Sweetie & Joy » Nursery

Nursery natterings (part four: the grand-ish tour of our sweet little nursery)

Mon, 04 Aug 2014 20:30:16 +0000

Today is my due date. TODAY. It’s wonderful and unbelievable and crazy and scary and exciting all at once. As of last week’s OB appointment, Baby hadn’t yet made much of an effort to join us out here in the real air-breathing world, so I’m guessing that he or she is still feeling comfy cozy in there. Which, truthfully, is rather fine by me. That said, I’m very aware that time is now ticking away quite quickly and that Baby could make an appearance at any moment.

And I’m also very aware that I’m ridiculously ginormous…

Crazy eh? I’m still not entirely sure how I manage to stay upright.

Last week, with nesting instincts in overdrive, I put a few last minute touches on the nursery. Curtains were hung, art was placed up on walls, the more-complex-than-anticipated baby monitor got installed, and I fussed over silly little details (would bashful bunny look better here? Or here?) And, with Baby overdue as of tomorrow, I’m happy with the rather peaceful teal, gray, white and mustardy yellow space that this nursery has gradually morphed into.

My dad found this metal wall hanging at a street art fair. I added the ribbon and hung it from the door. It’s perfect in every way.

We’re using Ikea’s Hemnes dresser as our change table: it’s a good height for both normal-sized me and super tall Sweetie, it has lots of room for the change pad and diaper related stuff, and (most importantly) it’s rather lovely-looking.

(Unfortunately it was also rather difficult and time consuming to assemble. But that’s a whole other blog post for a whole other day.)

The Celebrate Everything canvas was a HomeSense purchase (on clearance, no less!) made a couple of years ago, long before Baby and nursery planning had ever started. Again (and again and again): I heart HomeSense.

And this trio of friendly stuffed animals will eventually be relocated to a shelving unit of some sort (I’m still in search of the perfect bookshelf for this room.) I’m hoping to find something fairly small, but still very functional. Until then, these three will bravely stand guard over the change table.

Because the nursery is fairly tiny, we didn’t want a crib that felt large and bulky (as so many of them do.) Enter: Ikea. Of course. We fell in love with Gulliver (and hopefully Baby will too!)

My friend Nadia (we’ve been friends since Grade Nine) (which means we’ve been friends for… um… many many years) made Baby this gorgeous yellow and teal baby quilt.

And the small vintage rocking chair, that long ago belonged to my grandparents, was reupholstered by my mom and dad as a gift to Baby. It’s the perfect size for this little space. And I love knowing that I’ll be rocking Baby to sleep in a chair that once belonged to people who, while no longer here, were such an important part of my life growing up.

Keeping watch over everything from beside my beloved rocker is the ever adorable bashful bunny (along with his good friends the happy hedgehog and hilarious hare.)

But my absolute favourite part of the nursery? This sheep mobile from amazing Etsier (and fellow Canadian) TheMemis…

Each little sheep has a different expression on its face. It’s absolutely perfect, and I can’t say enough good things about Emi at TheMemis. :)

So there you have it. Our sweet and peaceful (and gender neutral) little nursery. I’ll likely continue to add to it as time goes on – I have lofty gallery wall plans for the wall opposite the crib, I still need to find that bookshelf for stuffies and books and toys and nicnacs and such, and I’d love to add a little more coral (if Baby is a girl) or greens and navy (if this belly-wiggler is a wee boy) once Baby arrives. And my friend Shawn (who I’ve been friends with pretty much since forever) has commissioned a baby blanket for me as a gift for Baby from another mutual friend (Sheilagh) who is an amazingly and incredibly talented quilter (you can see some of her work over at her site, Lay it on Me Baby) – I’m so excited about planning the blanket with her once Baby is born!

But for now I absolutely adore this serene little space, just as it is.

Let’s hope that Baby does too.

Whenever he or she decides to make a big appearance.

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A quick update (I’m still here!) (and yup, I’m still pregnant!)

