Part 2: Eliza's room

All right, folks. Finally, the nursery post. This is the happiest room in our home, and the one with the most precious inhabitant. We spend a lot of time here these days!

I started out designing this nursery knowing I wanted to incorporate a lot of fabric, and otherwise make it very modern in style - Oeuf crib, minimalist, sleek lines, white white white. Somehow though, as soon as we found out little E was a girl, I changed my tune. We had a vintage name picked out, and suddenly I wanted cozy, vintage, sweet, with lots of handmade touches and bits of our past. Just about everything in this nursery was a project of some kind. Every piece of furniture was lovingly assembled, customized or painted; much of the artwork and all of the fabric were custom-made just for her. Of course we could have made this easier on ourselves, but since I pretty much sit around all day dreaming up ways to turn things into complicated, time-consuming projects, this was a dream come true for me. I loved watching it come together bit by bit.

We tried to sprinkle bits of our childhoods around the room, and of course got her started on some toys, books, and keepsakes of her own. Our families also kindly pitched in; Nicholas' parents gave us her beautiful crib, my father and stepmother paid to have the chair slipcovered and converted into a glider, and my mom and stepdad generously paid for all the fabrics and labor. So much love surrounding our girl as she plays and sleeps. Below is the grand tour:

The quilt I made on bedrest now hangs on her crib. Although the fabrics were designed by me, a lovely woman in Oregon named Wendy (found through Alchemy on Etsy) sewed all the bedding, panels, and cushion because I knew my sewing skills weren't up to the challenge. I love how the white ties and box pleats turned out. All the bedding and drapery panels are printed on linen-cotton canvas; the bench cushion and chair are printed on upholstery weight twill.

Eliza's newborn shadowbox: her measurements, bracelets, hat, some little booties I made her (which she quickly outgrew) and the announcement I designed that we handed out to our families at the hospital.

The white dresser is an IKEA hack. I really loved this piece from Pottery Barn which was $900+, but not quite in the budget. I took the handles off this piece we found at IKEA and ordered some pewter English bail pulls to make it a little more traditional. I added the changing topper from Land of Nod. I actually really love this dresser - the drawers are roomy and glide beautifully. Let me tell you, Miller LOVED putting this one together - it was an all afternoon project and the universal illustrations provided as "instructions" weren't exactly clear. He had a big role in this room from an assembling/painting/nailing/doing stuff only tall, un-pregnant people can do standpoint, and was a great sounding board for the fabric designs.

The hutch. A Craigslist find that was originally painted cherry, with brass knobs. It still has a sweet little bouquet painted on top that we couldn't bear to mess with. Most of the stuffed animals and dolls on the hutch were ours. Nicholas' teddy bear, Spacey, is my favorite. I crocheted him a new yellow and white scarf with a leather button to make him a dapper gent for our daughter's new room. The booties in the shadowbox were mine, crocheted by my great-grandmother. Nicholas' baby cup sits on the shelf, as does my little Peter Rabbit music box, and some of our favorite books growing up. The knitted toys are new - they just seemed to fit in well. The silhouette is me, age 2.5 (I had a crazy amount of hair!). That doll with the gorgeous lace dress is actually a Prince William in his Christening gown, brought to me by my grandmother from England when I was little. Annie and John brought Eliza that Paddington Bear from their most recent visit to London; they made it home just in time for her arrival. Highly recommend the retro "This Is..." series! The illustrations are fantastic and it gives its readers a lovely (if somewhat dated) tour of Texas. We also have "This Is London."

Hello from Suzette! This is my favorite corner (and the one I spend the most time in). We converted a club chair that we already had into a glider, and we decided to have a slipcover made so we could wash it. I designed/ ordered the e. fabric months ahead of time, but didn't get the pillow sewn until about 2 days before she was born. The quilt is the one my stepmother made and gave to me at Eliza's baby shower; she is a very talented quilter, and knew I was crazy about fabric so wanted me to help design it. All the fabrics are from Amy Butler's Soul Blossoms line. It is a treasured gift and it such a perfect addition to our nursery!

