"Beg, Borrow, and Steal" or "Making a Free Nursery"

There were a few things I learned in my brief stint as a teacher.  Okay, there were a LOT of things I learned.  One of them was what I call the Teachers' Creed.  You might think it has something to do with ensuring every child has a quality, educational experience in the classroom.  While that is every teacher's goal, that's not the one I'm talking about.  I'm talking about "Beg, borrow, and steal.  Don't reinvent the wheel."  This has to do with maintaining your own sanity by using others' ideas and making them your own to work with your students. You don't need to create everything yourself.  Ask for help.  I put that principle to good use when gathering the fabrics for the nursery bedding.

My original idea for the nursery would have included buying everything new...and probably not sewing the bedding.  I did that for my first daughter and swore I'd never do it again.  Too much work.  Having more time than money changes that up.  Because I'm going for a $0 budget to make this nursery I have no choice but to use what I can get my hands on for free.  Beg, borrow, and steal, right?  Note: Don't really steal.  It's wrong and bad and I don't actually do it. I don't have a big fabric stash (all mismatched knits) so I had to turn to my mom and ask if I could raid hers.  She has way more than I do.  My mom had actually purchased some fabric for me to use for my oldest daughter's crib bedding.  I had already purchased all my fabric for that project.  While a jungle theme wasn't really what I had ever planned on doing for a nursery, the price was right, there was enough yardage, and the fabric was cute enough.  The two jungle prints and the lighter yellow came from my mom's fabric boxes.  I wanted a little more variety, so I called my grandma and asked to go through her stash.  The orange print and the blue solid came from her house.  The darker yellow on top is leftovers I found at my house, but I doubt I'll be able to use it because there's so little of it.

The next problem was a crib.  We bough convertible cribs for the others to grow up with.  Then we only need to buy mattresses.  We're too poor to buy a crib right now.  We put our oldest in a big girl bed (with a mattress set my parents no longer need), our second in the toddler bed that our oldest used to use, and planned to put the baby in the crib from our second.  That idea worked well enough.  Then I saw someone post on Facebook that they had a crib (in need of repair) to give away.  I took it.

It requires a bit more repair than I feel comfortable putting a baby in after I'm done, so it's back to square one.  But don't think I haven't got a plan for that little crib.

The great thing about telling people you're looking for free or cheap nursery stuff is that it gets it on their radar, too.  Last week I got a call from my mom asking me if I wanted a gently used crib.  It was used for sleepovers at a grandma's house.  I quickly said yes.

Yes, the nursery is currently serving as the catch-all room.  You know you've done it too.

So now everyone has their own bed again.  The crib sheet above is one I made for my oldest daughter.  You can see why I'm not excited to put my little boy in it.  Anyway, we'll just have to buy this kiddo a convertible bed when he's older and we can (hopefully) afford it.  I'm so excited to see how the nursery comes together!  Oh, yeah...I like the price, too.