Mon, 21 Jul 2014 10:00:10 +0000

Many apologies for my MIA-ness over the past couple of weeks. I’m now off on maternity leave (which makes baby-day seem really really crazy close now!) and you’d think (logically) that this would mean tonnes of extra time to relax/sleep/enjoy sanity pre-newborn, but that doesn’t seem to be the case with me. I’ve had family to visit, friends to catch up with, a hospital bag (Sweetie refers to it as my “bug out bag”) to pack, projects to finish, a thousand obstetrician appointments (or so it seems) to attend, last minute baby “essentials” (ie: cute little onesies and sleepers) to buy, cloth diapers to prep, and (seemingly) a gazillion other things on the go.

So, in short (or, rather, long): I feel like I’ve been super busy, despite my currently newborn-pending, work-free status.

Although I did manage to fit in a quick DIY mat session the other day. For the record, I’m really quite awful at using the tripod + timer approach to self-photography. This was a rather challenging little project! For about an hour’s effort, I ended up with one image worth sharing…

…and even then, it’s out of focus. And my hands are all gross and pregnancy-vein-y. And I’m not sure if I look serene and contemplative, or sort of annoyed. Needless to say, Sweetie is taking me out later this week to try again, with an actual person (Sweetie) on the other end of the lens. Guessing (and hoping!) that we’ll have much better results with a two-person DIY mat session approach. I’ll keep you posted!

The good (and rather timely) news: I’m nearly finished with the nursery (finally!), so a big (likely long-winded) update/grand reveal will be coming shortly. In the meantime, if you need me, I’ll probably be marveling at the size of my belly while hanging/organizing/baking/shopping for something. At 38 weeks, I’m starting to feel really large. But I also feel amazing. And with only a couple weeks left before my due date (and, really, knowing that Baby could arrive at any point now) I feel so lucky to be a mommy-to-be. Can’t wait to make that transition into simply being “mommy”.

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Nursery natterings (part three: a crib is in the howwwse!) (yup – I just went there)

Mon, 09 Jun 2014 10:00:35 +0000

As my due date creeps closer, I’m feeling more and more motivated to hurry the heck up and get ‘er done (nursery-wise, that is.) Over the past couple of weeks we’ve brought my grandparents’ rocker in to be reupholstered (should be finished any day now!), we’ve created our baby registry (which, if you’re a tad OCD like me, means hours spent researching various products and thinking about how crib sheets and change pad protectors in very specific colours and patterns would look against not-yet-but-soon-to-be freshly painted nursery walls), and we’ve made our baby-centric Ikea run (which, if you ask me, is the best reason for an Ikea trip ever.)

Yep. If I have this baby tomorrow (which, mind you, I hope I don’t!) (just a sec – knocking on wood…) he or she now, officially, has somewhere to sleep.

And all of this makes me a very very happy momma-in-the-making. :)

Nothing is set up yet, of course. My parents are coming down to paint the nursery later this week (thanks mom and dad!), and then, once the walls are all prettied up, the furniture will be assembled. I’m ridiculously excited to see this little room transform into the nursery that’ll belong to this wiggly little one who is currently doing pirouettes in my ever expanding belly.

But, until that all happens, he’s what we’ve settled on so far…

The nursery will be painted Benjamin Moore’s Woodlawn Blue…

Then there’s the Hemnes dresser that’ll double as a change table (currently sitting in a box in my living room, but it’s going to be awesome!)…

And our Gulliver crib (I’m so excited about our crib!), while really simple and small, shouldn’t overpower the tiny little room that’ll become Baby’s nursery…

We still need blinds and curtains for the windows, an area rug for the floor, some sort of dirty diaper collection method (be that a wetbag or an ubbi or a simple diaper pail liner plus ikea garbage pail (like this one here) or whichever system we decide upon), and a bookshelf of some sort (since we plan on doing a lot of reading to Baby.) A footstool or ottoman (for mamma to put her feet up while nursing) would be pretty super swell too.

But, we have the basics now, at least.

Only eight more short weeks (until my official due date) to go!

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Nursery natterings (part two: what we’ve planned so far) (aka: a whole lot of cuteness!)

