Nursery Ideas!

Well, our baby isn't even half done cooking and we've put a ton of thought and work into the nursery. First we got it all set up in the room at the end of the hall because it was closest to the spare bathroom. After a month of musing on the floorplan (which I HATED), I finally decided we needed to switch it to the room closer to the stairs. It sounded simple in theory but it turns out both rooms were packed with junk so it took an entire evening of Don's muscle. He did it willingly but he did mutter a few times about how much junk I have, heehee.

And now the floor plan is perfect. The crib is away from the window and anything else that baby might reach for later in life. The changing table is unobstructed and relatively close to the crib. The bookshelf is by the glider, and the spare bed has enough room around it to be usable. Phew! Oh, and there's an itty bitty amount of floor space for changing clothes/playing/dogs to lay down and be in the way.

So what's next? Well, we have all the important parts and pieces so really we could probably call it quits. Buuuuttt, I really won't be satisfied with such a sterile looking room for baby, and it's a little room so it won't take much for it to be made-up. So what is next is my favorite part: design and decorating!

We both decided that we want the room to be very gender neutral for a few reasons: the first is because this house is destined to be a rental so gender neutral will mean we won't turn away potential renters. The second reason is because we might end up in this house longer than planned and need to use the room for more than one baby. Even if we move before baby #2, we can take all the parts and pieces with and still have a gender neutral room. See how clever that is? :)

We also both decided that we didn't want to do anything to "baby" or with too much of a "theme." I always look at rooms full of monkeys and bananas or pink daisies and butterflies and think, "That's really cute! And the kid will agree for the next 2-3 years. And then what?!" We definitely want the room to be fun, quirky, personal, but also calming and simple. It's actually a relatively hard balance to get just right.

Here's what we've come up with so far! (By the way, all images are from Pinterest and should link directly back to their original pins.)

All of our furniture is white except the glider and bookcase. I'm planning on painting the bookcase white to match with a fun pop of color on the back. The glider will stay the dark wood that it is because it's beautiful, mostly covered by cushions, and a complete pain to try and paint.

The walls are going to get beadboard wainscoting about halfway up. The wainscoting and trim will all be painted an off-white. The doors and windows will also get beefed-up trim in the same color.

Above the wainscoting, the walls will be a green of some sort. We're trying to decide what shade of green and probably won't until we find out boy or girl. For a girl, a softer sage is in order and a boy will probably get something a big darker and more saturated like a forest green.

This is the green I'd use for a girl.

And this is the green we'd use for a boy. The wainscoting here is also similar to what we want to do, but the white paint is a little bright in this picture for our tastes.

I also like this green for a boy or girl.

As for fabrics, we both wanted a subdued, but fun print. Our first choice was a special order birch tree fabric that came in almond and white or gray and white but it's waaaaay out of our price range! (And probably a bit serious for a baby's room.)  Here it is in almond and white:

Pretty!! Pretty expensive...

So what we've settled on is a different birch fabric which I also ADORE and think will make for a much better baby's room when we build around it.

The winning fabric!

Isn't it adorable?! I think it'll mesh well with the green and white walls. And look at that handsome woodpecker. If it's a boy, I'll incorporate a little orange, for sure.

Here's what I think I'd like to use for the fitted crib sheet:

I think I'll find something in the soft blue to make the crib skirt out of. I also want to make some felt animals to set around the nursery.....

Aren't they huggable?!

Finally I'm going to make a pennant or two to string across the corner over the crib out of fabric scraps along the lines of this guy:

It's not safe, in my paranoid mind, to have anything solid above the crib that could fall down, but I think the pennants should be cute and soft, right?

Lastly we'll hang some photos in spray painted frames and leave some empty shadowboxes to be filled at a later date by my creative friends. I'm loving the ones that have the announcement and the outfit baby came home in all arranged artfully in a way I'd never think of like this:

So, there you have all that we have for now! I'm sure there's a lot I'm leaving out, but it'll all come together on its own good time. Like after Christmas when we can afford the tools for the wainscoting and trim, haha.