Nursery Update

I was hoping to do a "Nursery Reveal" post of the finished nursery, but I just can't wait anymore! :) So instead I am posting an 85% finished nursery update.

Once I had the basic color scheme and theme decided, my biggest inspiration for each element was the cheap factor. Even though we became DEBT FREE--except the house--earlier this month (this topic definitely deserves its own post), we still have some big financial goals to hit and so are working hard to live as frugally as possible. This means I didn't really have a budget for decorating the nursery, aside from a little bit of "fun" money I had saved up and what I could squeeze out of the household category in our regular monthly budget. It's a good thing I have a huge stash of fabric people have given me, Pinterest, and an obsession for awesome deals. :)

As you walk in the doorway you see the crib area. The first thing I made for the nursery was the crib bumper & skirt. I ordered the fabric from fabric.com (there went that "fun money" I mentioned) and just happened to hit Hancock Fabrics on a huge sale weekend when I went to buy the batting and a few other materials. (Yay!) The colors are so bright and cheerful. I love them!

Here is a close-up of the mobile. I made this using the idea posted here, but with some modifications. (For example I did NOT hand-sew each bird--no thanks!--and I hung it with skinny grosgrain ribbon instead of clear wire.) I think the mobile is my favorite element in the room so far. :)

I couldn't resist using the header from the blog as the inspiration for the wall art behind the crib. (Who knew I was this drawn to birds??) As I pondered what to put on all these blank walls, I was really trying to avoid spending $3-4 each on canvases, but it seemed all the DIY wall art I was finding started with a canvas as a base. Of course $4 is better than the hundreds you could spend on buying wall art, but I kept stubbornly searching for an alternative. Eventually I found this idea. I decoupaged scrapbook paper on as the base of my "canvases" to give it a softer more whimsical look than the paint used in the original tutorial.

I decided it was finally time to recover our yard sale rocking chair. The original English farmhouse upholstry didn't match the nursery at all and was wearing very thin. I thought this would be a pretty quick project, but it ended up being a 2-man, lengthy ordeal. Let's just say upholstry tacks aren't the easiest thing in the world to pound into a piece of hard wood. Thankfully Seth saved the day with his handy dandy drill and precision drilling skills. Thanks, Babe!

I still need to make a pillow for this chair. I'm thinking a taupe pillow with a bright yellow rick-rack flower in the center.

I saw an adorable bird painting for sale ($110--ack!) and immediately thought, "I could totally do that!" The way the birds were depicted reminded me of thumbprints and an idea was born. Here is our version featuring the thumbprints of baby girl's 3 older siblings. I didn't keep track of who's prints are who's, except that the dark pink, light pink, and medium pink birds at the bottom of the tree were stamped by Benj, Talia & Leila, respectively.

I made these little birdhouses just for fun (I found the pattern here) because who can have a bird nursery without birdhouses? I also saw some adorable tiny wooden birdhouses at Michael's that I was sorely tempted to purchase, but since I could make these for free I exercised all my willpower and went with this version. I'm thinking about hanging a branch on the wall above the changing table and hanging or propping these in it with some birds dangling from the branches.

Lastly, here is the shelving under the changing table. Never having had an actual changing table before (we have always used a long dresser with a changing pad on top), I was not sure what to do with all this shelf space. After perusing lots of nursery decor blogs I decided that baskets were really the only option. Of course, you know me...I was not interested in spending the money to buy 4 large baskets so I set about searching for an alternative. I orginally found an idea to cover diaper boxes with canvas, but I had a huge piece of taupe cotton fabric in my stash that I wanted to use instead of buying canvas. So I found a slip cover for plastic crates and modified it to fit diaper boxes instead of the crates. My friend Stephanie found those cute magazine boxes at the dollar spot at Target. I have no idea what to put in them yet, but I think they go perfectly! :)

I still need to paint and hang some shelves to go above the rocking chair, find a lamp & a clock, and figure out what to do with the window, but it's definitely coming together!

Thanks for looking/reading!