my sister's nursery: Part I

My sister J is having a baby any day now. She's put together cutest nursery for my niece! She has kindly agreed to share the room and lift the heavy blogging burden from my shoulders (yes, that's right, one week of blogging and I've already got someone else doing the work).

Yay, I’m the first guest blogger! I figured I would share my nursery with you. My baby’s due date was Saturday (two days ago), and she decided she likes her current living quarters too much to move into this super cute nursery I’ve been working on for her. This weekend, since I wasn’t in labor I decided to complete the finishing touches for her room that I just hadn’t gotten around to yet – like hanging some of the pictures. (Because I’m sure it was the lack of art on the walls that was keeping in her my womb).

Here’s a picture from the hallway looking into the room. I wanted something girly, my husband wanted something not pink. The compromise – green and brown, with plenty of pink accents.

The chair was a gift from the in-laws and is made by Best Chair, and I think it is nicer than similar Pottery Barn options – a more manageable size for a smaller room, a million upholstery options, and a much easier price tag. Behind the chair is a vinyl wall art tree by Dali Decals. I have a bunch more leaves that I could add to the tree, and I still haven’t decided whether I like it as is, or if should add more leaves – opinions? The table was a $4 find at a thrift store, and I gave it a new coat of pink paint. The lamp was also a thrift store find, and I recovered the lampshade to match the bedding (see below). I’m not so sure about the lamp base which is why I took the picture from a distance. I might end up putting the shade on a new lamp base from target or something… We’ll see. The pink and green blanket on the ottoman was knitted by my super talented sister.

Moving to the other side of the room, we’ve got the expedit bookshelf from Ikea. I love these shelves. Right now we’ve got lots of empty baskets for storage that I’m sure will fill up soon once the baby is here. In the corner of the room there is an alphabet picture I made. Zoomed in here. I need to reprint on larger paper and put in the frame straight, but you get the idea (the crookedness and paper seam is really bothering me, so I should have done that this weekend but didn’t get around to it).

Basically, I found dingbats for various animals and created the whole thing in Microsoft powerpoint. Pretty easy, and I could personalize all the details, like the colors or what animals I wanted. Some of the animals we had to think really hard to come up with (V for vampire bat anyone?) or even use google (like X for xiphias). You might think the picture is just a swordfish, but really it’s a xiphias. Duh. The problem was two-fold – we first had to think up the animal that started with the strange letters – and then actually find a dingbat of that animal. The project was a couple weeks in the making, but I’m pretty happy with how it came out.

Our daughter’s room couldn’t be too childish – and we wanted to influence her musical tastes at a young age – so we already decided she should be a wilco fan. And I loved this wilco poster. We actually went to a show on this tour with friends of ours, and they ended up buying the poster and getting it framed for us after I mentioned wanting it for the nursery. Gotta love friends who pay attention to dropped hints like that!

We’re working our way around the room here – and we’ve gotten to the crib corner. The crib… oh the crib. Started out as a saga – we were offered plenty of hand-me-down cribs that I didn’t feel all that comfortable taking – for safety and aesthetic reasons. But how do you tell people that while their crib was good enough for their child, it wasn’t good enough for ours? Plus, we were not very enthusiastic about spending a ton of money on a piece of furniture that we had been offered for free many times (three different cribs to be exact). When I started looking at cribs just to see our options, I stumbled upon the Graco eco-friendly crib – which had gotten good safety ratings, was recommended by the baby best buys book, was the color we wanted, environmentally friendly, and an unbelievable price (with free shipping if you ordered from amazon) - sold.

Above the bed are some paper lanterns that my friends used for decorations at my baby shower, and I thought they were perfect to use in the nursery. On the wall, pictures of a cat and dog – again dingbats/Microsoft powerpoint creation.

Part II to follow tomorrow....