One of the things I am most excited about with this pregnancy and our new home is the opportunity to exercise my quote-unquote “creative” muscles. What I really mean, is the opportunity to find out if they even exist. Thank the Lord for websites like Pinterest and all the home improvement, DIY, and decorating blogs out there, because that is where I draw my inspiration from. I see a concept that I like and think I can recreate, and springboard from there.
I never wanted to find out the baby’s gender before birth, and initially, neither did Denny. That made it even easier to set up a gender neutral nursery that all of our (hopefully) future children will be able to enjoy without us having to break the bank each time a new one comes along (in case the next one is not a boy/girl respectively). When trying to decide how and what the nursery would look like, I at least knew that I didn’t want it to look like every other baby’s room; with baby blocks, or baby Pooh Bear, or animals, or butterflies… you get the point. Really, the baby doesn’t even know what the nursery looks like, and baby doesn’t even care, but momma does. I’m thinking, if I have to spend approximately 2 years of my life in this room with this child, I might as well make it a space that I will enjoy, where I will feel content and at peace. After all, if momma’s happy, baby’s happy (right?).
After spending weeks upon weeks looking at nursery bedding, I started to get discouraged that I would not be able to put together a nursery I would be happy with. All the bedding that was within our price range was, well, special (read: tacky), and all the bedding that I LOVED and that sparked something in my brain was ridiculously expensive ($485 for a 3 piece bedding set, REALLY!?!). So that process was a little frustrating. That’s when I decided to look into buying some fabric and having our bedding custom made.
While I was looking at fabrics trying to find the one that screamed “this is for your baby’s room,” I finally decided that I wanted to do the nursery in grey and white. There is something about that color combination that feels crisp, clean, and classic to me. Not too stuffy or fancy, but not too childish. And the more I looked for inspiration, the more color combinations I found that I loved; grey and white + blue, pink, orange, yellow, red, lavender, green, turquoise… so I thought once we knew if the baby was a boy or a girl, I could pick an accent color and personalize the room a bit more. So now, with a little bit more direction, I was on a mission to find the perfect grey fabric for my perfect grey and white nursery.
It finally dawned on my one day that I hadn’t even thought to look on my all-time favorite, go-to site for all things unique, handmade and custom made, Etsy. A quick search for “custom nursery bedding” pulled up hundreds upon hundreds of shops, with thousands upon thousands of fabric to custom make whatever type of nursery a new mom’s heart desires. So, just when I thought this project was about to get finalized, I realized that I was just then truly getting started. A narrower search for “grey nursery bedding” then pulled up shops that offered grey fabrics, and we were on our way. I ended up finding the bedding at one shop, but the best price for what I wanted with another shop. Thankfully she was able to order the fabric that I wanted and still make it for the price that I needed… a plus of custom ordering J.
Next came furnishing and painting the room. Picking out the crib was pretty simple. I knew I wanted white furniture, and after reading Baby Bargains, it was easy narrowing down which brand and style of crib to look at. I ended up falling in love with a sweet, traditional looking crib from Babi Italia, which is well rated on Baby Bargains, plus very decently priced; which was very important because my sweet sister and brother-in-law decided they wanted to gift their nephew with his crib J. I have seen TONS and TONS of pictures of super cute nursery ideas between Pinterest and the blogs that I follow, but I always came back to this room that has an accent wall painted with thick horizontal stripes. And so I decided to do an accent wall with the thick grey stripes, and the rest of the wall the light grey base color.
True Confessions: I didn’t do a very good job of picking out the base paint color. I picked it on-line on the Sherwin Williams website, which I just found out is a BIG No-No!!! No matter how good the computer and monitor, the colors never read true to life. And even when I saw the paint card at Lowes and realized that specific shade of grey comes from the green-grey family, I still went with it. I don’t think it looks awful, but the lighting is just right at certain times of the day, and you can definitely see the green undertone. Oh well, like I tell my {Ranch} kids, live and learn from your mistakes!
The rest will come together just as slowly, I’m sure. I have some ideas of what to do on the walls. I’d like to do a pennant banner with his name over the crib, but of course, he needs a name before I can actually make the banner, lol! I also want to do a gallery wall with black and white pictures my brother has taken while living in Chicago
Something tells me this room might not be completely finished by the time this baby is born, but I hope to have made significant progress in the next few weeks!
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