Dream, Baby, Dream

**Psst: It's day two of the competition. Declan is 18th out of nearly 1000 babies. Have you voted today?!?**

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Thanks for all the love yesterday as well!

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Peyton talked me into it. He talked me in to posting one more project that, while not done for the Pinterest Challenge, was totally inspired by Pinterest. This leads to more flattering photos of the nursery. The prior post didn't quite give the warm and fuzzies. It made the room look more like a basement of a rundown hostel with a piece of art slapped on the wall. With the amount of work Peyton put into this fixture, he deserves to have an entry.

So officially, we are making this a Pinterest Challenge post. dun, dun, dun, duuunnnn.

As explained in the previous post, the Pinterest Challenge is where you stop pinning and start doing. This edition is hosted by the creative chicas Katie, Sherry, Carmel, and Sarah, all of which have projects worth taking a gander! You do a project, blog a post, then link up and blog-hop all day long.  They need to offer babysitters, or even better, make it a holiday. There's just no way kids get as much attention on P.C. days. 

We really needed a big, inexpensive piece of artwork to go above the crib. The opposite wall (shown earlier) is going to be a gallery collection, so we didn't want to shove a ton of frames in both spaces. But finding a long slice of pretty for peanuts? Not going to happen. Until we saw this beaut:

{gracias}

And then that was topped like chocolate on peanut butter with this:

{gracias}

Our nail hitting hearts were sold. Even though we thought about doing a combination of both, we really loved the way the second one fills the letters in, so we followed that tutorial. 

Instead of cork we used some heavy pressed particle board that we had around, some white paint, and about 500-600 nails. There was a lot of nailing. As in, somewhere in the range of seven hours worth. Luckily this was all the mister's doing, as he is much more careful than I am. I can assure you, each and every nail is the same height and distance apart. Hence the seven hours...

First he printed out the lettering found on Honey & Fitz. In an OCD moment, he proceeded to spend another hour or so perfecting the sizes of each letter. (Honestly, I couldn't see a difference at the beginning, sooo I'd say that you're fine with theirs.) Next was taping it onto the painted wood backing.

Then came the nailing. The hours and hours of nailing. But that led to this. 

We were tempted to keep it here, since the simplicity itself is so retro and lovely, but decided it blended in with the grey walls too much. So I swooped in to take over for the stringing. You see, Peyton had a plan to go every fifth nail to the diagonal by the 19th power times pi, over and over again, and I just could not see this getting finished before our son's first birthday. He stepped away because my haphazard manner was close to heart-attack inducing. Fifteen minutes later I ushered him in, he hung it up, and we smiled. 

Ta-da! We love, love, LOVE it. And so does sweet Dex, who stares at it from his crib when we fail to come rescue him quickly. 

And how about a real throwback pic, taken one week before the boy's arrival?

{sorry for the immediate boob shot there... I want this as a reminder, but I definitely get ya good!}

And with that, I will go sit, rub my belly, and miss his little kicks from within. Pretty good job though, right? This is one of those things that constantly remind me of the greatness that is Peyton. Thank you, sir, for getting on board with the honey-do wish list and making this happen ten times better than I could. You're pretty darn awesome. 

Now off to check some more of your lovely works. Please leave a comment so I can love on your creations some!

LIVE THE MURRAYED LIFE

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