Nursery Pictures

Edit: Thanks to ApartmentTherapy.com for the feature.

We've had so many random projects that I've not been able to schedule an afternoon to take pictures of the nursery, but my friend Kelly (and her awesome pictures) motivated me to get out the camera. Also, Peter and Jenny needed a shot of a crib for a project they're working on, so here goes… Lots of high-res goodness if you click the shots and some detailed information below.

Casie and I have such happy memories of our own childhood spaces — bright, airy, colorful, a bit dogeared and just a bit faded. We grew up in the early 70s among the Letter People, Richard Scarry, Wildlife Adventure Cards… and at the tail end of American Modernism. When looking for inspiration for Truman's room, we looked back to the things that made us happy in the hopes that he could share in the same warm fuzziness one day.

The room itself is a bit of a menagerie — literally — animal themed with creatures of all sorts: animals, robots, and a random house-cat or two. In our Eichler-built home in Northern California, the rooms are also fairly small (by suburban home standards) which presented a challenge with fitting it all in, so we opted to keep it fairly simple — both in quantity as well as in tone on the major surfaces — and let the small things bring in color and levity.

Casie is an ardent thrift store shopper with a penchant for Fisher Price goodies, so the kid's pretty well stocked in that department as seen in the photos. The custom prints from Wee Society line the walls… I'm luck enough to have worked with Jill and Jason and asked that they print up some larger pieces and I was able to get my hands on a limited edition silkscreen alphabet print which helps to wrap up the theme nicely. A few pieces from Jonathan Adler and custom-made DIY bits round-out the room.

Of course, folks like to know where stuff comes from:

• Crib and changing table by Babyletto (who has awesome customer service BTW)
• Glider by Gus Modern (and a gift from Casie's family… which broke shortly after)
• Shelving unit by me
• Stools by me
• Most art by Wee Society (plus a vintage Charley Harper print over the changing table). Framing materials by Metroframe.com
• Turquoise cart by IKEA
• Floor lamp and rug by IKEA (discontinued)
• Orange diaper bin by Ubbi
• Toys by Fisher-Price
• Ceramic animals by Jonathan Adler
• "Red ball" rocker by Knu
• Paint: Behr's Shotgrass Prarie (green) + Silver Drop (off white). We like the Silver Drop as a background color as it makes all of our other white things look really white.

The Belkin "Conceal" powerstrip/containment box is great for keeping little fingers out of dangerous places. The Apple Airport Express ties in the rest of the house network and links the Tivoli Radio to the house sound system/iTunes library… so, we can play the Pixies at volume-11 (Truman's current favorite: Surfer Rosa/Come On Pilgram).

Blue canary in the outlet (by the lightswitch)… aslongside a custom, cloth-wrapped extension cord necessary to make the lamp and lightswitch work in unison.

Arthur is just getting used to it all…

 

And some folks had asked for pictures of the boy… here goes.

(This will probably be my all-time favorite photo of him, but the two above are likely more "grandma worthy".)