First, let me say that as much as I love pink, I did not want a nursery covered in pink. In fact, I wanted to stay so far away from pink that Scott had to force me to register for other pink items (as in, items that weren't nursery related...clothes, blankets, towels, etc.). I knew I wanted to decorate her room (and most importantly - paint the walls) in colors that she would still enjoy as she got older. Additionally - I wanted it to be a room that I enjoyed, seeing as she's not going to really have an opinion on it for a while. I knew immediately that I wanted to do some shade of gray on the walls. Picking that shade of gray proved a little tricky though, when we considered the fact that our trim and doors were all off-white, and you usually see gray walls paired with bright white trim/doors. After throwing several paint samples on the walls, we settled on Benjamin Moore's Rockport Gray with 50% color reduction. I should add here that this is the only time I have ever spent this much time deciding on a paint color - pregnancy has either made me much more patient or much more indecisive. I haven't figured out which one yet.
After the wall color was settled, I spent many evenings browsing bedding sets online. Can I just say that there are WAY too many crib bedding sets with animals, cartoons, and gigantic flowers that are just not appealing to most adults?! I absolutely did not want her room to look like a cartoon character lived there (no offense to anyone who likes that style) because, again, I wanted to enjoy this room as well. I finally found the perfect bedding set on Overstock.com and even better - the stock photo had it paired with a white crib and gray walls! My parents were sweet enough to offer to buy the bedding and our crib. Once we found out we were having a girl, I knew I wanted a white crib but I did not want an entire matching white furniture set. This was mostly because new complete furniture sets for babies are EXPENSIVE these days, and I knew I wouldn't want her to have white furniture for the next 18 years.
Moving on...since we didn't purchase a complete furniture set, it meant I needed to hit up some consignment stores to find furniture pieces for the rest of the room. My mom and I spent one long Saturday stopping at a variety of stores I had found online. We finally found the perfect small dresser that would also work as her changing table at a consignment store called The Perfect Piece in Cary (check them out...LOTS of cute stuff there!). I can't remember how, but I somehow found the person who painted this dresser on Facebook. I contacted her and let her know what piece I had purchased and that I was in search of a chest of drawers of a similar style. She quickly sent me a picture of a pink dresser she had that she thought would match perfectly and said that she could paint it another color for me. I took her a couple of paint swatches and we picked one that was the closest to a periwinkle color. It turned out perfect! I will say that now that we have more purple items in the room, the dresser has more of a baby blue look to it..but I still love it!
Last but certainly not least - I have to address two other special items in the nursery: the chandelier and the bookshelves. I'm sure many of you have noticed the new trend of hanging chandeliers in nurseries. I ran across a blog of a photographer who made a DIY chandelier for her baby girl's nursery and I LOVED it. I immediately headed to the Habitat ReStore in Sanford a couple weeks later and found an ugly, old, rusted brass chandelier for around $20. I told Scott my ideas for it and he ended up surprising me about a week later when he snuck it over to his dad's to start the paint job. A coat of primer and a few coats of white spray paint, and it looked like a totally different light fixture! Sadly, I don't have a picture of it before the paint job, but I do have one of it before the "bedazzling," during, and after:
The process of picking out what beads to decorate the chandelier with was much more difficult then it probably should have been (which probably supports the indecisiveness versus patience theory). Anyway, after much searching I settled on some beads from the jewelry section in Michaels, and I absolutely love it! PS. Baby B - your daddy has quite the talent for bedazzling things - for future reference ;-)
Lastly - the bookshelves. I knew I wanted some sort of bookshelves that would allow her books to display face forward. There are so many pinterest ideas out there for book slings and book racks that you can mount to the wall, but none of them appealed to me. I finally found a book rack at Pottery Barn Kids that was perfect - but it was also $120 for one small book rack. Luckily, Scott's dad is really good at making things like this. I showed him a picture of it and wrote down the dimensions and he made a perfect replica! However, after our Chapel Hill Shower, we realized we were going to need another...so he quickly whipped up a second one! I absolutely love them and they are the perfect addition to her room!
Without further ado and after much more nursery information than anyone probably cared to know..I reveal to you our sweet girl's nursery! Enjoy!
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