The Amazing Life Mid-Life Edition: Grandmama Is Nesting

My youngest is expecting a baby boy on October 1st. This will be my first grandchild, and I decided that I would create a nursery here at our house for when he comes to visit. I am also developing this philosophy that things at Grandmama's are home made. I thought I should redo a used crib. So, I started scouring bookoo, and found a crib and changing table for $50.

I didn't know it at the time, but once I got it home and started working on it, I realized that it didn't have most of the hardware, and parts of it were broken. I filled some holes, did some sanding and looked up the current safety specs for cribs so that I could make sure that the little guy would be safe. I at first attempted to stain it....but that turned out to be a total fail, and so I painted it....you guessed it navy blue! Being a safety conscious Grandmama, I made sure to buy the no VOC kind at about $45/can. Woo...this cheap crib is getting expensive! Mike found hardware for it and tightened it up. I had to buy a firm mattress according to the current recommendations for newborns....and so I went to Walmart and squished the mattresses until I found one that I thought was firm enough. Of course that wasn't the cheap one... And, I needed to get a changing pad for the changing table, and a matress cover, and sheets. This home made crib is getting more expensive by the minute!

Of course a crib needs a quilt, and so I set out to crochet a baby blanket. After three skeins of yarn, I realized that it was kind of deformed looking and so I pulled it all out and tried again, and again, and again. Mike couldn't believe that I kept pulling out all of that work. Finally, I was satisfied with a pretty straight blanket. When I showed Mike the finished product, he said "How did you finally accomplish it?" I said "Perseverance!"

I was on a roll, so I decided to make my daughter a quilt. She has always loved cows and was doing her nursery in brown and red. So I went online looking for cow material. It is very hard to come by cow stuff at this time...but after a bidding war with someone, I managed to come up with some cow material.

Notice how there is no brown in those materials? I didn't. I cut out all of my squares and went online and found a picture of a cow to create out of fabric and pinned it all together. It only took me a couple of seconds to write that....but it took about 3 full days (well 2 of them were all nighters) to get it all cut and pinned together. Since my sewing machine was getting fixed by a lady at church, I asked my sister to help (read do while I sit looking at her) sew it together. That took another three days...and a steep learning curve. When it was coming together I started to like it, and then to love it....and that was when I realized that no, it was not brown and red....it was red, white and blue....just like my house! I decided the quilt needed to stay with me, and we would make Christy another quilt. I also think it is quite funny that my creativity outshines my actual skill...and I need others to bail me out quite frequently.