Thursday 8 March 2012

A Room for Baby (part 2)

Remember that time, when I designed a beautiful nursery in muted purples and neutrals? That was fun, wasn't it?

When I started to make that design board into a reality I ran into a few...difficulties. See, all those pretty pictures were taken from places like Anthropologie and Restoration Hardware baby & child. When I started to look for similar items from places that were a bit more...in reach...my options were limited. Actually - I didn't have any options. I found that all the "normal" baby stores (Babies R Us, BuyBuy Baby, even Pottery Barn Kids) had very traditional baby items. 

Read: pink and blue. 

And little in between.

Even though I loved my original vision for our baby girls room...there was no way I was letting an infant have more expensive sheets for her CRIB than what I have on my BED.

Sorry baby. I love you, but something tells me you are not going to appreciate a $300 sheet set. Mommy on the other hand definitely will.

So - now that we have a new house and have a room picked out it was time to get to work on a new design board! The original inspiration was an owl sheet set that I found at Pottery Barn Kids. I liked it because it was cute and colorful, but not too pink and over the top.
From there  I pulled out the main colors and decided to use those as an overall color scheme. What it eventually evolved into was a pastel palette whose colors still popped and were fun. We are going to have white furniture (an idea left over from the original palette) and use the four main colors (pink, blue, green and purple) as accent colors throughout the room. Items like the tree and owl decal and the multicolor hooks will add pops of colors without being too overwhelming. The wall color will be a super light blue and we will use chocolate brown accessories to help add a bit of depth and contrast to the room (think storage bins and baskets, along with the hardwood floors).

Overall I think this design board is much more achievable in real life. Mostly because I have already registered for/bought a number of the items on this board :)  And when I stepped back and compared the two ideas I realized that this color palette and theme is much more baby friendly. As much as I would love to have a beautiful nursery decorated with nice, expensive, sophisticated details - something tells me it's not really practical. This on the other hand is cute, whimsical and fun. Perfect for our baby girl.

Perhaps I'll turn that design board into one for the master bedroom instead...

4 comments:

  1. hey, what's wrong with "pink and over the top"??? Heehee. =p

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  2. hey t! not sure how realistic it would be for you to travel up to san antonio/austin area but there is a pottery barn/william sonoma & restoration hardware outlet in san marcos...or at least there was 4 years ago. there might be something similar closer to you in houston but if you guys want to check out austin before baby girl arrives, you could roll in a little shopping trip too. might be good to break in the new cars, too ;) xx em

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    Replies
    1. Excellent!! thanks so much for the tip! I will definitely have to check it out...maybe design board #1 can come true after all :)

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