Caroline’s nursery is not actually a nursery. It’s really not even Caroline’s right now, since it’s full of toddler toys and doesn’t have a crib. But it does have nice carpet, a very comfy nursing chair, lots of pretty colorful things and a big closet full of little girl clothes. I’m pretty excited about the room in general, since in about a week I’m going to be staring down the barrel of taking care of two kids on my own (I have been SOOOO spoiled with E home and my mom here) and a fun place for all of us to hang out is going to make that a lot easier. Plus it will be PERFECT for play dates. Who wants to come over?!

Welcome!

My mom wrote “Caroline” in place of “Baby Girl” on the chalkboard tray before we brought her home.

View from the door

This room really needs to be painted. The paint is like primer, totally flat, and there are a zillion scratches and chips and scrapes on the walls. But I sort of figure it’s only a matter of time before someone colors on them in permanent marker anyway, so painting it now would be an exercise in futility. Also, I freaking hate painting.

From behind the glider

My favorite corner

The chair is from Babies R Us (this one is better than the defective one, but the seat is ALREADY kind of lopsided so I don’t recommend it, no matter how comfortable it seems in the store) but the ottoman came with our old glider that’s still in Little Evan’s room. My mom recovered the ugly beige with one of the cute fabrics I bought. Curtains are Ikea, pillows are from Target, blanket on the chair was a gift from my friend Amanda, tutu (hanging on the wall) and ribbon mobile are two of my craft projects.

Man, those moldings REALLY need a coat of paint. Yikes.

Here’s the most important nursery planning tip ever: BUY A DRESSER INSTEAD OF A CHANGING TABLE. Or at least buy a changing table with drawers. Those open shelves are useless. This one is from Ikea and it’s just the right size. Lamp and shade also from Ikea. If you can’t read the banner, it’s actually Charley Harper Flash Cards spelling out “Caroline” held on a ribbon by wooden clothes-pins. There mirrors were on clearance at Target for $1.25 so I bought 4 (the other two are on another wall) and painted the frames in bright colors to match the room. I hung them at toddler-height so Little Evan can play peek-a-boo with himself. (p.s. The child sized broom courtesy of a toddler who felt it REALLY belonged in this picture.)

The wall behind the main door

The floor pillows are my FAVORITE thing about the room. The fabric on top of the front pillow is what inspired the color scheme and the pink and orange fabrics were from Caroline’s baby shower. I’m terrible at sewing but my mom is AWESOME and after I tracked down some nice big fluffy pillow forms (Ikea! $6.99! It was cheaper than buying poly-fill!) she whipped these right up for me. Now they’re perfect for lounging around on the floor during play time. Mirrors are the other two I bought at Target and the baby hats/bows/booties are all just hanging on a ribbon with clothes pins. I went a little clothes-pin-crazy in here.

TA-DA! This is where the whole room started. So in case you were wondering, the theme of the room is orange, pink, green, blue, brown, birds, nature, vintage, nursery rhymes, and transportation. I have a hard time making choices.

I bought a yard of this fabric at Ikea. But it wasn’t at my local Ikea, it was during my super awesome fantastic amazingly amazing trip to Minnesota so it’s extra special. The frame was another freebie from after a garage sale that I spray painted orange.

Toddler play corner

Built-in book shelves. Please note my awesome variety of pretty much every book series ever written for children. And maybe one TOTALLY CHILD INAPPROPRIATE book by Edward Gorey.

Evan is in love with his little table and chairs (a Christmas gift from his grandma and grandpa)

Other stuff in this corner: Lamp & shade, easel, and abacus from Ikea. Animal shaped bins are from Target, various plastic toys from EVERY PLACE IN THE WHOLE WORLD THAT SELLS TOYS.

He really wanted to be in EVERY picture.

