I recently submitted some "nursery ideas" to
Munchkin for mom bloggers. Here are my thoughts and some pics from June's room :)
Choose a feeling....We wanted the nursery to have a peaceful/imaginative feel to it. So, we designed it based upon what we wanted people to feel when they walked into the nursery. A peaceful feeling normally comes through atmosphere or colors... so we choose light blue, white, grey, green and chocolate (I know, not a typical girl room). Our daughter's name is June Alice. June is my mom's middle name and Alice was my husband's grammy's name. We love Alice in Wonderland as well, and chose that as our imaginative theme with paintings on the wall. The idea was that there is another world beyond the walls of her room that peaks through and hopefully invokes curiosity. However, we purposefully painted scenes from Alice in Wonderland that went outside the circles in order to let her know it is okay to think beyond what you see. We left some circles blank so she can fill them in too!
Make it personal....There are a lot of things in the room that make it personal to us, and hopefully to her. The first is a crewel that my belated great aunt stitched.
It symbolizes the importance of family. Another thing that symbolizes family, and also fun, is the table and chairs that are in her room. They were made from the last walnut tree on my grandparents' farm and used to be mine when I was little. I hope she enjoys it as much as I did. The little pink bear in her crib was given to her by her Mawma.
The rocker/glider was used for my two nieces. I love the sense of knowing that love was shared already in the rocker and will continue to be shared with June. The saying on the wall is a quote from Alice in Wonderland that can be applied to life. It says, "begin at the beginning and go on till you come to the end. then stop."
Lastly, we love our friend,
Sam's artwork. So, we hung our favorite painting of hers in the room and solicited her help with the paintings on the wall. She drew everything and I helped by filling in the pictures. So, there is a sense of a "community effort" to her room, and community is important to us.
Be creative and like it....The last thing I would say is be creative in what you do and, ultimately, like it yourself. We have a more modern taste, but we were able to incorporate older things into the room to make it personal. Unlike a lot of people I know, we didn't want a lot of pink or purple in her room, so we didn't use it. Just go with things that you like. But, you have to be creative because It is hard to find things. Babies R Us and other baby stores don't have a lot of choices for things. I would just say look around. We went to Ikea for her furniture and she will be able to use it for a while, where some baby furniture only fits with the kid for several years. The crib we got at Target. The bedding is Dwell Studio, but we found it on eBay for 50% off. And, the mobile is handmade from Design Public.
We are excited for June to be in her nursery (she was due on 9/9, but is still enjoying being in my belly). Hope this is helpful for those that are thinking about their little one on the way.
