My best friend is pregnant. This is exciting news for me because: (1) she’s the first person who is very close to me to become pregnant and (2) I’m going to be the godmother (!!!). Godmother duties apparently start off before the baby is born with (a) throwing the baby shower and (b) getting the nursery ready. The baby shower is schedule for the end of February, and I’ll have more details on the projects for that and the event pictures afterwards (here’s a teaser.. the theme is Curious George). But we have already started getting the nursery ready.

Michele wanted to put a tree mural and incorporate monkeys somehow. Since I had a week off between Christmas and New Year’s, I headed over to help her out.

Just starting to pencil in the tree..

I free-handed the tree in pencil, and then we refined it even more with the painted outline. We were originaly going to give it some shading and texture, but decided that it looked better in just the one color. Then we added leaves (used a Behr paint sample card as a stencil). Looked pretty cool with just the tree and the name.

Painting in the tree and branches

Michele painting in the leaves (I did the stencilling)

Finished tree with leaves

To add some different texture, we made monkey’s from felt to stick on the wall. I used a picture of the bedding that she had registered for as inspiration and drew three monkeys in different positions. Then we cut them out of felt and glued them to some cardstock before sticking them to the wall.

Many steps (probably not all necessary) in making these monkeys..

In all honesty.. it turned out a lot better than I was expecting. And got me even more excited to be helping her out during this important time in her (and Hung’s) life.

Starting to really look like a nursery.. not just a room with a crib..

Here are some more pictures that we took that day..