Lisa: I am awesome

This might be my favorite Nora purchase EVER. The cutest little-girl shoes I've ever seen, and nary a licensed character. My online shopping skills are unparalleled.

Lisa: potato face

I think every kid with a Mr. Potato Head has done this. It's a rite of passage.

Lisa: Chester

Sometimes you have to sneak in and take a picture of your kid while she's sleeping, because it's just too sweet and cute.

Plus, this is an excellent opportunity for you all to meet Chester, a souvenir Grandma brought Nora from New York (and an adorably creepy littlemissmatched sock doll). Sometimes Chester gets nervous at night, and Nora has to hold his hand to make him feel better.

Lisa: She just looks like a Lulu, OK?

I name all of Nora's toys. I figure you have to refer to the toy somehow, and it's easier to say "Hey, Blake, will you grab Simon?" than to say "Hey, will you grab that sort of gender-confused but snooty-looking white teddy bear on the shelf in Nora's room? Or maybe on the dresser?" Plus, I think finding the right name to fit the personality of the toy is fun.

If you've met some of Nora's toys before, you might already know their names. Here's a chance to test your knowledge (or guessing skills). Click on the thumbnails if you want a close-up of the toy for your in-depth analysis, but don't click on the names unless you think you've already figured it out.

a.

b.

c.

d.

e.

f.

g.

h.

1. Lulu
2. Belinda
3. Rolf
4. Oscar
5. Sadie
6. Ruby
7. Kenneth
8. The Nemesis

Lisa: accessory clips

When I hung up the letter hooks in Nora's bedroom, it started an addiction that could only be fed by adding more hooks. Blake hung some little brass hooks in my craft closet for me that are now holding gift bags, and I ordered three more hooks from Restorers (through Amazon) for Nora's room.

I knew I wanted to hang her blessing dress and the gorgeous handmade blanket she got from her anonymous "secret grandma," but that left one empty hook and a long narrow space in the middle. With Sarah's help, I brainstormed an accessory holder.

Here's the result:

I'm really happy with how it turned out, and the whole thing took less than two hours to make. Endless variations are possible to suit your needs and tastes. Instructions and the materials I used are after the jump, if you're interested.

Materials:

Steps:

1. I cut the cardboard to the width I wanted, getting rid of the bent-up corners in the process. Then I set the cardboard on my fabric and cut around it, leaving plenty of extra fabric to wrap around the back.

2. I pinned the dark green ribbon down the center of the right side of the fabric, and just stitched right down the center with the sewing machine. Easy peasy.

3. The next step was a little bit tricky for me, since I'm not really a good spatial thinker. I centered the cardboard on top of the fabric and ribbon, and marked the top center and bottom center of the cardboard with a pin. Then I messed around with the clips, the light green ribbon, and some pins for a while, until they looked right. The idea is that the light ribbon threads through the clip rings, which are held in place by one pin through all three layers in the center of the loop. These pins will be replaced with stitching in the next step.

4. Next I replaced the pins with stitching. I slid the rings on each side away from the pin, carefully removed the pin without letting the ribbon slip, and backtacked over the light green ribbon a bunch of times.

5. I cut a piece of batting a bit smaller than my fabric.

6. Then I plugged in my trusty hot glue gun, and while I was waiting for it to heat up I ironed my fabric so the final product would be nice and smooth. Placing the fabric right-side down, and the batting centered on top of it, and the cardboard centered on top of that, I folded the two ends over the cardboard and glued them down. I took special care to make sure the ribbon stayed centered on the cardboard, and pulled each end of the ribbon tight while pressing it into the glue. Don't burn yourself--hot glue hurts like a mother.

7. Folding the corners like wrapping a present, I pulled the sides in tight and glued them down, too. While the glue was still warm and slidy, I turned the project over to the right side and made sure things looked smooth and not puckery from the front. Then I took the leftover light green ribbon and glued it in a loop to the back side of the top edge. If I'd wanted to get fancy, I could have cut a panel from the leftover fabric, ironed the edges under, and glued it to the back of the project to cover the empty cardboard and rough edges. Nora was getting hungry, so I bagged that idea, but I might still do that sometime if it starts bugging me. It would definitely look more professional and finished that way.

8. Ta-DA! I used five of the curtain clips for optimum future flexibility. I'm only using three of the clips now (see the top picture above), but in the future I might want to display different items, and I wanted to be able to accommodate various sizes.

Lisa: In which I try to bore you to death with completely insignificant details.

For better or worse, the nursery is pretty much put together! It feels good to have that task done. The polka-dotted fabric bin on the lower shelf of the white table holds board books and tub books. You can see the Boppy pillow hanging out on the seat of Blake's grandpa's rocker.

The dresser is full of baby clothes and linens that have been washed with Dreft, folded and sorted by size, and put into labeled drawers. The IKEA frog is sitting in a Bumbo baby seat next to George and Martha and a sweet little baby sock sorting thingie I found at HomeGoods. I made the print over the dresser in my letterpress class--it features my favorite quote from Peter Pan.

The top two shelves of the bookcase are full of baby supplies, and the bottom shelf is picture books. The art is two pages from an advance copy of You Were Loved Before You Were Born, written by Eve Bunting and illustrated by Karen Barbour. The book is due out in January.

Under the window you can see the gift Marci got us--the first baby item Blake and I picked out together. Above the crib are the letter hooks I talked about here. Since I took these pictures, I got some big clear totes at Target to go under the crib: one for extra diapers, one for blankets, and one for stuffed animals. We're still waiting for our Sophie bumper and crib skirt to arrive from Pottery Barn.

The light must have been a bit different for this photo, because the wall color here looks closer to how it looks in real life. Anyway, you can see we've been messing around with the toys on top of the bookcase and on the shelf above it. We swapped out the fancy (and arguably creepy-looking) dolls I had when I was younger for the Cabbage Patch Garden Fairies I adopted in college. And of course we had to dig out my Boo doll and press her belly a bunch of times. The soccer-playing Build-a-Bear was a gift to Blake from the girls he coached one year, and the other one is Olivia, who Blake gave me for our anniversary three years ago.

TA-DA! She'd better friggin' love it.

Lisa: hooked on phonics

Back in June I mentioned that I bought some letter hooks for the baby's room. I got them hung on the wall over the crib soon after that post, but it's taken me a month and a half to download the pictures from my camera. AT LONG LAST, here are the hooks in their natural habitat:

Here's a closeup of the hooks. I want to get some prettier hangers, but these work for now.

And this is why everyone keeps asking me if I'm having twins:

Lisa: upping our Google count for "knobs"

I've been working on painting our hand-me-down crib and dresser white to match the new side table for the baby's room, and I wanted to get some knobs for the drawers that would tie everything together. I decided on some cut glass knobs from Anthropologie, and while I was there I couldn't resist these letter hooks.

I am afraid buying decorative knobs might be addicting. Now I want to replace all the drawer pulls and doorknobs in our house.