Mike and I are so excited to share our ideas on our baby's nursery. There are SO many ideas out there and in the beginning we were a bit overwhelmed. We knew from the beginning that we wanted to leave the baby's gender a surprise. Since making that decision, it has been a bit hard planning and registering for certain baby items. We knew we wanted to keep everything pretty gender neutral because we plan on using many of the same items for our future little ones. We would agree that when starting to design your baby's nursery, you must decide whether or not you plan on finding out the sex of the baby. If you do decide to find out what you're having, you need to decide if you want to choose a design that's neutral and can be used over again or colors that will be specific for your baby (blues for boys, pinks for girls).
To be honest, I chose most of the items for the nursery while taking my husband's opinion into consideration.
Our general style of decor is Modern Vintage. We love incorporating older pieces with more modern pieces. Here's how we have started the design for our baby's room...
Color & Design Inspiration
I definitely did a lot of searching for fabrics and color combinations. No offense but, I am NOT a fan of character prints (Disney characters, Winnie the Pooh, etc) on fabric or baby furniture pieces. I did however fall in love with the owl epidemic and I love patterns and textures. I am currently into the color gray. It's very neutral and it can be paired with practically any color. Needless to say, we chose this as our main color and we are pairing it with shades of white and then plan on accenting it with either pinks or blues depending if baby is a girl or boy.
The Bedding
I found some great modern fabrics at a local fabric store. I decided to make my own bedding for the baby's crib. I made a pleated bed skirt and fitted sheets. I did not make a bumper pad because there is so much controversy regarding it with SIDS. Here are the fabrics we chose...the top fabric will be used for the skirt and the bottom fabric will be used for the fitted sheet. Like I mentioned above, once the baby is here I will also make more fitted sheets in either a modern pale pink or blue fabric.
Dark gray and white fabric found at Country Sampler in Omaha, Nebraska
Furniture
It is always fun picking out new furniture...well most of the time! In this case we were very excited to choose items for Baby B. Here is where Mike and I incorporate older vintage pieces.
The Crib
We started with the crib. There are so many new guidelines that have to meet crib standards and they are very different than 20 years ago. So choosing an older crib is not always the safest option. We bought a brand new crib that carried a vintage style. We went with the non-convertible DaVinci Jenny Lind White Crib. This crib can be found at several different stores. We ordered ours from Koo Koo Bear: Baby & Kids (when I ordered the crib I swore it said it was made in the USA, however when it arrived it said something different. Who knows! Pregnancy brain can mess you up sometimes!) I immediately fell in love with this crib because it has the older spindle details and it can be used for a boy or a girl. I also really like the idea of being able to change the color of the crib if we choose to for another baby just by painting it. This crib is solid pine wood, which also won me over because it will last longer than a crib made of particle board and a veneer.
DaVinci Jenny Lind Crib
We did debate on buying a convertible crib, but here's why we didn't....
1) You have to store all the extra pieces that actually convert it from crib to toddler bed to full size. We don't have the space and really didn't want to deal with trying to find all the pieces later.
2) Some of the convertible cribs can't be converted back to a crib once it's been changed into a toddler or twin sized bed.
3) They are huge! I was shocked how large some of these cribs are and we don't have a ton of space to begin with.
4) We plan and hope to have more than one baby, so we asked ourselves this question: If we have more children, are we seriously going to have to buy another convertible crib, because chances are our previous child will be sleeping in initial crib/toddler bed.
The Dresser
I have grown up in a family that refurbishing different items is like second nature. My family and I have always been good with our hands and a lot of my family are in trades (wood-working, renovating, plumbing, arts, etc). We love antique shopping and we are always up for buying older pieces and fixing them up to add character in our homes.
Mike and I had to stay within a budget when designing the nursery and furniture can definitely be pricy depending on your style and quality. As you know, we prefer furniture made from solid wood because it last longer, has more character and can be changed. My parents had an old dresser in their barn that had been sitting for about 15 years. We decided to use that for Baby B. Our plans are to clean it up, paint it white and change the hardware! I absolutely LOVE the store Anthropology and have found some beautiful hardware there. We also lucked out and found another free piece round night stand that was left behind at one of my parents' rental properties. We'll see if this fits in the room after we clean and paint it. It does take time to do projects like these, but so much love goes into it and we know we will appreciate it so much more! Plus who can beat...FREE????
Bubbled Glass Knob from Anthropology....$8.00
Wood Dresser....$0...Free
Night Stand....$0....Free
More to Come...
Since Little Baby B won't be arriving until early this summer, this will be a step by step process. We will continue to share our progress as we build the nursery so stay tuned! And we hope we have inspired you with some of our design ideas!
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