Indecisive. That’s me when it comes to the nursery lately. I am in a time crunch! Even though I had already painted and bought the nursery furniture, actual decorating had not been happening. I have been busy with my last semester of grad school/internship/work and since we were thinking we had quite a while to wait for a match, decorating the nursery had taken a backseat. That is until early last month when our world was turned upside down (in the most amazing, wonderful way!).

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Even though we have been ready to have a baby for years, we haven’t actually been getting ready. Painting and furniture is ALL we have ready. The drawers and closet in this room are empty. No curtains, no shelves, no bedding! If baby is born on his due date we will have had less than 10 weeks to get ready! I am in nesting panic mode! And yes, I know the baby won’t care what the nursery looks like, but this is my first baby and I want everything as perfect as possible just like I would have if I had 9 months to get ready!

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My panic mode has lead me to a pretty consistent pattern of buyers remorse. It was always my hope to make the baby’s curtains and bedding. I have made my two nephew’s curtains before they were born so the thought of buying curtains for my baby just doesn’t feel right. Problem is, I had 9 months to mentally prepare and make their curtains. Not so with my baby! So what has been happening is that I look online, see expensive and/or elaborate things I would love for the nursery, get frustrated that I don’t have the time and/or money to make/buy these things, then go to Target/Walmart/Babies R Us and see something I would normally never buy, convince myself that I should buy it because it’s a good deal and maybe it will look sort of okay and it will save me tons of time, buy it, bring it home, set it up, hate it, repackage (as best as possible), drive back to the store and return it!

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I have now gotten to the point where I’ve realized if I just start making things, I might actually save some time! So last weekend I made the crib skirt. It cost about $20 in materials, but I still have a bunch of stuff left, so I’m estimating it was more like $12-$15. I only made three sides since one side will always be against the wall (which also saved time and money). Here’s what I did:

-Cut three pieces of fabric (one for each of the three sides)

-Hemmed all four sides of each piece

-Sewed yellow ribbon to the bottom of each piece

-Sewed velcro to the top of each piece

-Stuck some sticky backed velcro to the metal mattress spring

-Stuck the velcro together and done!

The nice thing about this crib skirt is:

1. It’s home made by me for my baby which just makes my heart happy!

2. It’s adjustable, so when we lower the crib mattress down, I can easily adjust the crib skirt.

3. Since it’s velcro’d on, I can easily pull it off to wash when needed.

It’s been a while since I’ve updated about the nursery. We’ve made some progress, but still have a long way to go!

A couple of weekends ago we got to work on our rocking chair project. I got the idea from this blog. There are a couple of great things about this chair from Ikea. First, I love the look of it and it matches perfectly with our living room furniture, so when we are no longer in need of a rocking chair in the nursery we can easily reuse it in our living room. Second, I know it will come in handy that it’s washable. Having two dogs you would not believe the things I have gotten out of our Ikea slip cover couches (red wine, dirt, and things you don’t even want to know!). Babies can produce some nasty things as well, so it will be nice that I can just bleach it back to new again. Third, the nursery is a pretty small room and I didn’t want a huge chair taking up tons of space and this chair is a nice compact size. Fourth, compared to similar chairs from Pottery Barn which I love, it’s a smidgen of the price!

This chair would be a great deal even if it was full price, BUT as an Ikea fanatic I have to tell you that every time I have really wanted something from Ikea, I have pretty much always found what I had my eye on in the scratch and dent section. Seriously. Now I usually skip the showroom and head straight for scratch and dent! So that’s what I did with this chair and of course, there it was in perfect condition (just missing the packaging) for 40% off just waiting for me!

After we brought it home, Craig’s parent’s generously offered to buy us the rocking mechanism for the bottom of the chair.

Then one afternoon, Craig’s dad came over to help Craig transform the chair into a rocker.

Lucy and Shelly were good helpers!

 Once they took apart the underneath side of the chair, they got to work screwing in new pieces of wood to support the rocker.

I did my best to stay out of the way, but let’s just say it was a good thing I thoroughly read the tutorial because they were about to be all done when I noticed they forgot some pieces of wood!

Now the nursery is complete with a real rocking chair! We can’t wait to spend some sleepless nights rocking our future babies in that chair!

Back in October right around the time that we were visiting numerous adoption agencies looking for the best fit for us, I made a quick stop at one of my favorite stores, Good Will. Here you can see what I snapped up that day which included a glass vase, two brand new bags of fall leaves and pine cones to go in the glass vase, a brand new pillow sham, and a who knows how old ugly brown rocking chair. I think I spent about $15 on all of this with the rocking chair being just $3.99! I’ve seen new unfinished kids rocking chairs for $40 and up, so this was a great deal!

I thought about different colors to paint this chair and in February when the lovely Gina Zeidler came over to take our pictures for our blog, I had to make a decision. I chose yellow (gender neutral and fun). One of our photo scenes was Craig and I painting the rocking chair in the nursery. The picture turned out super cute, but in real life the chair wasn’t looking so hot. It was obvious that I was going to have to give this thing three coats of paint and even then I wasn’t sure if it was going to look good. So I went to Home Depot and looked at spray paint. I was looking for yellow spray paint, but I could not find a cute yellow.

So I moved on to green! Two quick coats of spray paint did the trick which looked so much better than brushing it ever would have and only took a few minutes that I’m considering spray painting everything I own right now!

I can’t wait for our future baby (who will quickly turn into a toddler/preschooler/big kid/teenager/grown up!) to read some stories in their rocking chair!