Above the crib: Eliza's mobile, which I think might be the thing I'm proudest of in this room. I crocheted it over a period of months. I can't take credit for the idea; it was inspired by Emma Lamb's Delilah mobile on Etsy. She's crazy talented! I'd decided I wanted to crochet my own, and googled around until I found one that matched what I had in mind. I decided to drop some hummingbirds down the center, so found a hummingbird pattern, crocheted the different flower motifs, crocheted around the hoop (very. frustrating.) and put it all together. The individual flowers and discs are actually fairly quick to whip together, but it was a pretty challenging project overall. She loves watching it spin, which makes me so happy. I hope once we've outgrown mobile age around here it will hang in a corner of some Miller child's room for years to come.

I designed the Good Day, Sunshine poster with my husband in mind. He loves the Beatles, and I thought it would be one way we could infuse a little more of him into this very girly room. (Sweet MJ took this pic - good shot, friend!).

Book nook: From the get-go, we both knew we wanted a corner that encouraged reading. I wanted her to be able to pull the books out herself to read when she is old enough, so this bench with its little cubbies seemed like just the thing. I had the cubbies styled a bit more interestingly at one point, but we've already been reading lots of books, and well, this is how it looks now.

The best job I ever had was working at the wonderful (and now sadly closed) Toad Hall Children's Bookstore in high school. I loved going there growing up, so it was always dear to my heart, and I learned so much about children's books while working there. I had the idea back then to frame illustrations from my favorites and use them in a nursery someday. The movie "You've Got Mail" used Toad Hall as a reference for their set and storyline, and just like the store in the movie, it eventually folded due to its inability to compete with the heavily discounted books at the big national bookstores. It closed its doors the day I left for W&L, which I've never gotten over, but I always found strangely symbolic and fitting in a way. I always dreamed about opening a similar store someday. But I digress...

Above: Madeline, Charlotte's Web, Winnie the Pooh, Bread and Jam for Frances, Little House in the Big Woods, and Eloise. I scanned them into my design software and then typed up the accompanying passages below. Miller kindly printed them out for me at work, although if they hadn't been such a TOTAL pain to line up straight in the frames I probably would go back and have my printer print them on a heavier cardstock so they don't curl in the frame. My perfectionist self can deal with it. I'm not redoing them.

This giraffe is from Anthropologie - E. loves looking up at him while we change and dress her. We both love the prints on the left of little girl in London, found on Etsy. The painting on the right is from my good friend Dottie, who lives in Amarillo and whose daughter Lisle is 6 days younger than Eliza. We did a nursery artwork exchange that I posted about awhile back. She has been a wonderful and special friend to have through our pregnancies and early days as mamas.

Above the crib: a blessing needlepointed by my great Aunt Billie (Eliza's great great aunt). I have one too that she made for me when I was born. We were looking for something small and safe to hang over the crib and this arrived one week after she was born (!). It is just the perfect thing and goes perfectly with the handmade theme of this room.

3-weeks old Eliza and her dog, who both love playing on the floor in this room. I can't believe how much she has grown from this picture. Now excuse me while I dig into my tub of Blue Bell Light...it's been an unusually long day with the above. She's a delight 90% of the day, until naptime, when she acts like I'm dipping her into a pit of snakes when I put her down. A fun new phase, and lately instead of wine (almost never worth it it seems...sad face) I self-medicate with ice cream.

Thanks for coming along on our nursery tour!

Nursery art

Tagging onto my previous post about my little design side business, I thought I'd share some nursery art I've been working on:


I designed this poster pretty early on for the baby's room. Even though she's a girl (and thus most things aren't going to have much of her Daddy's stamp on them), I wanted to design something that would have a piece of us both in there. Nicholas is a huge Beatles fan, and has been since he was very young, so I thought this worked well to incorporate a little bit of him into our baby's room. The "sun" is a take on one of the nursery patterns I designed (also found in the blog header), and I wanted it to have a bit of a mid-century feel since it pays homage to the fab four.


