I've always liked the idea of painting a mural on our children's walls. For years I've been conceptualizing a world map Mercator projection for when they get a little older and their playroom starts to turn into a study. This early, though, it might be a bit much. So Sed and I decided to put up a 360-degree forest meadow for Margarita.

"Hang on," you're saying. "Aren't you moving in two years? The kid's not even gonna be old enough to appreciate the amount of work it will take to put up all those trees, bears, deer, streams, birds, hikers, forest fires, and PowerBar wrappers before you have to cover it all up with white again."

Actually, you already said that, and you're right. Which is why we decided to downsize our grand scheme to one element: the butterfly. With my mom's help, I banged the whole thing out in a weekend.



This is where we started. White ... so ... boring ... zzzzzzz.... Sadly, that's the state of our entire house. Could we color it up some? Yeah, but then we'd have to make it white again before we leave. This one room is quite enough.



I wanted purple on the wall, Sed wanted green. So we compromised and painted the wall green. But seriously, when we were comparing paint chips to the wood of the furniture we chose, the purple made it feel kind of cold. Too modern-designery for my dear wife.



But I did get to paint the closet doors purple.



I cut stencils out of cardstock to make the butterflies. The pros say you should use acetate, and I found out why when, about halfway around the room, the water-based latex paint started really soaking into the paper and making it droop. Still, I have a feeling that cardstock was much more forgiving with my heavy-handed cutting technique than a sheet of stiff plastic would have been.



The crib was super-easy to assemble, even coming in as many parts as it did. My mom also put up new sheer cafe curtains while I was at work yesterday, which will sit behind the yellow ones her friend is making for us and replace the blinds that Kucha broke by constantly jamming her head around the side to look out the window. She was not happy with these blocking her view. It's only a matter of time before she figures out how to nose them aside, I guess.



Storage is a premium at any time, but especially when your baby's closet shelf is already packed full of camping gear. This new shelf gives us a place to put ornaments and special toys on display but out of breaking reach. It's not totally done yet -- I need to put a support bracket in the center so it doesn't eventually sag and block the closet doors.



A few more articles are on their way. Sed found the crib set online through Costco, and my mom couldn't resist ordering us the glider and ottoman. We'll also be buying the dresser with our tax return, unless someone else surprises us. But after that, pretty much all we'll need to put in the room is the baby.