Where in the world have I been?

I've haven't posted a thing since April. I'm sure most of you have long ago given up on me. I wouldn't blame you one bit...Well, it turns out that my husband and I got a little surprise back in April...we found out that we were expecting! We hadn't planned on adding to our family, which already included a 15 year old son and an 11 year old daughter, so this came as a big surprise for us! So much so that while we were excited, we were also very overwhelmed, and I decided to focus on preparing my family for the new addition and put both my blog and my online shop on hold.

Fast forward to present day. I'm due in 4 weeks, and while we still don't have our little baby here with us just yet, I've been put on bed rest due to some complications, so I decided that now would be a good time to share with you the nursery that my family and I built for our soon to arrive baby girl, who we've named Ashton Olivia. 

I say that we "built" the nursery because we literally had to start from scratch in the old office, turned guest bedroom, that would become her nursery. We added a studio/office onto our house in January so that we could turn our old office into a guest bedroom, (little did we know it would be for a permanent guest), so we had just hired a painter to put a fresh coat of gorgeous yellow-gold paint on the walls. We quickly decided that regardless of the sex of the baby, the color just would not work for a nursery.

We decided to wait until we knew what we were having  to decide on the paint color. We knew what we liked, and what we didn't, and thankfully my husband and I agreed on just about every detail. I knew that I wanted to make the baby bedding myself, so once we found out we were having a girl and we picked out the paint, he sort of stood back and let me take the lead with the decorating. I made sure to run everything by him first, and luckily he liked what I picked out.

We chose a delicate aqua paint color called "Lazy Days" by Valspar. We new that we wanted a pretty nursery, but not an over-the-top pink, frilly, or fussy one. We wanted something that could grow with our daughter so that we weren't overhauling the room again in 2 years. Our son painted the walls, and I must say, he did as good of a job, (if not better), than any professional painter we have ever hired. I was so excited that not only the color turned out beautiful on the walls, but that it was applied by someone who did it for love, not money.

Well, once we had the room painted, we went gang-busters on the rest of it. Thank goodness for my in-laws, who all but completely furnished the room. We bought a crib, an antique armoire and an old dresser that my husband drove over 2 hours to pick up, only to spend another 6 hours with our son refinishing it. Our son painted an old bookshelf that came out of my childhood home and then we added a rocking chair, lamp and nightstand.

 All the while this was going on, I was working on the bedding, sweating and fretting about it the whole way through. I am notorious for making my own sewing patterns, so of course, the baby bedding was no exception. I had to be meticulous with my measurements, so I followed my mom's advice to measure 5 times and cut once. It worked. The bedding turned out.

So, without any further blabbering, here is the finished nursery. It was built with love, sweat and maybe even a tear or two. Sometimes I go in there and just sit in the rocker, staring at all the details, remembering what went into each and every one of them. I see the basket of burpers that our 11 year old daughter made all by herself, the old bookshelf from my childhood home, the paint color on the walls, the dresser that was almost not worth all the trouble, and I cannot wait to use it all on the little baby whose arrival we so eagerly await.  I hope you enjoy the photos, and I hope you forgive my absence from the blog. I promise, I put the time away to good use! :-)