This is a piece I designed for my friend Dottie in Amarillo; we are due the same week and we've had so much fun sharing our pregnancies via text and gchat - from our crazy early symptoms to nursery design, carseats and strollers, to all the highly unglamorous details that come with the territory of being 9 months pregnant. Dottie loves to paint, so we decided to do a little nursery exchange - I designed this for her, and she did a little painting for us. We share a modern aesthetic, and she used a lot of gray in the nursery (which looks fabulous!). Since she's keeping the gender a surprise, these initials are placeholders - I sent her the piece so she could find a spot for it in the room, and I'm sending her the real deal once baby arrives. This one also has a Beatles lyric in it - one of my favorites!

Print + Paper

I've spent the past week sleeping as apparently we have hit a new fun stage of pregnancy - early labor! We went to the doctor first thing Monday morning as I'd been having contractions all day Sunday and through the night. Turned out I'd made more progress, and these contractions meant we were gearing up for the main event. My doctor said the contractions could continue to get closer together and she could come that night, or in a couple of days, or in a week or two - we have no way of knowing really. I haven't been just terribly uncomfortable most of the time, but clearly my body is using a lot of energy with the contractions as I've been pretty drowsy all week - sad considering all I've been doing is laying in bed.

Monday's fire drill put us on high alert; we are now eagerly anticipating her arrival at any moment. And so we continue to wait.

I tried posting this update earlier in the week, and Blogger went down and I lost my post! Grr. Since my days are filled with little more than Oprah, snoozing, and shows I shouldn't be watching about scary hospital deliveries, I thought it might be fun to post some of the design work I've been doing. Designing invitations, stationery, etc. has been just a fun little side gig for the past couple of years, but I've really enjoyed it as a creative outlet. Here's a few highlights from the past couple of months:



Baby shower invite for my sweet friend Beth (who also was a hostess at my shower the previous weekend; she's been a busy bee!). These hummingbirds are the main event on the textiles I designed for our nursery, which will be highlighted here in just a few days. The honoree's nursery had a modern, Jonathan Adler aesthetic with decidedly un-babylike colors, and since she was also doing a bird theme, I just repurposed my birds for the invitation.


My baby stationery, which matches our nursery colors: I've been in a pretty modern place design-wise generally these days, but for whatever reason (maybe it's her sweet name!) I haven't been able to resist going vintage/classic with a lot of the elements for this baby.



Stationery for my good friend Mary Jacob - she wanted two styles to choose from and ended up deciding to go with both. Good choice, MJ. A girl can never have too much stationery!



Save the Dates for I Live Here, I Give Here's the BIG Give: I designed the logo/invitations, signage and collateral for the event last year, and they decided to keep the logo for this year's event, with a few modifications to color & style. The event this year is at the new W Hotel, so we kept it clean, simple and modern, to echo the sleek interiors.



Baby stationery for sweet Harrison and Avery: because even little ones need to write their thank yous! I did this sort of backwards; I started with some generic silhouettes for these and tweaked them to their likenesses. Funnily enough, when I did Avery's she didn't really have any curls yet, but by the time we had them printed up for her birthday, she did! Our baby may get some similar stationery eventually...I had lots of fun working on these.
Hope everyone had a great week. We officially hit term tomorrow, hallelujah! We can't wait to meet this little lady, who has already been keeping us on our toes. Nicholas says she's just like her mama - says she is ready to go and then takes another 15 minutes to get out the door! Sadly, I readily admit this is a pretty accurate statement. XO

A few of my favorite things

Happy Friday friends! Aside from Fridays, royal weddings, and of course, concluding 10-year manhunts for terrorist masterminds, here are a few of my favorite things this week.

Amy Butler's home tour:
One of my favorite textile designers, Amy Butler, gave us a tour of her mid-century home on Apartment Therapy this week.


I dig her colorful style - edited, modern, eclectic and fun. I have lots of her fabrics in my stash, but around my house they are most prominently seen on the outdoor patio pillows I made a few years back, and on the pretty quilt my stepmother sewed for the baby (well aware of my love for fabrics, she had me pick them out).

