Monday, January 16, 2012

Isabella Wren's Wardrobe

So, here I am 38wks 2 days along in my pregnancy and what do you find me doing (when I'm not completely exhausted and lying down somewhere anyway!)?  Getting Bella's room ready, of course!  :)

Just a week or so ago I didn't think there would be much of a room for her as we did not have the funds to get her some of the bare essentials (like a crib!) but thanks to a wonderful church body we were able to purchase little miss Bella a crib, changing table, chair and rug! Praise God!  With all that activity I got inspired and started putting things together!  

Today I finished her "wardrobe" or closet/shelving thing.  ;)   Jenni and Scott (our team leaders) gave us this ladder shelving unit deal that they didn't need and I figured I could turn it into a wardrobe of sorts to store Isabella Wren's clothes in.  I hate that I didn't take a pic of the before shot but  you can see a bit of what it looked like before in some of the shots since I left the inside unpainted.

Here is the finished product:

 I had these sheer curtains that I had stored in our shipped boxes thinking I could use them for something here in Portugal, so when this shelving unit became available I figured I could use them to "hide" the shelves and clothes inside.  The only problem is that they were about a foot too short.  Well, when I first got here and started going to the weekly flea markets that happen here in our little town (and surrounding little towns) I came across two panels of curtains that had some fun trim on them and were sheer. The were just a few Euros each and just perfect for some window covering in our house.  Well, even though they are not the exact same cream color as the ones I brought with me I used part of them to make up for the lacking length.  And to cover the seam I sewed two stripes of ric rac found at our local sewing store.  Isn't that trim on the bottom fun?  :) 

I tied bows to the hooks to add some color and "girly-ness" to the top. 

A peek of the inside. 

I wanted to show you all of the inside in one shot and was thinking about how to do it when I remembered that along with those sheers I brought from the states, came the tassels I had used to tie the sheers back!  In red!  Hee hee!
This is also a good shot of how the shelves are put together and why its called a ladder shelving unit.  

 I painted the edges in brown (same brown I used to paint the trees on a couple of walls--more on that in another post!) and covered them in this fabulous contact paper I found at our local grocery store!  Sweet!  I was thinking I would get some generic white or woodgrain paper but when I saw this red with pink polka dots I was floored--just perfect!!!

Here is a closer look at what it all used to look like and where I painted brown on the outside edges.  (I wasn't going for a professionally done job, just one that worked!  I mean, come on, time and energy aren't really on my side these days!)  ;)

So, there ya have it.  Would I have preferred a nice store bought wardrobe?  Definitely. But, this adds some fun girly flair to her room that I wasn't thinking I'd have, so I'm happy with it.  :)

Thanks for stopping by!  I'll be posting soon on the trees I painted and then hopefully after that a post with pics of the room all put together.  Yea!  

Blessings, 
Janice :)