most talented husband award!

It's the post you have all been waiting for: the mural in the nursery is DONE! All in all, it took Kyle a couple of days to do everything.

We first painted the walls an off-white color, and then Kyle taped out and painted the tree trunks.

We ran into a snag with the textured walls - the paint was seeping under the tape. So we had to repaint along each tree trunk in white to get cleaner lines. Kind of painstaking, but worth the effort - it looked much better afterwards.

Then Kyle painted all the branches freehand.

And finally, he used stamps made out of kitchen sponges for the leaves.

The finished product:

Look! We got a crib!

The photos don't do it justice; it is really stunning in person. Plus I'm not patient enough to figure out how to fix the lighting to take good photos at the moment :) But I am so thrilled with how it turned out - it's better than I could have imagined. And I think Kyle is pretty proud of his handiwork.

Other things we've worked on: 

We got this bookcase and orange bins from Ikea. We figure it will be perfect for toys and books and all the other stuff this kid will accumulate. I'm planning on finding a couple of pictures to hang above it, and I might make either a fox lamp or a birdhouse lamp to sit on top of the shelf - if I can get myself motivated to do it!

We moved the dresser to the opposite wall - it fits perfectly in this space, and will be great as a changing table. I'm thinking of making a mobile to hang above the changing pad.

 I also got this great fabric from Ikea to recover a lampshade for the table as well. The colors are similar to those in the bedding and in the clock I ordered. I thought about using this for the curtains, but I think it might be a bit much :)

Well, that's where we are at so far! The walls are pretty sad and bare at the moment, and I really need to pick out some fabric and make curtains. Once we get the crib bedding, changing pad, and curtains up, it will bring a lot more color into the room. I'll do another post when we start getting some more accessories in there.