Chapter 1: Creating a Nursery

I simply could not wait to design a nursery for our little nugget! It probably is one of the best parts of being pregnant.

Keith was a little nervous…okay, maybe a lot nervous…when I started sending him countless ideas for the nursery via e-mail at work. I believe he even e-mailed my parents for advice on how to calm me down a bit! Ha!

To start the process, I decided to take the recommendation of various sources and pick out the nugget’s bedding first. That way, we’d have a color scheme to work around. I must have visited PotteryBarnKids.com, BabiesRUs.com and Target.com a few thousand times. There are so many choices that it can really be overwhelming.

To make things a little easier, I decided to make a list of things I knew I didn’t want for the nursery:

• Primary colors – I wanted to maintain a similar color scheme to what I created throughout the rest of our home and primary colors are not part of the mix.
• Pink overload – I love the color pink, but I knew I didn’t want that to be the only color in our nursery, even though we’re having a little girl and it's very easy to go pink crazy.

Knowing what I didn’t want really did help me narrow down my selection. So much of the girl bedding is entirely pink so that was immediately crossed off the list.

What I did fall in love with was the Hayley bedding collection at Pottery Barn Kids. I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE the trees, birdies and owls! Too adorable! Plus, it had a nice mix of pinks, blues, yellows, greens and purples in the bedding, which would allow me to have a wide option for paint color.

So we went to Home Depot and purchased about 5 different paint color samples to test on the walls. I highly recommend spending the extra $3 - $5 per test bottle to do this because it’s a huge disappointment after you’ve spent $50 painting entire room only to realize you don’t like the color you picked.

I was initially thinking of painting the walls lavender, but I couldn’t find a color that would really work with the bedding. On a whim, I picked two sample bottles of yellow while we were at Home Depot. I really loved the idea of having a happy yellow nursery, but yellow is notoriously a hard paint color to get right so I figured I wouldn’t like the two test bottles. Totally crazy, but lucky for me, Behr’s Havana Cream was PERFECT!!! It’s the most delicious shade of buttery yellow and it flows very nicely with the rest of the colors in the house.

Here is the before photo of the bedroom we picked for the nursery.

This room is straight down the hall from our bedroom. And since it's in the front part of the house, there is one of the cute dormer window nooks. This was also one of the two rooms in our house that wasn’t wallpapered so we were able to get started on painting it right away. Yay!

And here's the after photo with a fresh coat of Havana Cream. When Keith’s family came into town a few weeks ago his mom Brenda kindly agreed to help me paint and his grandma Helen agreed to supervise. I must say they were both excellent helpers and I think we did a fantastic job!

Isn't that just such a happy shade of yellow? It's so creamy and buttery that I'm starting to get a craving for some yummy mashed potatoes! lol

Then we...well, really Keith...had the fun task of removing the old carpet so we could expose our fab hardwood floors. After a little bit of elbow grease and some Rejuvenate floor cleaner, I really felt like the room kind of sparkled.

And what would a nursery be without a crib? We...well, that would be Keith again...managed to get that put together this past weekend without any trouble. We selected the Graco Lauren crib in white because it was a really good price and received high praise from my current bible – Baby Bargains. (Seriously, every soon-to-be mom needs this book!)

I forgot to take a photo of the crib completely put together, but it's so cute and since there is still plenty more things to do with the nursery, I’ll be posting more updates soon. And tomorrow I promise to post another update on the kitchen because we managed to agree on a paint color this past weekend and get that room painted. Stay tuned!