Nursery Fun

Let me start by saying the day I started to write this post was the same day I got an email from a fellow Mommy friend who sent me an article titled, "23 Things I Think New Parents Should Know."  And #1 (no joke) was: The more time and effort put into decorating a nursery, the more likely that the baby will sleep in your room.  I had to laugh because as much as I thought we would be those parents that had a very simple nursery, I still seem to spend a lot of time planning and thinking about it and wanting it to not be too simple.  My how things change sometimes once things are put into motion.

So there, I just wanted to share that first!  Oops, haha! :)  Here is the story of our nursery ideas anyway...

Since we are not finding out the gender of our sweet babe, planning a nursery had to be thought out a little more than usual.  Not to girly, not to boyish, not to boring, not to plain.  I thought this would be pretty easy because even if we had decided to find out the gender I wouldn't have done a really pink/purple room or a really blue room.  It's just not our style.

With that said, we wanted to do atleast a little color so we decided on orange.  So oranges, browns, creams, whites, and tans were the final decision.  Pretty easy, right?  I thought so.

I have never been big into themes either and thought we would just plan on doing something that looked "us" because what did the baby really care anyway?!  :)  Well once I started searching Etsy and finding fabrics, the fabrics led me to a theme after all.  Once again, things change!  I think that just may be happening a lot in the coming years.

So here we are.  We have the nursery about half done, but it is coming along and so far I am really liking the progress.  Ryan has never really cared from the beginning what the nursery looked like so he is easy to work with!  He's been great for helping me with painting, putting together furniture, making shelves, and hanging things so he definitely hasn't been in the dark!

As for furniture, we ended up deciding on a very dark brown (espresso so it's called) crib and dresser from Babies R Us.  Then we added in some white shelves and a white armoire so it wasn't too dark.  We have very dark hardwood floors, too.

Below are the 3 fabrics we chose for curtains and crib bedding.  Nursery Dreams from Etsy is making those for us.

Fabric #1 is how we decided to use a theme.  I kept seeing little bird things that I liked that I thought would work great in our nursery.  So after a month or so, we decided we'd incorporate birds into the nursery as well.

I was on Etsy one day and came across these adorable bird knobs from The Turquoise Cottage so once we decide on a color, we will definitely be purchasing these to replace the armoire door knobs.

They will look great next to the bird curtain rod I found at Tuesday Morning (of all places).  Very excited about this find b/c 1.  It goes with the theme and 2.  It wasn't that expensive considering how big it had to be to fit our window.

To incorporate more of the khaki/tan color, we found this glider at Babies R Us.  I believe the correct name for the color was "oatmeal."  The orange pillow cover (still need the pillow insert!) I found on one of my very favorite websites, Very Jane.

Here are 2 lamps we plan on incorporating as well.  The one on the left is from Ross and one on the right is from TJ Maxx so as you can imagine, cute and cheap, which is right up our alley. :)  I thought the one on the left was neat because the lines are all made of a material that looks like sticks.  Birds...trees...sticks...yeah, I know, you get my correlation there! 

My sister-in-law found this ottoman online at Target one day and I of course had to snatch that right up.  It was actually my very first purchase for the nursery and it might just be my favorite piece in there so far.  It matches perfectly with the orange and the birds.  Love it!

Lastly I really wanted some cute prints to frame for the nursery.  I came across yet another wonderful Etsy vendor, West Eighty Third, and I loved some of their prints.  Plus they could do any of their prints in any colors you wanted. Below are the 2 I decided on and plan to get them framed in white frames.  You may notice a little turquoise in the prints, which was another suggestion by my sister-in-law.  It gives the nursery just a little more pop of color.  We plan on adding in some other little turquoise things just to bring it all together (picture frames, pillows, etc). 

I can't wait to see it all come together!  Once the nursery is actually complete I will come back with another post, but for now it sure is fun to share ideas!  I sure hope Baby Harper loves the little "nest" we are making for him/her!