Decorating a Nursery

Bare with me when it comes to pictures on this blog...we have a decent camera, but I don't know everything about it or photography for that matter.  That's another to-do on my list, learn more about the camera, learn more about editing!  For now, I hope you'll understand and stick around!

Now on to the nursery "reveal"

When we found out we were having another little boy, I wanted to go a different route than your usual blue room. After all, we did a blue room for our oldest son and it had a sports theme. There is only so much blue this mom can handle. So I picked up a few different fabric samples at our local craft stores and got to work. These are most of the samples I picked out.  Side note: Did you know you can get a tiny piece of fabric cut and it will only cost you a handful of coins?  I never knew that, it's a great way to get samples and head home to decide which colors look best for your project.  Then you can use the leftover scraps for smaller projects!

Question: Which one do you think I went with?

Answer: None of them!

At the time I was planning this, grey and yellow was a popular color scheme for all kinds of rooms, so I ended up jumping on that bandwagon and I couldn't be happier with my decision. We started with the Valspar color called Gravity. I don't have any before pictures of Liam's room. Just imagine a plain empty box. It had tan walls, the color we picked for the rest of our houses when we were building it.

This is a smaller room, it's about 10 feet by 10 feet, but it has a nice sized closet and it works just fine for a bedroom.

(shelves found here, frames found here)  

Liam was born on June 8th, 2012 and this room was completed in July of 2013. I'm not kidding! Most of the room was done by the time he was born, there were just a couple finishing touches I was waiting to do until I had everything I needed. Like these picture shelves I use for books and the frame collage wall. I knew the supplies I needed were at Ikea and the closest location is over 3 hours away from us, it's a tragedy, I know. I sure hope Wisconsin gets an Ikea location someday. Soon. Who doesn't love meatballs and table lamps on a Tuesday afternoon? Anyway, that's a different blog post all together.

His "monthly photos" also wouldn't be complete until he was a year old, so that wall used to have placeholder art. Framed fabric and a drawing made for Liam by his big bro.

(alphabet wall inspiration found here)

My absolute favorite part of Liam's room is the alphabet wall. While I was pregnant and planning this room, I kept a list in my purse and as I found letters on the cheap, I would buy them and cross them off the list. This entire wall of "art" cost MAYBE $25. That's a steal if you ask me.  I waited until different letters went on sale at Hobby Lobby. After I had purchased all the letters, I laid them on the floor and kept moving them around until I had a  layout I liked.  I took a picture so I would remember the layout and got to painting/decorating. I made a note of which letters needed to be spray painted and with what color and gave those to my hubby to take care of. The ones that needed to be painted by hand I did myself . We got 4-5 different samples sizes of grey paint when we were trying to choose a color for the walls, so I just used the leftover paint from those. Then I added dots or stripes. I also tried to do different things to keep it interesting. An embroidery hoop for the "o" with fabric inside, colorful string wrapped around the "e", and chalkboard paint on the "l" so I could add a little something extra to it.  I've always thought about painting zebra stripes on the "z". What do you think?

My husband and I were actually hanging all these letters the day I went into, labor, or what ended up being false labor.  But four short days later Liam was born!  We used command strips when we could and small nails in other places. A few of the heavier letters required an actual anchor and screw. If you have little ones who are mobile, I highly suggest using a good anchor system if you have heavy letters towards the bottom. Luckily we don't have anything too heavy near the bottom of our alphabet.

(push pin art inspiration found here)

(Who's that hiding?!)

This string and push pin art is the easiest thing on the planet! It takes just a little bit of time, but anyone can do it. I just channeled my inner middle school girl and planned out the "bubble letters" as we used to call them. Then wrapped the same colored string I used on the letter "e" on the alphabet wall.  I was trying to find something that would be safe above his bed (he can't reach the pins or the string).  I also wanted something that was long to take up the large wall, so this was a good solution.

My mom and I spent an afternoon sewing those amazing chevron curtains that you can see a few photos up along with the curtain for the closet where the door used to be. We do a lot of rocking and reading to our kids and since I planned to log a lot of hours feeding Liam I always wanted a tv in his room. Since a dresser with one on top is not the safest and also because we don't have a lot of space in this room, I thought of mounting the tv in the closet. Not your usual solution, but it works great for us. My husband removed the door and we hung a window curtain rod we had on the inside of the closet above the door frame so it was hidden.  I tied the curtain with some string and hooked the string to a small cup hook which is also hidden inside the closet.  (I have a project on my list of an interesting way to hide those cords hanging from in the closet, hopefully I'll be writing about that soon!)

(corner pieces found here)

One of the last and final touches was adding crown molding to the room. My husband, bless his heart, tried over and over and over again to get the crown molding cut correctly and installed. Unfortunately he just couldn't figure it out. Even after we read the instructions John over at Young House Love posted and watched countless videos online. We also bought the exact same tools John suggested. It just wasn't going to happen. My dreams of crown molding were almost shattered when we found these corner pieces that matched our crown exactly.  They are super easy to use and made my husband happy! Your crown just slides right into the pieces and boom! You're done. Instant upgrade. I'll have more pictures of these bad boys when we install crown molding in our master bedroom. Can't wait for that.

A few notes.  The dresser is from Target (so is the crib) and came with cheap white wood pulls.  We replaced them these, I believe they were from Lowe's and came in at under $2 each!  It was an inexpensive upgrade and now the dresser matches the crib great!

I used a clear acrylic magazine holder for a shelf.  It's just turned sideways and anchored into the wall.  So simple and practical!

(Light found here)

The light is also from Ikea.  I love it, it's so different and really makes the room feel personal!

I started with this room first here on the blog because I feel like it's the most "done" in our house. I feel like rooms can always be changing or evolving as your taste changes so I wouldn't even call Liam's room done. In fact, there are already a few projects I have on the back burner that I want to do over the next year or two since he's getting bigger.

Here's our little dude now...

Always, 

Alyssa

Linking up to: Tatertots&Jello