The canvas on the wall was super cheap at Target (on clearance, less than $5). It was bright and happy and figured I couldn’t even MAKE something for less. The table my doll house is on is actually an old dining room table from Ikea (this one, purchased by E at least 7 years ago, painted by me 5 years ago) that he shortened the legs on to make it toddler height. Hanging toy storage in the corner also from Ikea (they should really pay me commission or something for plugging their stuff, right?) The rocker Little Evan is sitting in was my mom’s when she was a child. It had an unfortunate run in with her dog that left it a little worse for the wear but it’s still functional. Plus it means a lot to have vintage stuff like that used by my kids.

A few details...

1. Vintage airplane mobile (my brother’s when he was a baby) It plays “Fly Me To The Moon”
2. Bebeh feet!
3. Vintage fabric birds hanging in the window over the doll house
4. Beautiful hand-made teether from Little Alouette. LOVE LOVE LOVE everything from Amy’s shop, plus she is an extremely nice person (I met her at The Creative Connection). I’m sitting on my hands right now to keep from ordering this little owl shaped teether. Or just getting three for $35. But Caroline can’t even see her hands yet so it seems a little excessive. For record, I’d get the owl, the hippo and the fawn. Just, you know, FYI.
5. Vintage tea cup from my Aunt Susan
6. Vintage dress (mine when I was little) hanging on the wall. Too pretty for the closet!
7. The “LOVE” sign is a wood cutout I bought for $1 at Joann’s and spray painted with a little help from some blue painter’s tape. The bird has a pull string that makes it play music and flap it’s wings (vintage from my childhood).
8. Easter ducky (also from Aunt Susan) sitting on nursery rhyme books from the baby shower

Thanks for visiting!

So in the end, it’s not really a design-magazine worthy kind of space but I’m totally in love with it. Better yet, the kids seem to really like it.

Oh my God, saying “the kids” sounds so weird. I have KIDS.

If I missed the source for anything you’re wondering about, let me know and I can tell you where it came from. Full disclosure: the two or three Amazon links do go through my associates account so I get like, 4 cents or something if you purchase the item by clicking through my link.

…here’s a list of things I am going to blog about. (aka LAZIEST BLOG POST EVER)

1. A photo tour of the new nursery/playroom. I finished all my projects weeks ago, I just need to hang ONE frame on a wall and put the toys up on the shelves. Oh yeah and find a time to take pictures during daylight hours.

2. An epic post about the double stroller we ended up choosing and all the ways I love it. Bonus fun: We put it together wrong and I sent the company snippy emails until they very politely explained I was an idiot. In the nicest possible way! But this post needs a lot of pictures and I keep forgetting to do it during daylight hours. I meant to take pictures when we used it at the mall the other day but forgot my memory card. I forget things a lot.

3. A photo tour of our new master bedroom now that it’s finished. Except it’s NOT finished because the closet doors we bought are hollow and so trimming them to fit our odd shaped closets doesn’t work and dragging three doors back to Home Depot just to spend several hundred dollars on non-hollow doors hasn’t been at the top of our list of things to do recently. SO!  As soon as we wrap up the project (and I can find time to take pictures during daylight hours) I’ll get right on that “after” pic.

4. My round up of Things I’ve Knit Recently that includes all the Christmas knitting I sent as gifts and didn’t want to post about before people received them. Luckily I DID remember to take pictures. I just keep forgetting to write the post because I’m too busy knitting. IRONIC.

5. A zillion words about how much I appreciate all the help and support I’ve been getting in the past few weeks. I would be out of my skull already if I had to do everything for both kids plus keep us fed, clothed and not crushed to death under piles and piles of trash.

6. Lots of other stuff that keeps floating around in my head at 4 am when I’m trapped under a sleepy, nursing baby and immediately falls out again as soon as I’m able to get to my computer. I swear my babies have eaten my brains. OMG ZOMBIE BABIES.

Thank you for your patience with my all-over-the-place topics and filler-pictures of children and dogs. I promise to get my act together…soon. Maybe. Ok, probably not.

