. We're ready!

First baby purchase

While we actually already have some baby items (mostly clothes), they were gifts from family and friends, which means that we ourselves hadn't bought anything yet. The crib below wasn't something we bought, but my mom and I will be spending quite some time with it since we're going to sand and restain it a darker color. This is actually a DIY project that was meant to go on my summer bucket list, but as we weren't telling people yet, I couldn't include it on the list. This crib is a family heirloom that is over 80 years old. I slept in it, my mom slept in it and my grandmother slept in it. I wouldn't have gotten a traditional old-fashioned crib if it weren't for this one and I actually think it is really cool to have our baby sleep in a crib that has such history.

Seeing as we'll be putting this crib in our living room, we also needed a little bed to put next to our own. So we went to IKEA yesterday...

 ... and got the Hensvik bed.

Let me tell you, I felt so grown up driving home from IKEA with a baby bed that I picked out and bought with my husband.

We also got a bunch of different picture frames for the gallery wall we're planning (we still have to sort through our wedding pictures and choose the ones we want to frame).

Klaas and I are also starting a little family tradition. When we first started dating, we discovered that we both had stuffed dogs as a child. The dogs are still in our wardrobe and every once in a while, we come across them and feel all nostalgic again. At IKEA we found stuffed animals and lo and behold, they had a dog too! Klaas got all excited and decided that our baby should have a stuffed dog as well. I think I just about melted into a puddle on the floor.

And this is a picture of all of our dogs together:

The big Samson on top is mine, the one that had to have its head reattached to its body is Klaas's. :-)

When we were in Disneyland, my mom bought the baby this stuffed Remy that I picked out. So just like its mommy, our baby will have two stuffed animals (I also had a monkey).

On a completely unrelated topic: Lien came back from her trip to the US and brought back peanut butter cups. Eternal love for her!