Nursery dreams

So lately I’ve had nurseries on the brain.

We won’t be doing anything special with our current nursery before our next baby arrives – for starters because the 2-year-old is still in it, and secondly because we could well be looking at moving house before the arrival of our latest little surprise package.

But I have some photos of the nursery we did up for our first baby (at our previous house) and thought I would share them. I was quite possibly THE most excited pregnant woman on the planet and I had so, so much fun decorating Jaxon’s room.

It all began with this one piece of furniture…

I knew I wanted a “shabby chic” style room for my baby – soft and muted colours, distressed white furniture, white wicker and blue gingham. I found this buffet on sale at Everyday Living and HAD to have it! I knew it would be the perfect height for a change table, and I needed the extra storage underneath. Perfect!

The room was previously a blah off-white, so our next task was to paint the walls soft baby blue above the tongue-and-groove panelling. Instant transformation! I then looked around online to find the perfect wallpaper frieze. It was hard to find anything that wasn’t brightly coloured or cartoony-looking. Then I stumbled across this lovely vintage-inspired teddy-bear motif in pale taupe with hints of the softest baby blue (shown above). It was EXACTLY right. The wicker basket was a steal from Target, and I used it to hold white burp-cloths. We had professional baby photos taken after Jaxon was born, and had them framed to hang above the change table.

Okay, more furniture…

The cot (crib) was a gift from my parents, and that gorgeous bookcase and toybox came from local store “Sweet & Shabby” (which sadly is no more) – on a HALF PRICE SALE! Total score. As you can see I was already working hard at collecting storybooks before my first baby was born. 🙂 That bookshelf is now jam-packed on every shelf.

In the picture above you can also see the canvas I painted for the nursery before Jaxon was born. It’s mixed media – paint, fabric, stitching, buttons and ric-rac.

Here’s a closer look:

And some details:

I was happy with how it turned out. I actually finished it while in the early stages of labour. Nothing like leaving things to the last minute, hey?

Next priority…. a comfortable feeding chair that wouldn’t break the bank. Picked up this slip-covered armchair from Ikea. Then it was time to add some polka-dot details (I am SO in love with polka-dots for kids rooms!) Initially I wanted blue and white polka-dot wallpaper, but couldn’t source it for the life of me. So I decided to get my fix of dots by adding them into the soft furnishings. Shoulda been easy, right?

Well… I hunted EVERYWHERE for blue and white polka-dot fabric to make curtains. And COULDN’T. FIND. ANY. (Unbelievable, right?) I tried all the usual places – Spotlight, local haberdashery stores, even dedicated curtain and blind stores. NADA. (Of course, there’s heaps around now – just not back then when I wanted it!) So I started digging around online, and finally stumbled across a site that stocked this lovely fabric. If I was a sewer I would have proceeded to make everything myself in the matching cloth, but unfortunately I am not. And never will be. So I was happy to find a cushion that tied in pretty well and leave it at that. 🙂

Some final shots of how it all tied together…

So that’s it… our first nursery-decorating experiment. Hope you enjoyed the photos!

Question for Mums: did you decorate a nursery when you were expecting? If so, what theme did you use? If you have any ideas to share, I’d love to hear them!