Now I am finally on maternity leave and have time to sit and write my thoughts on things before my job changes from graphic designer to functional human designer. Before I make the venture into human designer, I made a stop over in the world of interior design and tried to create a room for our baby girl. It is hard to decorate a room for someone I don’t know yet, so the next best thing is to make a room that I feel like embodies all I know about her so far- that she is a combination of Chris and me. So if a musician and an artist were to get together and make a baby girl, this is what the room would look like (I guess). We tried to create a room fit for an Eloise- and since I don’t know any Eloises, we had a nice clean slate to work with. Check it out:

Collecting supplies has definitely been a lesson in God’s goodness. He knew we had no plans for a baby, which means we had no savings for a baby, which means we had no money to buy really anything for the baby, not to mention expensive baby furniture and bedding and stuff. I would like to note that there were only 3 items purchased by Chris and me to go in the room- the rest were either gifts or hand-me-downs. We bought the rug, the woodblock concert posters from Hatch Show Print in Nashville, and the mobile that hangs above the bed for a total cost of under $75. Everything else was free to us. I could blame this on coincidence, or the fact that my mom is a packrat, or take this as just another sign that Eloise is not an accident, but another stitch on my life quilt. I like the last choice the best.

The bed and rocker were mine from when I was a baby. The changing table was my desk from college. The green chair came from the trash. The awesome quilt that matches the room perfectly was a gift from our very talented friend, Mrs. Shelly Spidel. My grandmother painted one of the pictures in the room, I painted on of the pictures, and the other came from the thrift store. I bought the tin star above the crib when I went to Mexico in the 8th grade.

When she gets old enough, she can pick out her own room decoration, but considering she won’t be able to see more than a few inches in front of her face for a while, or be able to communicate which colors and shapes she likes for at least a year, she’ll be stuck with this for a while. But I think it suits the little bit we know about her already- that she is the unexpected product of two artsy type people, God is taking care of her little needs, and she is insanely loved by a whole bunch of people who don’t even know her yet. But we will soon…very soon!