I made my first online nursery purchase! (Obviously I’ve made some nursery purchases, but this was the first online, so it’s special right?!). I mentioned that I decided on the nursery paint color because I loved how it looked in the Gus and Lula nursery. Well, Gus and Lula also has an Etsy shop with tons of super cute prints which I have drooled over in the past. This week (through Sunday) Zulily is having a sale with some of the prints I loved at 40% off. So I didn’t blink and I bought two! I hope Craig likes them too because he hasn’t seen them yet!

Aren’t they cute?

I’ve been thinking I would stay away from any sort of “theme” for the nursery since I don’t know if the baby will be a boy or a girl, and because I’d like to keep the nursery as a nursery for (hopefully) more babies in the future, moving our bigger kid(s) into a bigger bedroom. However, I recently have become really into the idea of a “You are my sunshine” theme. This song is special to me because I always remember my mom singing it to me when I was little. Also, I’m really into gray and yellow right now (who isn’t!?). And I have some really cute ideas based on this. BUT, I have been known to change my mind often…like as soon as I see something cuter! 

Who knows what I will end up doing in the nursery. For now I’m on the hunt for some fun frames to put these prints in!

Welcome to the (almost) nursery! The painting is complete (including the trim!).

The color is Sparkling Lake by Valspar. I decided on this color when I stumbled upon a picture of this nursery on Pinterest.

I love that it’s gender neutral, but still fun (and not yellow or green!). Also-I’m pretty much in love with every part of the Gus and Lula nursery. Designer I am not, Pintereting copy cat I am!

Check out that trim! It’s white! And only white! No yellow peaking through.

Craig doesn’t think it’s much different than the spotty Pottery Barn color it was before, but trust me, it is! It’s much more fun (in person, than in pictures) than the old color and since I took my time (16 days!), it has 2 good coats of paint.

Here it is with the new chair (future rocking chair) and tall dresser. Now imagine what accents we could throw in there if the baby is a boy (orange, green, navy, yellow, etc.)! And now do the same as if baby is a girl (pink, orange, yellow, turquoise, etc.)!

Know what I love about these dressers? Dust bunnies can’t hide! My baby can’t have dust bunnies lurking in it’s room!

This dresser is going to act as a changing table. *Do you see those doors? Look closely. Halfway painted now, but never fear, they are going in the fire pit soon!

It’s still got a long ways to go (crib, decor, curtains, rug, a baby), but in comparison to what it looked like a couple weeks ago, it’s come a long way!

My plan was to post today about the current state of the nursery, but that’s going to have to wait. Why? Because the before shots are going to make it look that much more amazing (even though it’s not exactly amazing yet!). Without further ado…

This is what the room looked like soon after we moved in 5 years ago. Queen size air mattress, my twin size comforter from college, and baby Lucy enjoying a princess and the pea moment!

Baby Lucy. Diva from day one.

So as you can see, this room needed work. Lots of work. We wanted a guest room. So I found a pretty blue color from a Pottery Barn magazine and painted the walls.

Problem #1: This room is small so I thought I could get by with one gallon of paint if I just painted slow and carefully. Yeah, that doesn’t work. So the paint job was always a bit spotty (more like shoddy).

Problem #2: I hate painting trim. I knew that we were going to get new windows eventually and that the trim would be ripped out, plus no one really ever saw this room, so I started painting the yellow trim and then quit….

Lovely right!

Then I made curtains. This was early in my curtain making days (not that I’ve really improved much since then). I was into stripes for a second. Then I found some fade resistant fabric and thought that sounded like a good idea.

Problem 3: Fade resistant fabric (or at least this fabric) doesn’t move. It’s pretty stiff like the fabric meant for outdoor furniture. Doesn’t make for flowing, soft curtains.

For a chunk of time after the partial painting and curtain making we started working on remodeling our basement. This room became our office and guest room complete with a full size desk with our computer, printer, etc. plus a queen size bed. There was no hope in making it look good.

Eventually (which means 4.5 years) we finished our basement and had a designated office area, so this room was finally able to be just a guest room. Except that 4 months after it was finally just a guest room, we started the adoption process. So I bought a $20 duvet that didn’t match a thing in this room for the guests we had coming for Christmas. Pretty right!?

So after over 5 years, this was the current state of our future nursery.

B-E-A-U-T-I-F-U-L!

Now that you’ve gotten the full tour of the before, I bet you can’t wait for the after! Me either, so I better get working!

Since our Home Study was approved, I suddenly started feeling antsy  to have a room ready for baby. I don’t (yet!) feel the need for every baby item out there, BUT I do want to have some basics ready in case we aren’t given much warning for baby’s arrival.

So, I dragged brought Craig to my favorite store, Ikea! I knew they had some dressers I liked on clearance (I love a deal and I saved 36% on these babies!) and I was hoping we could snag them before they were all gone. We were in luck! Since the baby room is pretty small (10 feet by 9 feet with two windows to work around), I didn’t want all the floor space to be taken up by a standard dresser. Instead, we opted for a chest of drawers and a smaller two drawer dresser that will act as a changing table.

I’m embarrassed to admit on the internet that for 5 years, I left the trim in this room half way painted! It had yellow trim when we moved in. At some point years ago I started to paint it and then walked away for years…until now! That trim is now gleaming white! It’s going to look so nice with these dressers! Now I just need to assemble them (let’s hope that doesn’t take years!).

*Coming soon! I took the plunge and bought paint! I haven’t tried it yet, but I’m 99.9% sure I’m gonna love it!