I’m such a sucker for vintage-looking toddler clothes and shoes. I ‘d love to get these red “London” boots for Julianna from Livie and Luca.

I’ve entered a few pictures of Julianna’s playroom in Ohdeedoh.com’s nursery colors contest. Check it out and vote for us! The 1st, 2nd and 3rd prizes are a crib, toddler bed and children’s table with 2 chairs, respectively, from Argington furniture.

Here’s my first photo:

I am, of course, proud of the room but I think I also have an advantage in the fact that I may have a little more experience with photography than the other entrants. It’s amazing how much better a room looks when you put the camera on a tripod and only allow natural light (no overhead lighting, no flash on camera).

I think this room is a testament to how much color can compensate for a limited budget. The only items that were bought especially for the nursery are the IKEA Malm dressers and the Wal-Mart rocker - everything else came from other rooms in the house. The most expensive item in this room is the rocker, which was only around $150! I discovered I needed a good, comfortable rocker when Julianna was born and I began nursing with c-section pain. The second priciest item is the Eames (actually, it’s a 1960s knockoff from a company called Krueger) chair, which I picked up on eBay. The chrome legs were rusted and peeling, so I recovered them with black duct tape. You can’t tell unless you get up close. The 1950s turquoise ottoman was my grandmother’s and it’s been in my family for a loooong time. Andrew gave me the blue lamps as a birthday present a few years ago - they’re from the Crate & Barrel outlet in Kittery, ME. The curtains and floor lamp are from IKEA.

The artwork above the “Eames” chair is by Charley Harper (very trendy right now). Sitting on the chair is Andrew’s old teddy bear, “Mici Macko” (Winnie the Pooh in Hungarian) and my old Paddington Bear. The white children’s rocker was a gift from my grandparents to me when I was born.

The striped bins are a Pottery Barn purchase from a few years back. The orange leather-covered box was a Christmas gift from my mom - I think it’s from TJ Maxx. The artwork is all mine - I created the silhouettes from vintage postcard photos, except for the dog image - that’s actually our dog, Bingo. We had some old frames laying around and I decided to paint them with Benjamin Moore Color Samples. I created the artwork, painted the frames and designed this arrangement rather quickly and explicitly for this contest. When I find the time, I’ll tweak the colors in the artwork a little more to my liking.

Thanks for looking!

Introducing our daughter, Julianna Marie:

Born at 12:33 PM on December 7, 2007 via c-section.
Weight: 10 pounds, 4 ounces
Height: 21.5 inches

We returned home from the hospital on Tuesday. We’re all doing well … very, VERY sleep deprived - mostly because we can’t stop marveling at our darling little daughter. I’ll post more details later.

Andrew, Julianna and me in the operating room minutes after her birth:

I’ve been working out color schemes and furniture arrangements in Google Sketchup. I think I’ve finally settled on a light, bright green for the walls with some brown and a few splashes of pink. I’m considering Benjamin Moore’s “apple green,” “fresh cut grass” and “limelight.” I realize the art display is a bit excessive, but it’s just a grouping I downloaded from the Sketchup library (they’re IKEA frames). Our actual crib is IKEA’s “Gulliver,” not “Hensvik” as shown in these images. The bedding is the Dots pattern from Dwell. We’ve already bought the brown leather-upholstered Poang chair and footstool from IKEA, as well as the Malm 3-drawer dresser.

Nursery with “Apple Green” walls:

Nursery with “Fresh Cut Grass” walls:

Nursery with “Limelight” walls:

This Thonet knockoff rocker would look great in the nursery, but alas, the company doesn’t recommend using it while holding a baby due to its deep, low seat. I saw this in a nursery feature in the most recent “FitPregnancy” magazine. The decorator had painted it a pretty kelly green color.

From rocking-chairs.com, $149.

It’s been a LONG time since I posted. I was busy working at a summer music camp for kids and have barely been able to peruse all my favorite blogs in the meantime.

Here is an ultrasound video clip from our 22-week ultrasound on July 31 showing our daughter sucking her thumb! You can see her hand move to her mouth, but then her arm fades out of view and you can see her tongue moving back and forth in her mouth. The cheesy music is courtesy of the ultrasound office (we paid for this - Sneak Peek Ultrasound in Londonderry, NH).

… or you will end up with this:

Since Friday, we’ve been battling our dishwasher and the never-ending production of suds each time we run a cycle. I Googled “suds” and “dishwasher,” trying to diagnose the problem and concluded that some liquid hand soap must have found its way onto a dish or bowl in the first cycle on Friday. However, after removing all the dishes, using salt, ice cubes and vegetable oil to dissolve the suds, the dishwasher was still producing suds. So last night I popped open the rinse agent dispenser and noticed a few bubbles in it. It then occurred to me that Andrew, when refilling the rinse agent last week (Friday!), must have accidentally placed Dawn instead of Jet Dry into the dispenser. Sure enough, when I asked him, he realized his mistake. I called Bosch’s customer service line and was told to continue to run the dishwasher to try and run out the Dawn. Yeesh. I hate hand washing dishes in the meantime.

A lot of people find this site by Googling “IKEA Arild sofa,” so I thought I’d post a photo of our sofa in its natural habitat:

It’ll be moved to our larger living room later this week when we get our new IKEA sofa, the “Sater,” which will replace the Arild in our TV room.

This floor looks like VCT to me, but I doubt it is:

From Elle Decor, October issue