This post is entitled 'Zen' because today I'm going to give you all the tour of my [stubbornly] unborn child's nursery and it happens to be the only room in the house that is completely unpacked, put away and decorated. Sometimes I go in there and sit on the floor and soak up the calm while silently trying to will my water to break.
Before I get to that though, I have to take a quick detour to talk about my breakfast, which was inadvertently awesome (hey, when all you do is sit around waiting for your water to break, a fantastic breakfast can be an enormous diversion!).
Last night, I made
a giant pot of homemade soup, but was fairly disappointed when I realized I had no buttermilk to make biscuits with. I scavenged the cabinets and came up with a gluten free pancake mix that could, supposedly, also be made into muffins. I figured I'd give it a try but after following the directions explicitly, I ended up with something the consistency of play dough that has sat out too long. Not to be deterred, I went ahead and baked them, figuring they would kind of melt and spread and puff up like normal muffins do. The husband and I watched as the little muffin balls remained staunchly in their original form and began to resemble small rocks as the timer ticked closer to 0:00.
a giant pot of homemade soup, but was fairly disappointed when I realized I had no buttermilk to make biscuits with. I scavenged the cabinets and came up with a gluten free pancake mix that could, supposedly, also be made into muffins. I figured I'd give it a try but after following the directions explicitly, I ended up with something the consistency of play dough that has sat out too long. Not to be deterred, I went ahead and baked them, figuring they would kind of melt and spread and puff up like normal muffins do. The husband and I watched as the little muffin balls remained staunchly in their original form and began to resemble small rocks as the timer ticked closer to 0:00.We decided to try them anyway and, to our amazement, they actually tasted like decent shortbread! Soooo this morning, after stumbling into the kitchen all bleary eyed and contracting and hungry, I did what any pregnant woman (or my mom) would do and tossed a couple of the shortbread muffin rocks into a bowl, covered them with strawberries and doused the whole thing with a healthy shot of cream. And then I did it again, and would've done it a third time, but my strawberries are all gone.
So there you have breakfast.
Now on to the Wee One's room..
I had this room painted and the dresser refinished within 3 days of us moving into our new house. No doubt this is the reason I ended up in the hospital on Terbutaline a few days later, but I digress...
I had absolutely no desire to have a pink, frilly or otherwise overtly girly room so I chose artwork that I knew I wanted on her walls and kind of based the color scheme off of those--very loosely. I wanted a very light, airy look, which ended up working out well since the room itself is quite small. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves, with a few comments interjected here and there.
This is the whole room, taken from her doorway:
We like books, what can I say:
We also like glass jars full of tiny baby socks. I recovered the lampshade with fabric from Heather Bailey's delightful fabric line. I highly recommend finding some excuse to buy some pieces, as they are beyond lovely! The wallflowers were a local boutique find, but they are made by Umbra and come in several different finishes.
Next stop is the dresser. Oi, the dresser. This was a last minute Goodwill find that I picked up a week before we left California. It was in pretty rough shape, so I decided to go ahead and start sanding it down and refinishing it while I waited for the movers to come later in the week. Being the brilliant soul that I am, I failed to lead paint test the thing until I had most of the top sanded, and of course, the test came up positive. The husband and I decided to go ahead and at least try to get the paint stripped off before it went on the moving truck (brilliant idea #2) which ended up being more of a hassle than we expected. We still managed to get it stripped and primed..just in time for it to rain non-stop for the remaining 3 days before the big move. The day the movers came to load the truck, it was still tacky and I told my neighbor that he could just keep the thing (I wanted to kick it off a cliff at that point..). The movers laughed, stuck it out in the sun and it was dry by the time they were finished, so on it went. Thankfully, it all ended well and it is now the perfect little accent for the nursery, complete with ceramic hardware from Anthropologie and a very large Crocodile from Ikea.
These are the pieces of art that were the basis for the whole room: the beautiful fish were created by Annalisa Fink and the two smaller ones were finds from Venice, Italy and Carmel, CA. The two beautiful prints are the work of my dear friend (and artist extraordinaire) Cory Godbey and can be bought here for your own enjoyment.
A little diversion from the decor: We will be cloth diapering, and I dare you to find anything cuter for your baby to poop on than these lovely little numbers from Bum Genius and Thirsties. I buy all of my diapering paraphernalia from the wonderful cloth diaper queens at Baby Cotton Bottoms in Colorado Springs, CO.
Ok, almost done. This rocking chair was mine as a child, made with love by my dear grandfather and used/abused with as much love by me. I really really want to paint it, but I'm struggling with sentimentality issues. Maybe someday. In the meantime, I just dressed it up a bit with a little handmade cushion and an alpaca teddy bear from a street vendor in Bolivia.
Aaaand last but not least, the crib. I fell in love with this gorgeous canopy crib from Babyletto back in the first trimester and was originally going to deck it out with some filmy white cotton curtains I have from a former apartment. And then reality hit and I learned about babyproofing (double Oi) which is another post in and of itself. So I spent quite a while trying to come up with something that wouldn't choke, suffocate or otherwise do major harm to my child, while also making the canopy bed actually worth having. This was the result, and while I'm not 100% happy with it, it's not bad, and gave me an opportunity to bring a bit more yellow to the room.
So there you have it. I'll leave you with one of the most beautiful nurseries I've seen pulled off in a while, courtesy of Ohdeedoh. I've lusted after it all day and contemplated repainting my own nursery a lovely greyish plum color...but I'll refrain.
full post and more pictures here