Mon, 21 Apr 2014 10:00:54 +0000

Little by little we’re starting to put a nursery plan in place. With only fifteen-ish weeks to go until my due date (eek!) (seriously – where did my second trimester go?) we’re at the point where we need to start making decisions and purchases and moving forward with this space that’ll one day be home to someone so completely and utterly adored.

A couple weeks ago, I mentioned that the nursery will be a light teal-ish colour (which I see as very gender neutral – once baby is born we can add a bit of coral and yellow if we have a little lady, or navy and green if the bump is currently housing a little gent.) Here is our (ok, well, my – Sweetie has sorta given me free-reign on this whole nursery decorating project) inspiration pic (from The Farmer’s Nest)…

Happy sigh. Prettiest nursery ever.

And here’s what we I have planned to date…

Rocker

Remember the rocker from our staged quasi-nursery at the last house?

This chair once belonged to my grandparents, and my mom (hi mom!) has sweetly offered to have it reupholstered for our nursery here. The room that’ll be our nursery is quite a tiny little space, and this rocker is small but super comfy. And I love that it once belonged to my grandparents who, while no longer here, were such an important part of my life growing up. Having this rocker in the nursery is a little like having them be part of Baby’s life, and I absolutely love that. :)

Mobile

Have I ever mentioned that I love sheep? I love sheep. Weird? Likely. But there’s something so awesome and peaceful about those grass-munching field-frollicking balls of white fluff that makes me insanely happy. So when I stumbled upon this mobile (courtesy of Etsy-seller GiftsDefine) I was sold.

Oh, lamby sweetness. I love everything about it. I haven’t yet hit the purchase button, but I plan to very very soon.

Bunting

Yep! I may fall into the whole mobile-PLUS-bunting (how decadent for baby, eh?) category, mostly because (surprise surprise!) I can’t decide between the two. The mobile will likely float above the crib, and the bunting will likely hang above the change area.

This one is my current fave for a little girl…

And I love this option should we have a little man…

…both from the awesome Etsiers at The Spotted Barn.

Pretty little things

Have you ever noticed that Chapters has the absolute best stuffed animals? They really do. I’ve adored the super soft, squishy stuffed creatures from Chapters since way before Sweetie and I had baby-thoughts.

My favourites are the ridiculously adorable bashful lamb…

And the ever so sweet bashful bunny…

So much cuteness. So much. Like, an immense amount. (I’m seriously swooning over here.) Here’s hoping that Baby loves them as much as his mom does.

And then there’s all the other (far more important) stuff

And then there are the bigger, scarier, expensive-er, non-decorative purchases: the crib, the dresser (that’ll double as a change table), a bookshelf of some sort for stuffies and books and such… THESE are the items that I need to make decisions about soon. Very soon, in fact. I have a couple of friends who’ve had their babies far earlier than their due dates over the last few weeks, and I’m starting to get a wee bit nervous.

Let the nursery decorating frenzy officially begin! :)

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Nursery natterings (part one of… several) (since, well, I’m awful at making decisions) (and also because baby stuff is just so darn cute!)

Mon, 31 Mar 2014 13:15:16 +0000

I am officially 22 weeks pregnant today. Twenty-two! How the heck did that happen? It seems like I just finished a very nauseous weeks 8 through 12, and now, all of a sudden, I’m over half way to the finish line. It’s so exciting! But, honestly, so overwhelming at the same time. There are registries to prepare. There are maternity leaves to schedule. There are no fewer than a gazillion cloth diapering systems to decipher (yep – call us crazy, but we’re going to give the wild and wacky world of cloth diapering a shot!) And there are strollers and baby baths and car seats and boppy pillows and cribs and carriers and all sorts of foreign (to us not-yet initiated future baby-club parents, at least) stuff to research and plan and obsess about.

