The Nursery....

Well, to start I knew I wanted animals to be invovled in the decortating of baby Milo's room, I just didn't know what kind. And so started the quest of figuring out which animals I would be using in the nursery. I decided to start my journey in making toy animals and see where that would take me.  Well, it lead me straight to the wonderful world of amigurumi. Amigurumi are knitted, but mostly crocheted animal dolls that are quite popular in Japan but are making quite the impression here in the states. There are quite a few books that I found at the library on amigurumi and even more websites with free instructions. 


I bought Amy Gaines book Little Knitted Creatures....

and spent days making these little friends. 

I really wanted to use buttons for eyes but that is not entirely safe for little ones so I embroidered ones instead. After looking at the various little animals in the book I decided that I liked the forest animals the best. My favorite being the rabbit pattern I got from 

http://sheepdogsfleece.blogspot.com/2010/08/mr-bunny.html

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I still have more animals that I am making but they aren't quite finished yet. I am even making a pattern of my own to look like my dog Chips, I will post them when they are finished.

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Now that I had a theme, I needed to pick colors. Aqua blue and kiwi green were my first pick and it stuck pretty well. I think the deciding factor was the rug we found at ikea. Chaz and I had gone to ikea to find bookcases and stopped by the rugs to see what they had. What we liked were these bright 2' x 2' carpet squares in various bright colors. On their own, these squares to were too small but if you got four of them connected together it was a decent sized carpet. To keep things playful, Chaz and I got two blue squares and two green ones. We put them together using ducked tape. Crafty, I know...

Next came the crib. Chaz and I really liked the cribs they had at ikea because they came in the colors that we wanted to use but they were on recall for safety issues so we are barrowing Ann's (my mother-in-law) crib. Its the same crib that Chaz slept in, which I thought was pretty cute. 

I wasn't quite sure if I wanted to make a quilt for the crib because I had never made a whole quilt before, but when I found a kit at Jo Ann's that had the right shades of green and blue, I couldn't say no. I was actually quite pleased with myself because after about a week and a half the quilt was done and sitting in the crib.

I knew that I wanted to make my own mobile because I felt silly paying so much money on something that would only be used for a short while, plus I felt like I could make a pretty cute one. Diving into my new found love of amigurumi, I found an adorable bird pattern in Amigurumi Toy Box by Ana Paula Rimoli, and made different sized and colored birds.  I then tied the birds to and embrodiery hoop and hung that on a garden hook. I then wrapped it in cute green ribbon and secured it to the crib with zip ties. It doesn't spin and it doesn't play music but I think its still pretty cute. 

I also painted green and blue striped letters that spelled out Milo...

But my favorite part of the nursery are the paintings. While looking for patterns for amigurumi animals, I came across Amy Gaines etsy store. She sells patterns that are not found in her books and I found these little guys...

I bought the pattern and am currently making the beaver and the raccoon (plus I am trying to figure out how to make a badger) but what a really liked was the background she used to display the stuffed animals. I took what she did in the display and made two large paintings to flank the sides of the crib....

I really like the bunny.

With the paintings done the room was pretty much finished. I did meet my goal of getting it done before the baby shower and here is the final product...