Nursery Mini-Remix

I thought I would share one of the rooms that I like the most in our home, my son’s room. (I imagine I could still call it the nursery, but since he will turn 2 in a few weeks, I’m not sure that is still appropriate.) Anyway, I decorated most of it about 1 1/2 years ago and just left it sit from there, so I decided to give it a little re-mix last week. Has anyone else seen that show on HGTV where they re-do a room using items found in other rooms of the house? That is what I wanted to do. I told myself I wasn’t allowed to purchase anything new, spend money on paint or supplies, and had only 2 naptimes to finish the whole project, which forced me to prioritize. Otherwise I probably would have re-painted a lot of the accessories since I’m one of those crazy spray painters. :)

Anyway, when we moved into our home with a 2 1/2 month old baby I had my decorating priorities set, the nursery. It was probably just the opportunity to indulge some of that nesting that I'd been reading about but unable to participate in yet. My mom came into town and we tackled the nursery with a cute little sleeper as our inspiration. That week, we painted stripes, and stripes and stripes and stripes. I LOVE the result, it is so incredibly fun, but I will never stripe again. I often tell my husband that if any of our other children want a striped wall, then we’ll just have to rotate them all through that room. I kind of decided on a whim to do the stripes and had not done any research about the best way to carry out this rather tedious task, so we had several uneven stripes that needed to be corrected, which threw off the other stripes…ugh, it was bad. But again, at least it is done now and we love it. I was particularly happy with the thin little white stripe, which was just a little strip of painter’s tape placed randomly on the wall to break up the blue just a little.

My other favorite part of the room is the paintings, which my brother made for Jayce. Justin is one of those people who will just doodle little animals in the side of his notebooks if he is sitting around somewhere for an extended period of time, so I asked him to paint a few little animals for Jayce's room, gave him the color scheme that I was looking for, and he went to work. He came up with these cute little "Mom and Baby" animals, aren't they fun?

I originally had 3 pictures on each of the 2 side walls, but I wanted to have the artwork on all 4 walls of the room. So I went to work rearranging the artwork along with the furniture.

Here is wall by the door before and after.

I brought a bit of the green over by using a green gingham blanket on top, painted the clock blue with the same paint that was used on the animal paintings, brought the little turtle family over to that wall, and framed an extra of this gorgeous family portrait that we have. The photographer was talented enough to take a photo that captured our family beautifully and hid my post-childbirth chins, so I really should spread this picture around our house even more.

I shifted the storage unit over to the side wall beside the rocking chair, which automatically let a lot more light into the room than the bulky dresser.

(before, with my little darling)

(after)

I had picked up this little lamp at the thrift store for $.50 and thought it was cute. I didn't have a lampshade for it yet, so I grabbed one off of the lamp in the spare bedroom, and hot glued a little of the green gingham ribbon around the edges for some detail. It will be getting a paint and number makeover at a later date, but I needed to stay within the timeframe that I had given myself.

I had picked up this long frame a few months ago (which is about 48 inches x 14 inches), and thought that it would make a perfect little chalkboard for Jayce's bedroom. But at this age I am a little afraid that giving him this privilege will only lead to chalk all over the walls, so as a temporary solution I made up this picture board. I had an extra curtain that matched the bedding but was too small for the window, so I wrapped it around a foam board and just pinned it in place. That way I can just remove the still-usable curtain at a later date, and transform the frame into the chalkboard that I want.

But for now, it is a nice display of some of the photos that I had out in his room, and also took up enough space on one of the feature walls that I could take down a few of the animal paintings to use elsewhere.

On his left sidewall, I used a shelf from an unassembled shelf unit to take up a bit of the space, and add a bit of detail. It will be fixed up more at a later date, but for now, this allowed me to take use only 2 animal photos on that wall and not leave the wall feeling so empty.

The room is so bright and cozy now. As a further bonus, my son could barely stand to be in his crib a minute longer at the end of his naps, because he was bursting to get out and play in the newly arranged room. I guess that the same toys, displayed in a slightly different spot, might as well be brand new toys. He dove onto the same old train, books, and animals with a renewed enthusiasm. I might need to do some rearranging on a more regular basis.

I hope you like it as much as we do!

Also, on a completely unrelated side-note...

**Mac users, please weigh in here**

In the last week I have switched over from a PC to a Mac, and though I love my new computer the more that I learn how to use it, I really miss composing my blogs in Livewriter!! Does anyone use a blog publishing software that they like, particularly one that makes moving pictures around easy? I would love any suggestions that you have tried and liked, every time that I turn to google for suggestions there are dozens of options but no real frontrunner. Thanks in advance for any help you can give me!!