Adam’s Nursery
I hadn’t planned on decorating a nursery for the new baby until after his arrival, but the closer we got to his due date, the more eager I became for a good project. This ended up being a simple room to execute since it’s not large and we were able to pull in pieces from other rooms in the house. I started with just a few new elements – a blue Ralph Lauren rug (a Homegoods find that I absolutely love for its design and quality), a board and batten accent wall (the handiwork of the Fuller men), and a Restoration Hardware elephant mobile (which I snagged off OfferUp for a third of the price). I struggled to find a theme to tie these pieces together until I came across Ben’s Elephant Nose Best book and noticed its beautiful illustrations. With a little help from my friends at our local FedEx, I was able to scan the images in high resolution and have them printed, before I framed them in simple white frames.
From there, I added an Ikea dresser we had in Ben’s closet, a few of his old throw pillows, his rocking giraffe, a lamp from our room, and a few plants. I added a new crib sheet as well as these blackout curtains to the existing white panels we already had. The most expensive piece in the entire room is the crib. I had been ogling over various vintage-inspired cribs throughout my whole pregnancy, and decided to splurge a bit on this one (though I’ve seen these used as well.)
This is now my favorite room in the house 🙂
Sourcing: Dresser | Crib (Purchased when they were running a $100 My Funds promo) | Mattress (Emily Crib Mattress) | Crib Sheet | Elephant Mobile (Got for $30 on Offer Up) | New Rug (Although I got mine from Homegoods for $350) | Knit Friends | Amazon Blackout Curtains
Ben’s Bedroom
After re-decorating both our master bedroom and the new baby’s nursery, I decided Ben’s old room needed a refresh. At 37 weeks pregnant, I knew I didn’t have much time to pull something together, but finding two new items were a top priority for me: a new rug and new blackout curtains. I love the Ralph Lauren rug I found at Homegoods to add to the other nursery, so I searched high and low for something similar and reasonably priced to add to Ben’s room, and wound up finding this one online. These Ralph rugs are THICK, which is perfect (so far) for laying on top of the existing carpet, and they’re soft enough to play on. After seeing how well these blackout curtains worked in the other nursery, I bought an identical pair for Ben and added them to his existing white curtains. We previously had a black curtain permanently hung behind the plantation shutters…. it worked great for blocking light, but unfortunately he never got natural daylight in his room (depressing!). This is a much better option.
After seeing the shades of blue in the rug and curtains, the whale theme came to mind and I ran with it. I started off by buying and downloading printable ocean life images from Etsy, combining them to create a few simple files, and having them printed on 100# matte paper at Fedex. Worked like a charm and was relatively inexpensive. I added in this poster to the corner to add a little more interest there, refreshed the books in his bookshelf, and added some baskets and his little white chair from Homegoods to complete that area of the room.
I added a few more random Homegoods finds to his dresser along with his Jellycat whale and we’re set! Ben’s pretty pleased. Almost as pleased as he would be if the theme were trucks 🙂
Sourcing: Dresser (weathered white) | Crib | Mattress (Emily Crib Mattress) | Crib Sheet | Glider (We got ours from our local PB outlet for only $400) | New Rug (7’x7′) | Cloud Print (I had this printed on canvas through Vivyx, a local Arizona printer – loved them!) | New Whale Prints (printed at Fedex) | 16×20 Frames | ABC Whale Poster (printed at Walgreens) | Lamp (dupe of this one at Pottery Barn) | Knit Friends | Amazon Blackout Curtains | Whale Jellycat