It's all in the details

One of my favorite parts of preparing for baby has been getting her nursery ready. It's been so fun thinking of ideas, planning it all out and searching for the perfect items. When I finished the last touches a month or so ago, I was sad that the project was over but really happy with how it turned out. I love to just go in there now and sit in the glider and dream about our little one and our future as a little family of three.

Even before I got pregnant, I had an idea in my head of what I wanted the nursery to look like. I loved the bright blue, yellow and orange color combination. It reminded me of rubber duckies and blue water and just seemed so cute to me. I think I first fell in love with it when I was putting together a 1 year scrapbook for my nephew Adam a few years ago and had a page with bright blue bubbles and an orange and yellow duck (or at least that's how I remember it in my head).

In fact, when I was at the state fair this summer I won one of those water balloon race games and got to pick a prize and ended up choosing a bright blue care bear because I knew it would match the baby's room someday.

Matt is actually surprisingly opinionated when it comes to decorating and likes to be involved in the decisions but ultimately trusts my vision and judgement. As I talked through different elements of the room with him he began to see where I was all going with this and got more and more on board. I really loved working on this together and feel like it was our first gift to our daughter. He also was the master painter and meticulously applied the blue paint to our tan walls and wouldn't even let me touch a paint brush. I finally begged him to let me paint a message to our little one on the wall in order to be involved in that part in some small way.

After painting came furniture! Nana Jeanne and Grandpa Garry bought the baby crib, mattress and changing table and Grandpa Rob was on the scene to help daddy with the assembly.

Painter hard at work

My message to baby

Built with love

Starting to come together

I'm not the most "crafty" person and while I do admire hand-made touches, I also knew that I would never be able to create them myself. So I decided to enlist the help of a few experts in order to give our little girl's room all of the unique touches that I had envisioned.

I first contacted a friend from high school, Nicole Moll, who has an awesome business called Poplin. She has so many amazing items for sale there and I asked her if she'd consider making a special order. I ended up ordering some fabric buntings for decorations, custom bibs and blankets and a crib skirt and darling crib quilt. I told her the colors and then picked out a fabric pattern that I liked and she did the rest! The items turned out amazing and exceeded all of my expectations. So if you're not crafty like me but in the market for baby items than I highly encourage you to contact her! Here's a link to her Etsy site as well. 

Oh and before I do the big reveal and show you the finished room, I have to say that when we found out baby was going to be a little girl we had to incorporate pink into the color scheme somehow. I've never liked pastels so we decided to swap the orange out with a hot pink. So glad we did!

I also just recently got a brand new camera and a couple of sweet lenses so I've been practicing! Some photos are better than others and as I'm sure you can tell, for me, it's all in the details.

Without further ado, here's our nursery:

Dresser, immediately to the right when you walk in the door

Tiara in the corner, of course : )

Far left wall, crib and glider (both ordered on Amazon)

Small space between door and closet with books and toy storage (shelf from Target)

Closer shot of the crib and wall decal from Etsy

All about the details for me, I ordered these glass knobs on Amazon  to
 replace the boring ones that the dresser came with 

Fabulous mobile from Etsy

Trying out the new 50 mm lens

A bit over exposed but I had to include it because I still really liked it

Fabric buntings from Nicole Moll and Poplin

How cute are these custom bibs???

Love

Chirpy bird from Poplin on a shelf above the changing table

My nickname as a kid was bunny so bunnies are a bit of theme for us

Bunny that I had my Grandma open to tell her it was a little girl at Christmas

Love all the adorable little girlie things beginning to fill her closet. How cute is that pink tutu dress???

The apple that has been in Matt's family for years

Tiny, sweet shoes just waiting for teeny tiny feet

This was Aunt Gracie's nightlight, our little one is really lucky to get to use it next

Something BIG!

So after almost a year of silence on the blog, we are finally bringing it back to life. What would cause this resuscitation you ask? Well, it must be something BIG! And you'd be right.

After 3 1/2 years of marriage, Matt and I are very excited to welcome a new little girl into the family in just a couple of months. We couldn't be more excited (and nervous, and frankly, a bit terrified)! But overall, we are really looking forward to our lives being absolutely turned upside down by the amazing blessing of our little princess.

When I first started this blog 3 years ago, it was my intention to blog about my experiences as a newlywed. I have to admit, it was fun for awhile and I do love going back and re-reading those old posts, but after about a year I found myself posting less and less. I think two factors were to blame. 1) We were settling into the routine of married life and I thought that perhaps our lives were not interesting enough to warrant keeping up the blog and 2) I took a new job as managing editor of a blog at work so blogging for "fun" became less and less "fun."

However, it was always my intention to resurface the blog once we had something more "interesting" to report in our lives and in the back of my mind, I always knew that would be when we were expecting a baby.

I've always admired the "mommy" bloggers out there and have loved keeping up with the lives of our friends and family through their blogs. And I think that most of them would agree that although it's partially about sharing those cute kid pics and great experiences with others, it's more of a way of recording snap shots in your life for years to come.

So that's why Life with the Leibrocks has been given new life. I'm looking forward to sharing this journey of parenthood with all of you, as well as recording these important milestones in our new little family of three for years to come.

To close this post, I will leave you with what I suspect to be one of many, many baby pictures to come. The first picture of our little peanut at 8 weeks.