Love her happy use of color mixed in with all that white, and wood, all that light coming in the house. And that open floorplan and that fab stone fireplace...yes please. We'd probably have to tone down the girly textiles a bit for Mr. Miller, but what a happy space! Full tour found here.

POUFS:
I've had a bit of a thing for poufs for awhile now. We don't have an ottoman for the glider in the nursery and I have been coveting this pouf for ages, in white:

So, I'm fairly crazy, but not that crazy...I'm well aware that no nursery needs a $450 pouf, so I've had the idea to crochet one myself, like this pretty one, found on Etsy:

...but I doubt I'll ever get around to it. Sigh. The nursery is brimming with fun things, so maybe a pouf will have to wait.

Fabrics:
Talented illustrator & designer Julia Rothman just launched a new fabric collection for Cloud9 fabrics - a total range of graphic modern and throwback, Liberty-esque prints. All so interesting, different and fun.


Target:
Has anyone had a chance to check out the Calypso for Target line yet? I love love love Liberty and was a little disappointed in the quality of the women's clothes that came out for their Target line last year (the little girls' clothes on the other hand...precious and so soft). Liberty's hallmark is those beautiful quality tana lawn cottons and some of those pieces were...gulp...polyester. For summer! In Texas! No ma'am.

So, some of this Calypso looks airy and pretty, but I'm not sure I can get behind tie die maxi dresses. A mite too hippy dippy for my tastes. But I think I might have to have this:

Eep. $12.99! Come on, Miller. I think we can lift the baby clothes shopping ban for $12.99.

And don't even get me started on Missoni for Target...very excited to see what comes of that. My dream collaboration? Pucci. I know it's never going to happen, but I can't justify Pucci anything on my best days and oh do I love it so.

And speaking of Liberty...Assouline:
This post is a bit Liberty-happy; can you tell Liberty and I forged a healthy relationship while we were across the pond? Well, this department store, maybe my most favorite thing in London next to the V&A, just opened a Literary Lounge in partnership with the supercool literary boutique, Assouline. I love this idea and must go! I've come to realize lately that I am turning into my grandmother (who is in England with my grandfather as we speak), and thus will forever be planning our next trip to London. I'm so lucky I married a guy who feels the same way; we are cautiously optimistic we will make it over there a little before Christmastime this year. I've already decided to send the baby for a little Christmas lights tour of Carnaby and Regent Street with her father while I flip through pretty books and sip champagne in peace (Megha, are you in?). Sounds loverly.

White pants:
They're back! I decided the close to 100 degree temps we recently had, coinciding with Easter, meant it was white pants time. Here we are, at 34 weeks - still carrying SO high:




Here's a least favorite thing: pregnancy hair. Did you know pregnancy makes your hair thicker? For a gal who already has too much hair, this is not a good thing and I'm losing the battle with the humidity thrown in the mix. Thus, I rock the frizzy untamed mane 24/7 these days. On the bright side: just about everything else about this pregnancy. Self + baby are healthy and feeling great. And bedrest really isn't so bad (1 more week to go!).

Weekends:


These days, they're not much more than quality time spent at home with my favorite guy and two little monsters. But they are savored nonetheless as I know we will soon be confusing our nights and days, weekends and weekdays in one happy, exhausted blur.

Hope everyone has a wonderful Mother's Day weekend with their mamas, or are showering them with love from afar. Our mamas are another one of my favorite things, but they deserve their own post. XO

Good ol Fred

I've been coming through Fredericksburg for as long as I can remember, on the way down to and from camp in the summers; usually just a stop for lunch, maybe a little shopping, but a even a little time in Fredericksburg is good for the soul.

Over the past ten years or so, dear old Fred has really transformed from a charming, sleepy hill country town to a bit of a not-so-well kept secret on the antiques and design scene. The emergence of the store Red is a prime example of this, and oh my sweet jesus did I go crazy in this place.

