Starry starry nursery

Our nursery is (finally!) just about done. While there are a few little things we might like to add, they’re not essential to its completeness and we’re not stressing over them. Anyways, without further adieu, here is Turtle’s starry nursery!

First off, let me just say, this was truly a labor of love on both my and DH’s parts. As we did when we designed our office, we really came together as a team to express our shared design aesthetic which tends to be an eclectic mix of modern and antique, new and collected. Putting together this room (THE room) will always remain a highlight of my pregnancy.

Let’s rewind a minute and take a look at the before pic of what was our guest room:

As you can see, we were pretty much working with a blank slate. I never wanted to decorate this room very much because like so many infertiles, I always hoped it would become a baby’s room. When I finally allowed myself to admit that this pregnancy looked like it would be sticking around, we started making plans for this room.

Choosing a paint color. We went with Benjamin Moore’s “Constellation,” ironically.

Painting complete, DH did an awesome job!

Now we knew we wanted to incorporate wallpaper in some way. I was thinking one wall of wallpaper with the others painted. We originally liked the look of this wallpaper but when the sample came, it really looked nothing like it does on that website (the stars were all holographic and tacky looking, which is crazy considering the price of that paper). So then I started poking around some more and that’s when I found Ralph Lauren’s navy blue constellation wallpaper and we both fell in love. When the sample came, we realized it would look so much better on the ceiling than on the wall. The little white stars even glow in the dark for 30 minutes after you turn the lights off!

My Dad came up to help DH put up the wallpaper – quite the bonding experience for those two!

Back to the finished product… here’s the crib corner with the mobile hung up. For the crib, we went with the babyletto Hudson 3 in 1 Convertible Crib in gray. It’s a nod to the Oeuf Sparrow crib at about half the price. The mobile is from Etsy. The color block curtains are from Land of Nod.

Here’s his dresser/changing table corner, which is the Nyvoll from Ikea. After college I swore I’d never buy Ikea furniture again but, do you know how expensive dressers are? We really liked the look of this one and the price was so affordable. I love the white lacquer drawers and the fact that they’re slam-proof. We plan to keep diapers, wipes and other essentials in the upper left drawer.

The lamp goes perfectly with the dresser and was such a steal from CB2. The astronaut print is kind of a long story but we bought it from a friend’s antique store. It’s actually a print on thick, quite warped, cardboard (believed to be from Grissom‘s memorial service) that my engineer husband had to rig up a fancy framing for. Anyways, it had just been floating aimlessly around the house but once we started putting this room together, we knew it had to be in here.

Opposite the crib, we have the chair and bookshelf corner. The chair we agonized over forever, it was one of the last things we bought. We ended up not getting a rocker because we couldn’t see ourselves using it once Turtle outgrows the baby years and didn’t want to fork over so much for a semi-temporary piece of furniture. Instead we found this chair at West Elm that worked so well stylistically. It’s actually a recliner and SO super comfortable.

The bookshelf is new, from Ikea. The star we recycled from our office (originally $5 from Home Goods!). The canvas baskets on the shelf are from The Container Store. If I have time and energy before he comes, I’d like to get the polar bear print framed and hung, and we’d also like a small side table (been eying this one in bronze) and either a floor lamp or a small lamp to go on top of the shelf (I love this one). And, I suppose the chair could use a throw blanket and pillow too but we’ll just have to see if I get around to those things.

A couple of other little details to share… these are the beautiful beanbag bookends one of my dear friends got for our shower. They fit so well in the room! She said she got them from Etsy.

This is a little antique Turtle figurine that DH bought me ages ago for some holiday or anniversary. I never really appreciated it until recently!

And this is the first thing we ever bought for Turtle, a little bicycle onesie. It symbolizes our embracing the pregnancy and is a nod to DH’s love of bikes (he builds them in his spare time).

So that’s our little nursery! It’s bittersweet in a way because I know Turtle won’t get to come home and enjoy it for quite some time but going in there reminds me that he will be coming home, that there’s more to our story than surgery and a hospital stay, and that life will go on.