Nursery Ideas

I'm in full fledged nursery mode. As I've said before, we didn't find out what we were having with Lula or Jane, so when I was pregnant with Lula, we h ad just a basic gender neutral nursery. I kept everything the same for Jane.  Here are some "before" pictures of the nursery when it was Jane's room just a couple of months ago:

 I never loved the color. It's before I knew how to pick paint colors. I would go to the store and just pick one resulting in me not loving most rooms after I painted them.  The color was always just a little "off"...

 My mom and I made the orange and green bedding out of Alexander Henry and Amy Butler fabric. It's so cute, but I can't begin to explain how SICK of it I am. I went a little overboard on having everything matchy matchy...

That orange dot snuck in everywhere and I've been looking at it for 4 years. Super cute, but I can't wait to do something new and fresh!



And here's sweet tiny baby Jane in the rocker that I bought for $50 at an antique store. It now lives in the new office area and I love that it doesn't look like it once belonged in a nursery. Reid scored a nice glider at a thrift store for $20 that I will be making over and showing you soon for the new nursery!

Well, I couldn't resist the urge to actually have some pink things in the baby's room...and maybe repaint and do some new bedding and art while I'm at it. I have already made quite a few things that I will share later, but here is what I've been inspired by!


So, I'm loving bright white and fresh nurseries. Here are some images I've found on Pinterest and my process of narrowing down what I wanted.


I just started looking at all white nurseries. I loved the different tones of grays and whites and the elegant white on white name on the wall of this one.

But I'm always drawn towards some color. I don't think I could do a room without any of it! This was a great use of mostly white with just a few bright pops.

 Another great use of bright whites...and I love the girly tissue pom poms on ceiling

I fell in love with the sweet bunting and white framed art on the slightly off white walls in this little girl's room.

I would LOVE to pull off a look like this with the giant chandelier over the crib. Pretty sure it won't happen, but I will still keep my eyes out for one at a thrift store or antique store. And the framed art is also a fun modern touch.

Probably my favorite nursery I found is this one from View Along the Way. It's the perfect combo (for me) of bright walls, but still lots of color. Love it!

So, now that you know where I'm going and where I've come from in the nursery process, I will share how I started making some actual choices.  The first thing was to choose a wall color.  At first I thought..."just paint the walls bright white". That is what the old paint picking Megan would have done. Now I know better. I really looked at all the images and realized, none of the walls were actually white. They were all super light gray, tan or cream.  So, I decided to go with more of a gray tone. I brought home a ton of paint chips and taped them on the walls. I slowly took down the ones that I didn't like until I was left with 2. I bought a sample in each and painted squares of color all over the room...

Ash Mist by Olympic

And Angel Touch by Valspar

It's funny because on the computer screen, they don't look gray at all. But in the room, they read very light gray.  The winner was Angel Touch by Valspar. It turned out to be the perfect super light color, but with just enough contrast that the white trim and crib pop a bit. I'm so glad I didn't just pick a color on a whim!  And yes, I painted the room while 7.5 months pregnant all by myself...don't worry, we got low odor, no VOC paint that is perfectly safe. (I actually painted 2 rooms myself last week, once I start, I can't stop!)


Next, I bought some fabrics for curtains and a bedskirt.  I spotted some sales on home decor weight fabric and snatched it up! I ended up with this sweet Ikat dot from Premier Prints. This will be the bed skirt. (I'm not making a bumper pad since you aren't supposed to use one anyways...and they are a pain to make.)

I also bought this fun gray print also from Premier Prints for the window treatments, which by the way, is so stupidly easy...I can't wait to share how I did it!

I'm also adding in some yellow as well. I will be back to show you how the room looks in it's new color as well as a tutorial on the easiest window treatment ever!