for baby's room

True story: Back in the (college) day, I entered a Hallmark Mother's Day writing contest and won my mom 12 months' worth of expensive and impressive flowers. 

The local news station even came out to interview us. 

That's a big deal in Iowa, ok?

It was really just affirmation of what I already knew: that my stay-at-home mama -- who fed me and schlepped me an hour to confirmation class and homeschooled me and then drove me a half hour to meet the school bus twice a day for a year and helped me through 4-H and listened to all my boy troubles, etc. -- is just the kind of mom I want to be to this little baby.

In other words, Mom set the bar HIGH. 

So when she came to spend a week with us, I really should have been taking care of HER in exchange for all she's done for ME, but somehow it worked out that I just kept asking her to help with more projects. And she did. And they turned out adorably. 

Like this woodland mobile for Baby's room. 

All it took was one hour in Michael's, and there was no turning back. We loaded up on:

• Sparkly adorns and branches. 
• Cute little birdies.
• Glittered pinecones. 
• A nest and some moss balls. 
• Feathers. Because the world can always use more feathers. 
• Peanut butter M & Ms. Those don't have anything to do with crafting, but they are a necessity. 

  

Then I plugged in the glue gun, poured Mom a root beer and got out of her way. 

Trust me. It's better than way.

She tied three strands of colored twine to the bird's nest -- evenly spaced around the edge -- so that it could hang from a hook in the ceiling.

That same twine was cut at varying lengths and tied to the nest so that she could hang adorableness on the underside.

Then -- in no particular order -- she hot glued feathers, sparkly leaves, acorns, moss balls and birds to the twine.

There was a lot of "Should the leaves go with the acorns or with the pinecones?" and "Does it need a red feather or a yellow feather?" and a lot of me saying, "Um...what you just said. Yeah. Definitely that."

The good news? It's hard to screw up. The combination was cute no matter how she grouped items together!

The last step was to -- legit -- feather that nest and add the mama bird to it.

The feathers came in a $1.99 package of a zillion different colors, but we opted for a little pop of red because red is the best color EVER. #commonknowledge

She added a glittery pinecone and an orange acorn for good measure, tucked in two moss balls and then glued the sweet little birdie on top. We decided not to use regular plastic eggs from the craft store because they were tiny and no one would have been able to see them anyway. Go big or . . . uh . . . don't go. That's what we say.

See how easy that little project is? It's not even DIY. It's DIM (Do it, Mom).

All the pieces needed to make this mobile are even pretty easy to gather up. You just need one wonderful mom, some crafting supplies, a baby on the way and a ceiling to hang the mobile from.

It can't get any more DIY than that!