Baby’s room

After I got used to the idea of turning my guest room into a bedroom for our third baby I started to think about decorating it. I knew I would need some new furniture as the crib I used for the first two, aside from being no longer “my style”, was on the side of the house buried a tundra of February snow. Folks, be careful when you decide to get rid of that crib - for me it turned into pregnancy karma!

I decided right away I wanted some kind of navy accent wall - regardless of the baby’s gender/sex. I definitely knew I was going to learn what the baby’s sex would be since I am over the ancient maternal age of 35. Gone are the days of having my sweet Cameron in my late 20’s, I am now pushing 40, and as a result eligible for chromosomal testing since I’m so darn old!

While I was waiting, I worked on ideas to incorporate my navy accent wall into plans for little boys and girls. I am really digging the rustic modern trend so I started thinking about ways to work that concept into this space.

At 13-ish weeks we found out our third little one would be a girl!

I love Madeline’s room, but I wanted this one to be distinct. I found this sheet at Target and it was my muse.

I noticed that the blue in the sheet looked a lot like my favorite blue - dark teal - that I painted our downstairs half bath last fall.

I’m obsessed with this color! I was so excited when I realized it would go perfectly!

Next it was time for furniture. Having had a couple of kids already I don’t see the sense in spending big bucks for an expensive crib. My kids are usually in there for about two years tops anyway. I picked this one up for $100 at Ikea.

Instead of a changing table I just got a dresser and threw a changing pad on it. I did this when Cameron was a baby and it worked just fine. We had a changing table when Madeline was a baby but only because our house was so tiny we didn’t have much room for anything else. And since we previously turned that into a bar cart and gave it to some friends we won’t be using it again!

See my post about how I turned it into a bar cart here.

I got a basic dresser like the ones we have all over the upstairs of our house from Ikea. I found new hardware on Amazon here. I love how many of these we have and how each one looks different! Here is the white one for the baby’s room below.

The dresser in a Madeline’s room pictured below. The pulls can be found here.

And the dresser from Ikea that is in our master bedroom. It was originally dark brown but we painted it last year. See my blog on how to paint furniture here. Clearly we are big fans of Ikea dressers.

I always wanted a cozy chair in the baby’s room but we either didn’t have the space when we had the older kids or it was just too expensive to fit in our new lawyer budget. This is a benefit of being older and having this third baby - we are decidedly less broke than we were when we had our first! I found this one on clearance at Pottery Barn Kids. The rocker legs can be changed out for regular legs so I can try to use this in another room down the road when this baby girl outgrows the crib and rocker stage.

The wall behind the crib needed something loud and expressive. I wanted a big painting so I stared looking around to see if I could find something I liked. Nothing really fit the vision I had in my mind so I decided to paint something myself. I told Terry to pick me up a huge canvas at Michael’s. I used just regular acrylic paint.

Since big romantic flowers are on the bedding I wanted to kind of coordinate with that idea. I have never painted flowers before but I am pleased with how they turned out.

The room was really coming together but it still looked kind of blah to me with just the boring carpet in there. I started hunting for area rugs online. I have previously used this website called esalerugs.com for purchases. (It sounds fake and spammy, but they actually come really fast!) I like them because they have a wide variety of colors and patterns and they’re relatively inexpensive.

The site also lets you see what the rug will look like in your space. A lot of sites are doing this now and it’s quite helpful to get an idea before you order it and have its shipped out. Here are some of the rugs I was considering:

I decided I liked this the best because it brought out the pink and blue with a blend of other colors.

There are just a couple of finishing details we have going on in here. First, this little white corner shelf is from Amazon. I also got the little side table by the chair from there too. The pouf by the chair is from Target.

I have so many of these in all different colors in my house and I love them! Plus they are SO much more affordable than most of the poufs out there.

This mirrored cabinet used to live downstairs and it would never have fit in this space had I left the closet doors on. I can’t take credit for this idea because I totally borrowed it from a friend, but we just completely removed the closet doors! This is the smallest room in the house and I hated the way the doors opened and creaked anyway. The room seems bigger with them off and gives us all an incentive to keep these closets neat and organized.

The inserts are from Home Depot. We got one for each closet and didn’t hang the second side of the rail since each closet is too small for that.

Finally, my open decorative shelves we made just like we have done all over the house. You can see my tutorial on how to make them here. My dad’s original Abbey Road album sits on this shelf in its original plastic with only a slit on the side that he used to remove the record. This room has a bit of a Beatles theme happening if you didn’t notice. I’ve always loved the Beatles!

I left these shelves unfinished (as in not stained) this time with perfect amount of Beatles displayed, of course.

We still have a number of weeks before this baby is supposed to arrive but I’m a solid type A personality and having this ready allows me to relax and focus on getting my big kids back to school and somehow carting them to all of their after extra curriculars.

This room was a blast to decorate. I have always loved my kids’ rooms most of all because they are fun, colorful, and full of life just like my kids!