But for now, please enjoy these pictures of children and dogs.

The lab is Hershey, my parent's dog. Little Evan is VERY excited to have TWO dog friends this weekend. The dogs are...less excited.

I would apologize for the ridiculous number of Caroline pictures, but I’m not actually even a little bit sorry. And I know you don’t really mind either.

Sunday:

First real snow of the winter! It was miserable - really cold with a wicked wind. We hid in the house for days.

Milk drunk baby

Monday:

Bebeh's first hair clip - sent by my internet friend Kim from Try It Mom!

Tuesday:

Yes my 1 week old IS wear Juicy Couture. My mom bought it at TJMaxx. It's meant to be ironic.

Wednesday:

Chair ON the couch. He's thinks he's the freaking king or something - no one may sit with their head higher than Little Evan or face the wrath of an angry toddler.

Working on arranging frames around my awesome Modern Bird piece. I don't think this layout works exactly right so they're not on the wall yet.

Thursday:

Hello Lover. My Christmas present to myself, thanks to a gift card from my uncle that covered most of the price. It is AMAZING.

Thumb print cookies I whipped up in practically SECONDS because the mixer is THAT AWESOME. I can't believe I've used the same crappy Hamilton Beach mixer since college and NO ONE told me how much it sucked.

Friday:

Traditional New Year's dinner: chinese food, shared with E, Mom & my BFF Erin who came down to visit

Twitter & champagne - official celebration of mommy bloggers everywhere!

This is my view for at least 5 or 6 hours a day. I don't mind at all.

Saturday:

We started to de-Christmas the house, but got bored and left it like this. Hey, at least the fire hazard - I mean tree - is down and out by the curb.

There was a LOT of this on Saturday. It's hard on everyone because he doesn't have enough words to tell us WHY he's so upset and we don't have an extra set of ear drums for when he pops ours with THE SCREAMING.

To try and avoid THE SCREAMING we took Little Evan to the still snowy-but-temps-in-the-upper-40's park. It was a mild success. Until he fell off the fire truck and we tried to help him. Or when we told him he had to go home. Sigh. Wasn't this not supposed to start until he was 2?

Link up below if you’ve got a weekly photo recap! These posts are really fun. And also easy, so if one of your resolutions is to update your blog more often it would be a great way to do that.

Get the code for your own linky from Amy here. And check out her adorable kid too.

Sunday:

I had a baby. Probably the high point of the week, even though Christmas was awesome too.

Cuddly baby is cuddly, even (especially) at 5 am

Monday:

Talked my way out of the hospital so we got to go HOME!

Tuesday:

Maybe someone else in my house did some stuff but I just sat around and stared at the baby.

Wednesday:

Oh hey, look, I have this other kid too!

"If I take my pants off and look REALLY cute will you pay attention to me?"

Thursday:

The shirt, the face, the wine, the Snickers bar...he's a keeper. (Kidding! He's been pretty great)

Friday:

Life is clearly getting back to normal.

We (all four of us!) went to lunch at a local pub with friends. It went amazingly well.

Even the children's Christmas Eve service was too long for toddlers - I think he made it through 1 song before E took him to run around in the chapel.

Saturday:

Baby's First Christmas!

Reindeer toes

I think maybe ever toddler I know got this laptop for Christmas. It is a BIG hit around here.

Another big hit? The Modern Bird piece I ordered for E. It is even better in person.

Reading new books with MorMor. It was a super fun day!

Link up below & grab the code over at A Good Life if you want to share your week in photos too!

Happy Holidays from The Davis Family! May you and yours enjoy the peace, joy and love this season brings and may your Christmas be as blessed as ours.

Under the tree

Look what Santa put in my stocking

Why do you do these things to me?

xoxo

Suzanne, Evan, Little Evan, Caroline
and Brutus-The-World’s-Most-Patient-Dog