Nursery Tales

If you are a regular visitor to Southern Lagniappe, you know that our daughter Whitney is expecting a baby boy, and has been on bed rest for six weeks now. She and the baby are doing well, and we're praying that he will stay where he is for at least another five weeks.

In the meantime, we have been busy decorating the nursery and buying the layette, most of it by shopping online, and the rest by me running all over Vicksburg and half of Jackson. But it's been fun, and we're pleased with the way things are coming together. I'd like to share some pictures of the results of our decorating.

We did not have to buy any new furniture, and are going to use the crib that my husband and I bought for Whitney's nursery when she was born. It was also our son Benjamin's crib, and Whitney used it for her daughter Avery Grace.

The bedding set is Little Lambs & Ivy's Jungle Story Collection, which includes the crib set, diaper holder, valance, rug, mobile, and coordinating wall decals.

The little shelf and letters came from Hobby Lobby, unfinished, and I sprayed the shelf a creamy white and painted the letters using colors from the bedding (yes, the baby's name is Maddox).

The wall shelves you see on the left in the above picture were Whitney's when she was a baby, and were made by her daddy and granddaddy (my dad) ...

They were well used through the years, and have the "battle scars" to prove it, but there's no way I could cover them up with paint.

Instead, we filled them with books and toys, both old and new. This train was Benjamin's when he was little, along with a wooden tractor and wagon and cement truck we "borrowed" from a box in the attic.

Avery contributed a couple of her stuffed animals, Hank, the Horse and Bonzai, the Monkey.

And the books were Whitney's and Benjamin's ...

Do you see the little striped cap hanging on the shelf? There's a story behind it, too.

When she was a toddler, Whitney loved to wear hats, and that was one of her favorites. We could seldom leave home without it and her little Fisher-Price lunch box filled with pretzels. The teething rings were Avery's when she was a baby.

I painted the picture of the giraffe on the toy shelf, which was fun. Perhaps one day in the future, it will be rescued from an attic and used in another nursery.

Another item rescued from the attic is the lamp base. We added the shade, which I found at Lowe's, and love the neutral, "non-jungle-y" look.

And, next to the crib, the best "hand-me-down" piece in the nursery is this maple rocker, which was one of our first purchases for that nursery long ago ...

The beautiful creaking sound it makes brings back many sweet memories of my husband and I taking turns rocking our babies in the middle of the night, with nothing but the sound of the creaking and perhaps a soft lullaby hummed along with it ...

Whitney has already started rocking Maddox in it, so it will be a comforting sound to him after he is born. I look forward to getting in some rocking time soon, too, surrounded by all those sweet "hand-me-downs" from nurseries past.