Baby Girl's Nursery, Part 1

"It's not who we are that holds us back; it's who we think we're not."
-Michael Nolan

What I'm reading:  It Starts with Food
What I'm writing:  Not much right now.  At least I'm honest!

Most of you know that I have three boys (10, 7, and 6) and one little girl (2).  When we found out we were expecting a girl, I was a little... excited.  Just a little.

Now don't get me wrong.  I love being a Boy Mom!  When we started having kids, I wanted boys and I was blessed with three in a row.  They are best friends and they are fun and rowdy and dirty and sweet and I adore them.  But after all that boyish fun, I hoped for a little girl to help even out the estrogen-testosterone balance (or lack thereof).  And I really, really wanted to craft and decorate for a girl.

I may have gone just a wee bit overboard with the nursery.  But Husband just smiled and got out of my way, and boy did I have a great time!  The only thing that slowed me down was Girl's decision to show up 3+ weeks early, which put a serious cramp in my crafting.  This is the first of a series of posts showing projects from Girl's room.

My inspiration for Girl's room came from Chris at Just a Girl Blog.  Her daughter's room is adorable.

I love the robin's egg blue walls, the pink, blue, and green color scheme, and the tree.  This picture is actually a little different than the one I looked at, since her daughter is getting older and they are updating the room.  As you will see in later posts, I shamelessly ripped off some of these ideas.  But when something is as perfect as Chris's room, it's hard to resist.

This is what we had to work with: our room in its original state.  The wall color isn't bad, but it's just kind of a bland beige and every room on the first floor was the same when we moved in.  Neutral paint colors are great when trying to sell a house, but now that it was ours, I was ready for some color.

The room had become a repository for all the unused/unwanted furniture and other items that we didn't know where else to put.  Note the beautiful rose-colored cabinet.  You'll see that again later.

Other challenges include large windows on two of the walls (great for light, not so great for furniture placement) and a closet on the third.

We were also cursed blessed with mismatched curtains on ceiling tracks.  Oh, the design potential.

 And finally, we had this treasure of a ceiling fixture.

The very first thing I did was rip down those, ahem, special curtains.  I truly loved them and shed great tears of agony as we gently deposited them in our large black trash receptacle.  Any neighbors who heard someone yelling "Woo hoo!  Die, evil curtains of Mordor!".... well, clearly that was someone else.

Next we patched the holes left in the ceiling from the curtain tracks, and painted the walls (you guessed it) robin's egg blue.  As we were painting away, Husband gave me a weird look and said "You know, now that we're finally getting a girl, I find it ironic we are painting her bedroom blue."  But I had a plan, you see.  I knew I would want to use a lot of pink and I wanted a different color on the walls to give the room some contrast.  No little girl needs to live in Pepto Land.  I also wanted to go with kind of a cutesy, outdoors, woodland feel.  The soft aqua was a nice "sky" without being too literal.

The little owl was handmade by me using this pattern from Little Hibou shop on Etsy.  Which, by the way, when I looked up the link I realized the shop has added a bunch more patterns and I am going to have to put those on my Christmas list!  I have just the set of five.  I was going to make all of them but again, little Girl arrived early.  The owl was not difficult at all and I would describe my embroidery skills as "extreme novice."  I would really recommend this pattern if you're looking for cute stuffed animals.

Ahem.  Sorry for the detour.  Back to our regularly scheduled nursery make-over.

One wonderful thing about our 1970s house is the big windows.  One complicated thing about big windows is finding affordable window coverings.  In the end we decided on white vinyl blinds for the nursery, but we had to put two blinds in each window because they are so large.  We found these great curtain rods at Ross Dress for Less.  I have had great success finding extra-long curtain rods for a reasonable price at Ross.  I think these were less than $10 each.  I especially like the glass balls on the ends.

I also stressed way more than necessary about the curtain panels.  I wanted something thick enough to potentially block light and drafts from the old windows, but all the lined thermal curtains were less-than-cute.  I found lots of fun sheer ones but they wouldn't block the light.  Finally, after much indecision and endlessly texting my sister pictures from every store in town, I settled on these tab-top striped cotton twill panels from WalMart.  I debated because of the yellow and orange- I was afraid it would bring in too many colors.  But in the end, I decided I love them in this room.  They bring a lot of bright fun and energy.

Maybe someday she'll outgrow the stripes, but for now they are perfect for my spunky, silly, sassy little girl.  P.S.  I know these pictures are kind of dark.  I am not a professional photographer, but I'm working on my skills.  Thanks for being patient with my learning curve!

The paint and windows were the first step.  In the next few posts I'll share some of my fun decor items.  Our budget for this room was extremely tight, so I'm pretty excited about the cute things I was able to make for very little money.  Stay tuned!

(Apparently my learning curve is steep and includes the post scheduling feature.  This post was supposed to go up on Friday, July 26.  It did not post on its own so I manually posted it on Tuesday, July 30... but it is still dated Friday, July 26.  Why must you mess with my mind, Blogger-demons?)