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making room for baby
A new series I have decided to start on my blog was inspired by the all AH-MAZEing pintrest. If you aren’t familiar with this site, it’s a brilliant way to catalogue things you find on the internet that you like, or even just things that other people have found and posted on their own Pintrest account. It’s a virtual bulletin board, really. And, I love it. You should check it out–and if so pinspired, go ahead and follow me here.
I have attempted and completed many projects and recipes inspired by Pintrest, but didn’t think to photograph them all. So, I’ll start doing that as I see fit–but for now I’m going to back track and start cataloguing things that I have photographed and would like to share!
Today I’d like to share the nursery we prepared for our baby girl! I have to say, first, I am SO lucky to have been able to do everything I wanted to in preparation for my baby. We are SO lucky to have such fabulous family to have helped us out and we worked hard and thrifted well to make sure we could put together the nursery of our dreams. However, a nursery is made by love and laughter–it’s not about the cosmetic finishings and the fuzzy bears. And while I have a special attachment to our nursery, I realize now more than ever that we would love any room as long as our baby was happy and healthy.
That being said–knowing what I know now about my life; I TOTALLY would have gone to school for interior design, or some sort of art degree if I could do it all over again. My mind THRIVES in creativity and solving visual problems, AND I love being thrifty!
Our biggest challenge in preparing this room was that we wanted to try and keep it as gender neutral as possible. We hope that we can use this room for all of our children, and being money-conscious was of big importance to us. So wanted to create a room with bones that could work for any gender.
I searched for gender-neutral baby things for many hours, and beyond safari and zoo themed rooms let me tell you, inspiration is hard to find! So, I decided to settle on a color scheme first. I saw this image, on pintrest (the website link didn’t work and there are no photo credits as you’ll see with many pictures I post) and I kept returning to it. So, I decided aqua and orange would be my “pops” of color, though I didn’t want to paint the whole room aqua.
Next, I was really drawn to this image:
{Photo Creds to: One Pork Chop}
I really liked the contrast of the orange and aqua against the neutral colored walls. I had also really been wanting to paint a room grey, so, I decided GReY it is! My color pallet would be “orange, aqua and grey! So I searched for nurseries with those colors…and found this:
I loved the clean fresh feel and thought that it was a pretty unique combination. It also seemed doable for our smaller room size, and perhaps it’d even make it look bigger! The challenge of course when using inspiration is to try and keep it just that. Inspiration. Many of the ideas and combinations in my room are very similar but I feel I was still able to make it our own by changing a few things.
My first project for the room was the bedding. I knew that I wasn’t going to be buying bumpers and I didn’t want to buy a set that came from a big-box store. I couldn’t find anything that really spoke to me, that didn’t cost hundreds of dollars and that I could use for any gender. So I decided to make the bedding myself. I found this pin on pintrest and I really liked the way the quilt looked. I also thought I could then personalize it in anyway I wanted:
{photo creds: Imperfect Homemaking.com}
When I gathered supplies to make the quilt, we didn’t know the gender yet–so I got material for both and made two!
{This is the one that we ended up using for Tess}
Next we went shopping for a crib. I looked on craigslist and in rummage to hope and find a project that worked with my vision–but it was a no-go. When there was a big sale–we ended up getting the crib and a dresser on sale, AND we got $250 in gift cards for making the purchase that we were able to use on future purchases from babies-r-us. We used the gift cards towards a crib mattress and a changing pad, amongst some other less excited necessities. I think we ended up spending a total of $400ish on both the crib, dresser, mattress, changing pad, bringing baby home outfit, hangers, and a few other items I can’t recall right now. Such a steal!
I also was able to order the rug and chair online during sales (rug: on sale for $99 @ Rosenberryrooms.com; glider 69.99 @ Kohls.com which by the way has a HUGE online baby dept). I HATE waiting, TRUST ME. Once I had an idea of what I wanted to do, I just wanted to get it done! But I knew that things would go on sale, and so I watched websites and waited for coupons and got some amazing sales. I also had to wait until my mom and sister came to visit at the end of July, as I promised them I’d save the nursery for them to help! Waiting ended up being a good thing because I was able to come up with a more complete vision of what I wanted to do.
I knew I needed decorations for the walls, but I wanted to use something that would be interchangeable and unique. So I found these pictures on pintrest:
{photo cred: Aedrial}
{photo cred: BubbyMakesThree}
So I purchased some needlepoint hoops from JoAnn’s when they were on sale and decided that I would use left over fabric from my quilt projects, dependent on what the gender was.
{our version of the loop and material art for Tess’s room}
It was important to me to have books available to my baby (everywhere in my house really). So I looked for ideas for bookshelves and narrowed it down to these, because it they were cheap, customizable, a good size, and attainable.
{photo cred: imgspark.com}
{photo cred: wonderful joy ahead}
My mom picked up six ikea spice racks for me, which were 2.99 a piece. So for the total of $18 and a can of spray paint I had six awesome book shelves!
{our bookshelves for Tess’s room!}
I couldn’t find any curtains that I loved for the space. I figured I would end up making my own, and kept my eyes open for a great fabric. While we were at Ikea on a trip to Florida to visit my family, we found some great graphic materials. My husband picked out our fabric and I loved it! The only problem was that the color green in the design didn’t work, so we simply bought some fabric paint and painted over it with a color that worked better! I followed this link:
{photo cred: House of the Hepworths}
The last big thing that we picked out was the paint! This worked out great because I already had all the colors for the room in hand because I had the bedding made and the wall art made. We bought a gallon of grey for the walls and a quart of aqua for the ceiling. My mom and my sister basically did all the grunt work! They painted the whole room and put together the shelves. My sister painted the “A, B, C” for the book wall, and decoupaged material onto the big “C” for Contessa.
When my mom went to paint the ceiling, we used this technique that we found on pintrest:
{photo cred: Houzz.com}
Finally, my sister made this awesome Pintrest inspired hairbow holder! I had this frame that I loved, and thought it’d be perfect for this project, I love the way it turned out
The inspiration:
{photo cred: The Paro Post}
Our final hairbow holder:
{Tess’s headband holder}
Ok, enough about the details, here’s the final project!
I was so excited to be featured on Apartment Therapy once we completed the room! My friend reccomended we submit our photos and we did…and then a few days later I got an email saying to check it out–you should too!! Click HERE!
Hope you’ve been Pinspired!