I'm a bit of a design junkie on all fronts - textile, interiors, paper; they will all probably find their way here from time to time. I was told before this trip (/Miller was warned) I would love this place, and that was perhaps a bit of an understatement. I could have stayed here all day, and then asked to sleep in one of their sumptuous bedding displays. The airy space is a mix of understated modern and vintage furnishings and deliciously colorful graphic textiles, with carefully curated knick-knacks and accessories sprinkled throughout. I was seriously smitten with every inch and found it difficult to take it all in.

I've been in "browse don't buy" mode for a few years now, since I'm not allowed make any major purchases for our house until we settle into "The House" - the one we actually own. Until then, it's living with the hand-me-downs and furniture we already had, which has been a fun challenge in its own right (resulting in some makeovers here and there to keep things fresh). But I've never been so tempted and on the spot inspired, and the only way he got me out of the store only $100 lighter was by promising I could return with a more substantial budget when The House is in the picture. A tour of my favorite things:



When I spotted the Sophie Digard scarf, I felt like they'd crawled up into my brain and pulled out all its favorite contents. She's a Parisian textile designer whose crochet work I've admired for years, but I've never seen one up close. I'm not sure I would ever even wear one of these (very expensive) scarves, but I absolutely admire her talent and use of color.

Other things you might discover on a stroll through Fredericksburg:


Pretty rooms of antiques, organized by color


Old Broncos, young cowboys


Local jam, jam samples. More jam. Closed Sundays.


Hidden patios

There were a few boutiques down toward the end of our long day of strolling that were pretty tempting too, but luckily I had my trusty kryptonite shield in tow. He keeps me rational while perusing adorable but pricey baby clothes ($50 for a lightweight summer bubble, I understand now, is a little unreasonable; in the moment however, it's a tougher call). At the end of the day, we stuck to our budget and came away with a pretty necklace (thank you husband!) & zipper bag from Red, jams and salsas, and a few little gifts for the peanut:


Baby Luckenbach t-shirt, the Suzette fox by blabla who I have been coveting for some time now, and a bit of yarn for a baby blanket, now in progress.

Daddy Jack, this one's for you

Our next stop was to Clint Orms' shop in Ingram to pick out a fancy belt buckle for Nicholas.

Do you wonder why I call him Nicholas sometimes and Miller other times? Me too. It started in college. I called him Miller way before we were dating, and it's just something that stuck. He likes it, and as it turns out, my great-grandmother called her husband by their last name, Pickett, so I figure I'm just keeping up family tradition.

Anyway, Mr. Orms is an extremely talented silversmith whose engraved buckles are some of the very finest anywhere in the world. They are done in the traditional, historic Texas style. His work is so detailed and fine that you almost need a magnifying glass to see all the tiny etchings made into the metal - the work of a true master craftsman. Needless to say, this was a very nice gift from his father (an avid gun collector who appreciates this fine art of engraving) for passing the bar last summer, and Miller was very excited to make his selection:


There were literally hundreds of options to choose from, but he knew what he wanted when he saw it. He loves to bird hunt, so this suits him perfectly. Mr. Orms also offered to put some Longhorns on the underside of the tips, a subtle nod to the meaning behind the gift.


I should have had my much taller husband take this, but I was struggling with the lighting in manual mode as it was. I couldn't get the camera high enough over the tray of belts and couldn't lean in enough due to the large watermelon protrusion in between me and the counter. So, this didn't exactly showcase the engravings like I wanted them to. You win some, you lose some.


Despite this sign above the door, once we'd picked out the buckle, Mr. Orms asked if we wanted a little tour of his workshop.




Here's an early sketch of a custom buckle;


This is how they start the die molding process; eventually it would be shrunk down to the size of something that would fit on the buckle. I think it might be similar to the process for casting bronzes?


A few exotic animal dies - so neat.

I'm so nerdily into anything artistic like this, and I loved seeing his design process at work. It's clear Mr. Orms has such a passion for what he does. This stop was a treat for us both, and Nicholas came away with a mighty nice souvenir to show for it.