A Room for Baby - the reveal!

We have finally finished the babies room! And we pushed it to the limit if you ask me (considering I am due in 8 days). Annndd I still have a few more bits and pieces that I still want to add (I have a few more things to hang on the walls) but for the most part, we are done!

First I want to apologize for the bad picture quality. I took these yesterday afternoon when the sun was already behind the house, so the room looks pretty shadowy and cool. The walls are a very pale blue though so at least it shows up in the photos! (How to house photographers take such amazing pictures?? I need a wider angle lens I think...)

If you remember, here was my original revised inspiration board:

And here is the finished room:

I stuck to a main color palette of white, chocolate and baby blue. Weird for a girls room, I know. But I made sure to fill the room with lots of pastel accents, mostly which is seen in the massive decal on the wall. The ruffle curtains and pink details help to make the room more feminine, without being overly girlie.

Not that an infant is going to care if the room is overly girlie or not, but we like it.

Crib and changing table, with birds and owls keeping watch

Baby C already has a growing book collection - which I love!

Dr Seuss artwork that I made myself. I dont think it turned out half bad!

More inspirational homemade artwork - and HI! you can see me in the reflection!

From L-R: Brian bought the teddy bear from Harrods before we left London to move to Texas, I love that he bought this for her. The Guardian statue was a gift from my Aunt and Cousin. Every baby needs a Sleep Sheep! Pony fund money jar was a gift from a dear friend in London - she even put a one pound coin in there to start her off right. I wonder how much that will be worth in 18 years??

There are those silly pom-poms that I tweeted about the other day...I'm still not in love with them but I wanted to add some more texture to the room. I'm leaving them up for now but might end up taking them down. They are supposed to be some clouds and a sun. I'm looking into some other cloud mobile options that might work a little bit better...

Hello Mr Owl

Here is a closer shot of the bedding that was the original inspiration for the room. I love the playful colors and design of the birds and owls. I think we matched the color scheme pretty well!

lots of toys for Baby C!

Baby C is lucky enough to have TWO closets in her room! I'm using one for storage (gifts and items that we don't need to use just yet, extra blankets and swaddles, diapers, etc) and one for clothes! Most of her clothes at this point are little onsies that are folded and stored in the changing table, but she received a bunch of beautiful dresses and outfits and deserved to be hung!

PS - I can't wait until she is big enough to wear that raspberry colored Burberry quilted jacket (all the way to the right) that I bought for her before I stopped working there - how cute is that?? I got it in a size 24 mo though so she has some time :)

I was really hoping to get some of those colorful hooks (from the inspiration board) but they are all on back order until the summer time. Guess I will try again later!

Overall I am really pleased with how the room came together. I can't wait to start using it :)

If you're interested in some of these items, here's were I got them!

Crib - Delta 'Springtime' Babies R Us

Glider - Dutailier Overstock.com

Changing Table - Nursery Smart Buybuy Baby

Bookcase - Cameron Pottery Barn Kids

Curtains and Rug - Xhilaration Target (could only find the link for the cream version)

Wall Decal - Couture Decals Etsy

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...

A Room for Baby

During all my spare time these days (HA! Gotcha, like I have any of that) I do a lot of baby-oriented research. I read about how our baby is developing this week and what size fruit she is. I am also reading about what to expect once she is here - all the nitty gritty stuff on breast feeding and burping and explosive - well...you know. I'm researching car seats and cribs and bottles and - you get the point.

And when I want to take a break from all that serious baby stuff, I design her bedroom. I haven't even created a registry and we don't even have a room set up for her yet, but this is the part where I get to be creative and look at pretty websites like Pottery Barn and Restoration Hardware and stop stressing about all the serious stuff. 

(Except in true Tracy fashion I then find so many things that I like that I stress out about making a decision on the fun stuff, as usual)

If you ask anyone who knows me well they will tell you that I love pink. And it's true, I do love pink. I love pink dresses and flowers and all shades of this beautiful color - from soft pink peonies to hot neon pink a la the 1990's. When given the choice I am most often drawn to the option that is pink - heck, strawberry milk is even my favorite kind, and that only has a tiny bit to do with the flavor.

But when it came time to picking out my "perfect" baby room, I just couldn't see it being pink. For one, Brian is less of a fan of pink than I am. The only color that was banned from our wedding was pink. He can handle one or two pink things but anything more than that and he starts to panic. 

So, what other options did I have for our baby girls room? I went down the path of our wedding colors, only lighter and softer. Neutrals and purple.

you can find all of these on my Baby C board on Pinterest!

For our wedding the main colors were chocolate brown, dark purple and gold. Since it was a summer wedding we lightened it up with white flowers and the guys wore light colored suits. I am still obsessed with our color palette almost two years later, so it makes sense that a variation of it came creeping into my brain when picking out stuff for babys room.

Truth be told, my favorite color has always been purple. When I was a kid my bedroom had lilac colored walls and purple carpeting. Lilacs are one of my favorite flowers (which might have something to do with how amazing they smell as well). I own purple Hunter wellies and a purple bag. While I really love pink, it's purple that is my actual favorite color. That and its a bit more "guy friendly". Its still a girly color without being too girly. You copy?

While I was searching around for variations of this purple theme I found myself being drawn to how sophisticated the color palette looked. A lot of options out there are for purple and grey baby rooms, but that read a little too cool for me. I love the warmness that taupes, tans and creams add to the shades of purple. And the great thing about having a neutral room with color accents is that it will be easy to change in the future. What if baby girl decides that green or orange or pink is her favorite color? Change some sheets and maybe the wall color and you are set to go!

So, here is my inspiration board for the babys room, Lets see if I can make this happen in real life!

But expect to see lots of pink baby clothes on our little girl. Thats only one or two things at a time so Brian can't complain :)