SHE MIGHT NOT HAVE A NAME, BUT SHE HAS A ROOM

Inside Baby, as I've taken to calling Baby Number Two, is only weeks away from making her appearance. I wake up at night and can't fall back to sleep because I start to worry about birth. I know lots of people say that you don't remember it, but unfortunately, I do. And it hurt. A lot. So I'm being a bit of a wimp about it. Last time I didn't have medication and I'm hoping to be able to do that again this time. Last time I had to have surgery right after birth and I'm hoping that won't have to happen again this time. I wrote out my birth plan this morning and it pretty much just says, "Get the baby out." Whatever happens, I just want Inside Baby to be healthy when she comes out. And this time it really would be great if I didn't remember giving birth after.

Hopefully over the next few weeks, Matt and I are able to settle on a name. With Lauren it was so easy; we wrote a list of our favourites, went for a walk and by the time we got home we had both selected Lauren as our favourite. We've gone on lots of walks while I've been pregnant with Inside Baby but we still have no name. Argh! It drives me crazy.

But at least Inside Baby's room is ready. I wanted her room to look totally different than Lauren's room and I wanted it to be cheap. Mission accomplished.

This was Lauren's room before:

And this is Inside Baby's room now:

I haven't yet done the math on the room but I figure now is as good a time as any to see what my grand total was. Fingers crossed that it was as cheap as I thought.

The bunting cost me $3.20 for the gold paper and $4 for a fray stopper to use on the edges of the fabrics. A friend had given me the fabrics a while back and I love that they are a mix of soft colours with pops of a dark, rich purple.

To make the fabric bunting, I simple cut rectangles out of my assorted fabrics and then, after finding centre, cut a short triangle out of the bottom of each one with a rotary cutter. I painted the fray stopper on each edge (because I was too lazy to do all the hemming and ironing) and it worked perfectly. The bunting won't be touched often so a dab of fray stopper was enough.

The gold strand was even easier. I borrowed three different sized circle punches from my mom and went to town. Then, with Lauren's help, I randomly fed them through my sewing machine on a straight stitch. She was fascinated with watching them move through to machine and her assistance meant that there was true randomness.

The chair is the same one that I used for Lauren, only without the fabric cover that my mom and I spent forever making and the rug is being reused as well. Everything in the bookshelf is either reused (the brown bear was mine when I was a child), a gift or something that we used with Lauren. The only thing I bought was the Every Little Thing book, but I used Scholastic coupons that I have had sitting around for years so that was free as well!

I struggled to find sheets for the crib that weren't pastel pink or purple or grey chevron so I wandered into the regular sheet section and found the perfect deep purple in a twin sheet set for $19.99. From the one flat twin sheet, I was able to make two perfectly fitted crib sheets following this tutorial and I also learned how to make a fancy French seam (really not that fancy but it made me feel special). I have the fitted sheet stored away for when Inside Baby graduates to a big girl bed in the future. The simple hanging bedskirt was something I whipped up from my favourite one of the bunting fabrics and another dab of the fray stopper (that stuff really is amazing).

The painting over the bed definitely took me the longest to create. Everything else DIY came together really quickly but this one took quite a few nights. The canvas and most of the paint was already just sitting around in my craft room but I did have to spend another $6 buying a few more tubes to make sure that the paint was completely opaque. I couldn't decide on one animal to have as a theme for the room so I decided to do an animals in crowns theme. Why not. So I ended up with a bear, a rabbit and an owl all with crowns. I really like that they are not too cutesy or girly and I think they fit nicely into the room.

When I finished making the bunting strands, I noticed that I had some extra of each so I created a smaller swag to hang above the change table. 

This was another area that I spent some more money on. The change pad and dresser were Lauren's old ones and I made the change pad cover with some of the hand-me-down fabric that I chose for the room. The white metal baskets were something I found in the discount area of Michael's and I think they cost me $20 together. That was a splurge! The three larger frames were also on the clearance rack at Michael's and might have cost me $15 altogether. I especially love the mirrored one in the middle! Then I hit up Ikea for the shelf ($15) and the two smaller frames ($3 each). I made all of the prints that are inside the frames and I will be posting those soon as well. 

I've chosen not to make a quilt for Inside Baby because I made some for Lauren and all that she will sleep with is a brown blanket that some mutual fund company gave to Matt. It kills me a little inside. So instead I have plucked a white blanket that I knit for Lauren to try with Inside Baby and a purple Minky blanket that it also lovely and soft. If Inside Baby decides that she would like a quilt in the future, I will make her one right away. But for now, I'd rather just lay on the couch than slave over a quilt that won't see the light of day.

I just calculated it and my grand total for the room makeover was $89.19. Not too bad! I would say that I put minimal time into the room other than the painting so that is a plus as well.

So we are at 37 weeks now (the picture below is a week old), the baby is super low (to quote my doctor, "I don't know how you're even walking anymore!") and I'm just hoping that she hangs on until after June 7th when Matt writes his CFA exam.



PS - If anyone has a baby swing that we can borrow in the near future, I would really appreciate it! That is the one thing that we are still missing and I know that a swing was a lifesaver with Lauren.

PPS - Don't forget to check out Matt on the Miracle Weekend on Sunday afternoon. It sounds like his interview is getting extended a bit more to include some more of Lauren's story and she might make a guest appearance when he and the other bank people hand over their cheque. That's step one for getting her cute little mug on an elevator or something in the hospital. Some people want to make their kid a celebrity - I only want her to be a hospital celebrity.