Our apartment is cramped. It's cute and cozy but to be perfectly honest it's cramped. We have four full bookshelves, two full built in book shelves, two beds, two dressers, a sofa with a chaise lounge, a recliner, a small desk, a desk chair, a coffee table, a nook for shoes, two dvd cases, the tv and tv stand, four bookshelves serving as pantry storage, and a dining room table and chairs. We also have various boxes and items sitting around because there's no storage space left to shove them. hehe Whew!
And now we have a crib and a cradle and I couldn't be happier! :) My parents visited over the week of Thanksgiving and they brought one of the two beds we now have set up, the cradle, and 9 boxes of my books from home. hehe The bed was mine as a child and will serve nicely as a guest bed for people coming to visit. The cradle was made by my grandpa for me when I was an infant and it's now going to be used for our little one when she makes her arrival. While they were here they bought us a crib and mattress from Ikea and helped us build it and situate it in our room. It's beautiful. Natural wood, simple design - perfect! Once we have a bigger place, the plan is to give the baby her own room and move all of our dining room storage shelving into her room as bookshelves and storage. The stuff in the dining room is dark brown-black and will be a nice contrast to the light crib.
My mom, being the crafty woman that she is, not only arrived with a knitted baby blanket, a hand-quilted baby blanket from scraps of a quilt she made my brother and a quilt she made Craig and I, and a quilt front of nursery rhymes she's going to finish and give to the baby, but she's also said she'll make me my own crib set so that I can have the colors I want instead of the stuff we've found. How awesome is that?!
Craig and I ran into a slight problem while looking for crib bedding. The problem is that Craig wants monkeys for our bedding and I want the colors green, purple, and brown. Those are fairly hard to find together. I can find green and brown and green and purple but not together - at least not without something like butterflys all over it or whatever. Sooo - my mom and I picked out a green fabric and a purple fabric that she's going to use as a back and front to a simple quilt. She's going to use a monkey face I found as a template to put on the green side of the quilt, thereby getting both monkeys and the colors I want and then she'll use the same purple fabric for a skirt. We also found a nice white with little purple flowers to use as the cover for a crib bumper. I can buy the fitted sheets in green, purple, and this really cute monkeys and brown polka dots and we're good to go! There's a wooden wall hanging of a monkey face similar to what will be on the blanket that I'm going to put up on the wall next to either the baby's name or some saying in brown and purple lettering. That's my current plan for the baby's crib space, etc. As you can see, the nesting has begun. :)
All of my mom's generosity and craftiness has gotten me thinking about crafting. I can cross stitch (but then again, a monkey could cross stitch - it's not exactly complicated) and I've been attempting lazily to learn how to knit for some time. I've never really sewed, at least not in earnest, although I've always thought about it. I value the items my mom has made for me so much - graduation quilt, wedding quilt, scarves, wall hangings, etc - and I'd really like to be able to do the same thing for my little girl. I think I want to learn to do more than just cross stitch. As much as I love it and find it relaxing, I also recognize that cross stitch art/craft is pretty tacky outside of the occasional holiday decoration or simple piece. Sewing and knitting have a little more versatility. I'm perusing sewing machines now in hopes of finding something cheap and efficient to start out on. I'm also thinking classes would introduce me to people in the community and since I know almost no one here, that would be a good thing! :)
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