What to Hang Above Ella's Crib...

Scott and I have been considering what to hang above Ella's crib for months (it was something we chatted about frequently while I was pregnant).  We thought about hanging her name above the crib or maybe hanging a neat picture above her crib, but we just couldn't decide what to do. Then Scott decided we needed a mobile for above Ella's crib.I liked this one, but didn't think it would go with the color scheme in Ella's room. Scott thought this one would be great because "moody the monkey" (the monkey stuffed animal from her playmate) was on the mobile. I was a little worried that the lights and music would be too stimulating for her and rather than falling asleep we would have a very alert and awake baby. Plus, neither mobile was very "pretty."

So the space above Ella's crib stayed blank... UNTIL... I spotted this wonderful idea from a blog I enjoy reading. I loved the dainty flowers and the whimsical look of the mobile. Scott loved the idea too. He could picture Ella Bear laying under the flowers and watching them move around while she fell asleep. So we decided to give it our best shot and make the baby mobile!

We headed off to Joanne Fabrics (we had a 40% coupon from the paper to use) to find wire and flowers. Ella was a lot of help...

We found some pink hydrangeas in the clearance aisle. I was a little nervous that they were too loud (I was hoping for soft pink flower balls floating above Ella's crib), but upon further inspection of the flowers, I noticed that there were several flowers with white and soft pink petals. I decided that I would only use those flowers and save the hot pink and purple flowers for another project (who knows what project, but they are safely tucked away with the arts and crafts supplies in the basement).

While Scott worked on creating the wire ball forms (which he found difficult to do. We didn't want perfect balls, but random, whimsical balls. Scott was much better at making perfectly symmetrical wire balls... must be the engineer in him). Eventually he created 3 wonderful balls... one larger and two smaller ones. While Scott worked on the wire ball forms, I picked the metals from the pink hydrangeas. Ella was still a lot of help... (sleepyhead)!

We ran into some trouble when it came to getting the flowers to stick to the wire ball forms. Tacky glue wasn't work AT ALL! So we loaded Ella back into her carseat and headed to Michael's (we had a 20% off coupon from the newspaper this time). We purchased a hot glue gun (I HATE HOT GLUE, so I was very disappointed that we were resorting to using hot glue) and some hot glue sticks.

 When we returned I got to work sticking flower metals on the metal ball forms Scott had made... AND IT WORKED! Ella enjoyed watching us as she was now awake from her snooze!

Take a look at the finished product...