The Nursery

Nursery's are so fun. Seriously. Just funness all around. I was really excited to be able to do this nursery before our little guy arrived. I had bought a boy nursery set when I was pregnant with Macy because it was on hardcore clearance and it matched a boy cross-stitch that I had made. It had been sitting in the back of the closet in Macy's room for almost 3 years now. I had the bedding and the room ready to decorate for a boy but for some reason I just couldn't bring myself to get started on the room. It took me forever to decide what color I wanted to paint it, and even then I really wasn't excited and kept putting it off. 

On Pinterest I found a bunch of grey and yellow nursery's that I fell in love with and the sadder I got that I had bought that bedding set. I've turned into a pretty frugal person and I couldn't stand the thought of spending money on this bedding and not using it. I finally decided that it just didn't matter. I got the bedding 4 years ago and I just didn't love it anymore, things change.

 I told my mom my plans of a grey and yellow nursery and she took it and ran with it. There was a week that she could come before they (Mom, Dad, Kyle, Chris, and Uncle Gary) all went on the Race Across America that she could come help me set up the nursery so we started making plans to do it. Some friends had a baby shower planned for that Saturday so we figured we'd just have a "get ready for baby" weekend and jam a bunch of stuff out. I had about 2 weeks to get the room ready for my mom to come with all the fabric to make the bedding so Kyle and I hit the ground running... at that point we only had 10 weeks till my due date! 

This is the room before we started. We had already moved things away from the walls but luckily I remember the "before" pictures before we did too much.

THE WALLS- This room has been the "don't know what to do with this so toss it in there" room since we moved in. The girls sleep in the bedroom at the end of the hall, it's bigger and the door is right across from our room and I wanted to keep them in there, so decided baby boy would just be a little down the hall. The walls were still white from the investor that fixed the house up so it was a pretty blank slate. I picked a grey from our local hardware store and hoped that it would match the fabric that my Mom got. Macy walked in while I was washing the walls (lots of dust from not being used) and helped me. Sweet girl. 

I got this painted in a day, started early and ended late. I LOVE the color. Love love love.

THE CRIB- We were lucky enough to be given a crib when we had Macy, but it was definitely used and the paint was started to chip off. I really wanted a new crib, but decided it would be cheaper to just sand it down and repaint it instead. It took Kyle all week to do the crib, it's a lot of sanding! I'm happy with the way it turned out though. It used to be a drop side crib and Kyle figured out how to turn around some of the drop down mechanisms so it stays in place now. The bedding is all props to my Mom. She really did a fabulous job and we worked out butts off. She looked at some tutorials before she came, but for the most part we just winged it.

 Originally she was supposed to come up on that Wednesday and help with the nursery but only half of the fabric that she ordered came in. The next half of fabric didn't come in until mid-afternoon on Thursday. Our "week" had turned into 4 days, and then turned into 2. We had Thursday night, Friday, and 1/2 of Saturday to complete the nursery. 

Thursday night we started the bumper. We basically just did a big pillow case for the girls bumper and just slid the boy one on. I say "slid" like it was easy, it's not, at all. We accidentally made it too short at first so we had to undo seams to make it the right length in the right spots. Long story short, it wasn't easy! :) but I think it turned out AMAZING. The inside of the bumper is grey corduroy on the longer sides and then a super cute fabric with giraffes on the smaller sides.  The sheets turned out awesome, we made one with big white polka dots and one with small white polka dots, the one in the picture is the bigger dots. The dust ruffle also had a little accident. We accidentally made the part that goes under the mattress too small so we had to redo that. It doesn't sound like that big of a deal, but we only had a certain amount of fabric to work with and if we messed up again we were going to have to go to Walmart (30 minutes away) which would take time out of our already crunched schedule. Anyway, we had enough fabric to add to it and it turned out just perfect. We used the stripes for the most part and even though you can't see it, in the pleat is the giraffe fabric.  

 THE DRESSER- My original thought was to paint the whole dresser white with the stripes. Kyle sanded it all down and put some primer on it and I decided I loved the way it looked just like that. It looked more white washed then solid white, and with the crib and changing table being solid white I think it's more visually pleasing since it's a little different. I put some grey stripes on the front and we got some new hardware. The original color of grey I got was WAY too light, you almost couldn't tell between the white and the grey. I added some black acrylic paint I had and got this color. Hopefully I never have to touch it up because I'll never get that exact color again. The lamp on the dresser is actually my Great-Grandma Bochat's that was given to me by my mom. It used to be just plain wood color that I painted black a while ago. It used to be in my living room but the dresser needed something on it and this was perfect for it. The lampshade used to be white and we covered it with the polka dot. The box on the dresser was a gift from my mom,  each of my girls have a hat box like it that I keep their baby book, coming home outfit, blessing dress, and other odd and end baby keepsakes- so now baby boy has one. It won't stay there, but it was there from my Baby Shower.

THE CURTAINS- This is a fairly long window that had a super ugly vertical blinds covering it. My budget was fairly small for this nursery so I just got the same cheap mini-blinds that are in the girls room (I like that they match now from the outside of our house) but it's amazing how much cleaner it looks with simple new blinds. We tied in the bumper, dust ruffle, and sheets all the the curtains. The top is the small polka dots, the middle is the same fabric as the dust ruffle, and the bottom is the giraffe fabric. We added some huge ric-rac in between the two bottom panels to add a little something to it, and I love how they turned out.

THE MOBILE- My original plan was redoing the fabric on the girls mobile that hooks onto the crib and making little birdies to hang from it. That way there was still the moving parts and it would still play music.... then I found something I loved on Pinterest. My mom didn't find out my plans changed until she got here and I said "ya... I don't think I wanna do that anymore..." :) I think it turned out amazing. I love to turn on the fan and watch it wave. We already have a music thing that hangs on the side of the crib so I didn't think the moving mobile really mattered. You might have to zoom into the picture to notice but on some places instead of using circles we used animals. There are a couple whales, elephants, and giraffes.

THE CHANGING TABLE- Our changing table was given to us along with our crib and the paint wasn't chipping so all we needed to do was given it a good little wash down. My mom found these baskets at Alco for like $0.50 last time she was down here and they fit perfectly in the changing table and matched the girl bedding really well, you can see them in the "before pictures" in the changing table. We had enough corduroy left over from the bumper that my mom made the baskets new liners. I also didn't have a changing pad sheet to match the bedding, so she made one of those too. Told you, she's amazing. 

WALL ART: I found the embroidery hoop art work idea on pinterest. My mom carted her silhouette up here and that's how we got the elephant and giraffe from the fabric. We still need a couple more to finish it up but I still think it looks great.

After reading all this remember.. we did this in 2 DAYS. We got started around 8am and went to bed around 10pm, working the entire time. I have a couple shelves I still want to put up, art work, and some knick knacks to finish it off, but I'm super duper happy with the way it all turned out.