Nursery ideas

23 weeks, 6 days

I, like a large majority of women, have had nursery ideas strolling through my head for many years. Long before kids were a blip on my radar screen. I guess it's almost like planning your wedding way before you are engaged. I knew I didn't want a room that was too themey or baby. Yeah, I want it to be comfortable for a kid but I also want it to be a room that I want to be in. Call me selfish.

The difficult part about planning for a nursery is having to plan for two possible rooms. When he first comes home from the hospital, he will come home to the lame spare room in our townhouse. Then hopefully by the time he's 3 months old, we will be moving to the new house. (We spent 2 hours with our cabinet supplier last night and finished kitchen and bath designs and finalized all our products! We're making progress!)

With the spare room, we will have to work with the white walls and crappy fixtures but I still plan to make it a fun space that can easily move to the new room. So onto the good stuff...Inspiration pictures!

As I was browsing nursery ideas, I came across this and knew that it was the direction I wanted to go for Baby Boy. Joe's only stipulation was green and that it was very boyish. That's easy! We will switch the wall color and use the green as the main color and have a navy stripe.


The colors will be green, navy, charcoal, white and a tourquoisey blue.


We are both fans of more modern and comtemporary design, and after what felt like months and months of searching, we found a crib that fit our requirements. No curved lines and white. It shouldn't be so hard to find but add in the safety ratings and price (all our other favorites were $500+) and it was very hard.

This is due to arrive any day now. Pink not included.


I had actually decided on our changing table way before babies came into the picture. This dresser is from IKEA and the same one that was in my bedroom at my parents while I was in college. It's super sturdy, the drawers are HUGE and very affordable. We will strap on a changing pad and it will do double duty as the dresser and changing table. There is plenty of space for diapers, clothes, blankets, whatever. And will easily be able to move with him as he grows.


We are also getting a glider and ottoman. This will not fit in our current spare room with the rest of the baby things so it will be housed in our living room. This works out great as we have plenty of space and will be perfect for extra seating. We found a great option at Babies R Us. It's sooo comfy and still pretty stylish which was important to us. I'm looking forward to having it even before the baby is here.

For some reason the website doesn't have the exact chair but this is pretty close. The color is slightly lighter.


The last bit of furniture is going to be a bookcase. I knew we would need to get one but when I came across this picture (the bottom portion), it was decided.




The room in the new house has a big window in the center of the smallest wall so we will be doing this set up exactly. It will work as a makeshift window bench as well as storage. Aunt Adelle has already started adding to baby boy's library so we are gonna need plenty of space to house all his books.

Another example of the horizontal bookcase placed under the window.


We don't have quite enough space in the spare room to lay the bench down so the bookcase will stand tall in there like this.



Moving on to the fun stuff.....Details!

I decided to skip the bedding sets that are usually found in most nurseries. I had a very specific idea in mind of what I wanted and none of the sets I could find really went with that. And honestly, the bedding sets seem to be a pretty big waste. They are $$$ and I wouldn't use half the pieces so really, why bother? We are steering clear from bumpers (increases babies risk of SIDS). Diaper stackers seem pretty useless to me. I preferred doing drapes rather than a valance so that would get tossed. The only pieces left are the sheet and crib skirt.

These sheets I found will work great with our color scheme. Don't pay attention to the ocean themed bumper. We're just doing the polka dot sheets.


Joe about peed his pants when he saw these sheets when we registered so these will also be in the rotation.



Since I can't paint in the spare room, I plan to bring in a bunch of accessories and color to make it feel a little less boring for baby boy. (Okay for me, since I know he could care less but I have his best interests at heart.)

Drapes will be long panels of this chevron pattern OR solid navy. I really wanted to bring in something with more pattern and color in the drapes but I've searched everywhere and the perfect set is not out there for a reasonable amount of money. I'm leaning towards the chevron because I like the pattern and I need to bring in more gray.



We will need pillows for the bench seat and glider.


And of course, we can't forget the art. Everything is from either Etsy or DIYed by me.




Lastly, we have random rooms that I like for various reasons.




That's most everything in a nutshell. Stay tuned as we make more progress!