But my favourite pastime at the moment? Nursery planning. I know: swoon! The colour options. The decor. The accessories. Where the crib will go. Mobile or bunting or both. Sigh. There are so many happy possibilities for the room that will one day contain someone so tiny but so important and so very very loved. With about 18 weeks (insert panic attack HERE) left to go until my official due date, here’s the nursery inspiration pic (from blogger She Walks in Beauty) that I can’t stop looking at…

So peaceful and lovely. I absolutely adore this colour scheme. A-DORE it. We’re still undecided on whether we’ll find out the sex of little Baby in advance of the big day, but this soft teal-based colour scheme fits perfectly for either a little girl or a little dude (in my humble opinion, at least.)

Once baby makes his or her arrival, we can then add in some gender-specific colours to the mix, if we want. Maybe a little navy and/or some bright lime-ish green if the bump turns out to be a boy, like this nursery from Spearmintbaby…

…or some coral-ly pink and yellow (like in this gorgeous nursery from CraftinessIsNotOptional) if I’m currently housing a baby girl.

Either way, I can’t wait to get started. Can’t wait! And that’s probably where Part Two of this (likely drawn out due to indecisiveness) nursery natterings series will go. Regardless of everything else that ends up in the nursery (and all the decisions yet to be made), teal is one of my absolute favourite colours. I’m hoping that Baby (boy or girl) will really like it too. :)

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The giraffe gets all comfy cozy (staging the nursery for resale sans crib) (it’s all about the angles)

Mon, 06 May 2013 10:00:45 +0000

So remember the last time we chatted about our second bedroom, the someday-maybe-to-be nursery? Here! Let me refresh your memory. It looked like this…

Well, when we started gearing up to sell, we realized it needed to be cleared out. A LOT. Which lead to a massive purge. Which lead to the room looking like this…

But then I realized (now that all the visual clutter was gone) that the baseboards were in rather awful shape. Like, really really bad shape. They looked like this…

So out came the painter’s tape (heaven forbid I should mar a cute little elephant while painting trim!) and the baseboards got freshened up a wee bit…

And then I decided that we’d better make the room look sorta nursery-ish for our listing photos. So I grabbed my beloved brown rocking chair (which, a long time ago, belonged to my grandparents, and which I hope to one day have reupholstered and use in my for real someday-nursery), some spare drapes, added a throw and a cushion, and poof! Instant quasi-nursery…

…well, sorta. It’s not entirely convincing, but it’s not bad. If I had a spare area rug kicking around, that’d make the room way cozier. And, of course, if I had a crib that’d be even better. And the drapes are a tad (ok, a lot) long and they cover up the sweet little elephant more than I’d like, but you can still see him peeking out a wee bit. For now, it’ll do.

So long as the house listing doesn’t actually show that there’s no crib in the room, we’re good. It’s all about perspective. :)

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Lions and zebras and giraffes (oh my!) (it’s a bit like a Toto song in here…)

Mon, 18 Feb 2013 14:58:37 +0000

Have I ever mentioned that we have not one, but TWO bedrooms in this house? Shocking, I know! The second bedroom sits directly across the tiny little hallway from our master-ish bedroom (“master-ish” because at about 10×10′ it’s hardly grandiose.) And this second bedroom is where we hide stuff. (True story.) A desk, our filing cabinet, a couple of storage chests, random boxes that we still haven’t emptied since the move (um, like, 2+ years ago…) I leave the door closed 95% of the time because I can’t handle looking at the mess. Why don’t we use this bedroom for something substantial (like an office or a guest room or some sort of similarly dignified purpose?) Afterall, our house IS rather tiny, so you’d think we’d put the room to good, functional use, right?

Look…

Yup. Lookout Tarzan, we’ve entered a happy little jungle!

The people who owned this house before us used this room as their nursery (obviously.) And, truth be told, I’m hoping that one day it might possibly be our nursery too. And, because of that, I can’t bear to paint over the rather cheery-looking animals that someone carefully and lovingly painted on the walls.

Are jungle animals my thing? Um, no. And even when this does become our nursery some day, the animals will likely get traded in for a far more subdued colour palette (since it’s rather glaringly bright in this room, and I’m more of a muted grays kinda gal.) But, until then, I don’t have the heart to ruthlessly paint over those happy little faces.

Especially the giraffe. He makes me smile. :)

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