Nursery plans – part 2

I’ve managed to somehow not accidentally spill the beans on the gender of little bebe-to-be. Yet! Seeing as I’m sharing some design ideas today, spoiler alert: we’re expecting a little girl! We were completely surprised when we found out as I was utterly convinced it was a boy [shoddy early mother instinct]. I wanted to avoid obvious choices for the nursery like pink and flowers etc. Maybe because I was convinced for so long it was a boy? This was one of the reasons I fell into a bit of a rutt … 

There are two reasons we hadn’t started the nursery until this week. For some reason [hormones], I had it in my mind that all the unfinished projects in our apartment had to be resolved before I could start the nursery. I made an 8-page list of things I had to do before we could begin. This ranged from cleaning the oven, painting the immersion, recaulking the bathroom, painting the ceilings and everything in between.

The second thing stopping me was the design of the nursery itself. I don’t know how or why [hormones], but I was under the impression [again, hormones] that the nursery had to be wildly different from the rest of our home; a different colour scheme, style and be gender neutral. I don’t know why. Did I mentioned hormones?

Luckily, over the past week I shook myself out of both mindsets. I realised I just want a cute and fun nursery [groundbreaking, I know]. We’re having a girl. Yes, I like burgundy. And pink. This isn’t new. I also like green but I’m not going to reinvent the wheel with our nursery by trying to make it something wildly different to what we already like. I’m hoping to make it fun and cute without it screaming ‘A LITTLE GIRL LIVES HERE ZOMG CAN YOU TELL THROUGH ALL THE HOT NEON PINK?‘. A little bit fun and a little bit Grand Budapest Hotel with gothic accents.

Less typing, more visualising! Onto the design we’re hoping for …

– A lot of the artwork for the nursery will be from what we already have [Bill Murray print, cardboard monogram etc.], will be second hand or from independent artists as much as possible.
– As for wall colour, I’m aiming for a subtle and cheery light grey paint. Fleetwood Paint sent me a gift voucher a few months ago and I’ll be excitedly picking up some tester paints this week. Yeah, grey is a safe shade. I decided on it because it goes with every colour [and I’m hoping to have a bit more colour in the nursery than the rest of our apartment], but also when we eventually move out, a subtle grey paint won’t need to be painted over compared to the living room and our bedroom. Forward thinking.
– Going with my mostly second hand theme, we picked up a standard pine dresser a few months ago for next to nothing on Adverts. I’m hoping to repaint it white at the very least; maybe something a bit more fun. We have yet to find an armchair to re-cover, but im hoping to find one soon. SOON.
– I’m also just hoping to put a lot of fun and cute things in here; hopefully appealing to both babies and adults alike. Some amigurumi creatures, alternative pieces and a handfull of cheeky things that’ll surely make our nursery a lot less worthy of appearing in a magazine [ahem, poo pillow and my ‘Even Katy Perry Poops‘ cross stitch #KeepingItReal].

I don’t have an entirely set design in mind so we’re mostly going to see what we find and do a bit of winging it. But the above are the basics and I’m hoping to build on it as we go. It’s exciting now that we’re about to start, but we better hurry up as we have T minus 9 weeks … ZOMG 🙂

Baby prints from Bill & Coo Paper Co.

A long overdue shout-out and thank you to Karla, the Creative Director and master behind Bill & Coo Paper Co. Karla sent me two of the sweetest prints a couple of months ago and unfortunately they were one of those things I looked at every day, said to myself “I really need photograph those“, I’d subsequently forget and be met with a hurricane of guilt the next day where it started all over again. 

Karla sent me two beautiful prints; Dream Big Little One and Forehead Kisses And Tight Embraces. Both prints are A3 in size printed in metallic gold soy based ink on FSC Certified paper, so it’s safe to say there’s a lot of love put into each print. 

I can’t wait to frame these beauts in our nursery. I already have a couple of gold accents for the room so these guys will fit in perfectly. Thank you again, Karla. They’re beautiful. And big time soz for my tardiness. 

Nursery plans – part 1

Before I share the exciting side of my design ideas for the nursery, I first have to tackle the far less exciting side that is the spare bedroom as it is now and getting it from this point to an empty room. Sounds easy? It’s not as straight forward as I’d like it to be thanks to us being renters living with our landlords furniture and not having as much freedom as a homeowner would have. But I’ve successfully managed to come up with a solution to almost every problem.

Feel free to allow your eyes to glaze over while you scroll as chances are you won’t find the below particularly interesting. It’s a solution I’ve come up with as a renter so I figured maybe one other person out there might find it interesting, so here it is … 

1. DOWN WITH THIS SORT OF THING – and everything else on the walls. I’ve found so many cute things to hang up and have some fun ideas, but that can’t start until I repaint.
2. REPAINT – this is an obvious step but it’s something that needs to be done before I start working on the nursery. I just need to decide on a colour.
3. UNDER THE BED – four years’ worth of college work and the dismantled shelves from our living room [as in the ‘before’ photo here] have been expertly rammed stored under our spare bed. Out of sight, out of mind! That is, until we get to number 5 below … 
4. DECLUTTER – I’ll be doing another sweep of what we have at the moment and either selling or donating as much as I can. I’ve gotten rid of a lot over the past two years but thanks to nesting hormones, I want to get rid of everything unnecessary. 
5. DISASSEMBLE THE SPARE BED – since we’re renters and the bed in the spare bedroom is our landlord’s, we can’t get rid of it. My plan is to stack the spare mattress on top of the mattress in our bedroom, disassemble the spare bed and store it under our bed. I also have to relocate the college work and shelves that are currently under the spare bed to under our bed and hope it all fits.

6. CHAOTIC CUPBOARDS – possibly scarier than under the bed; the cupboards in our spare bedroom. They hold about half of everything we own. Our Christmas decorations, more college work, my wedding dress, a printer, our landlords artwork, old Playstations, summer / winter clothes, one hundred years of wrapping paper that’s too pretty to use and mementos to name a few. All have to be ruthlessly culled. 
7. MOAR SHELVES – this random set of shelves belongs to our landlord and sit awkwardly at the entrance to our spare bedroom creating a bottle-neck to the room [which will be v. awkward when bebe comes]. We keep our DVD collection on them at the moment, but I’m hoping to move the DVDs elsewhere and put these shelves within the cupboard [no. 6 above] so the shelves can house overflow bebe stuff that we won’t have room for in the room itself.

If you’ve read this far, I commend you! If you haven’t, I don’t blame you. That’s the plan I have so far to get the spare bedroom ready for its new design and subsequently, new occupant. I cannot wait to share the plans I have for the nursery! Not to mention get started on decluttering and organising and assembling tiny bebe things. 
And for good measure, I’ll end on an awkward selfie …