We've got a problem at our house...one that I never ever thought I would say as a bad thing: My children love each other WAY too much. Why is this a problem, you might ask? Because not only do I spend 80% of their waking hours peeling them away from each other, but also because we live in a 2 bedroom apartment right now and they were supposed to share this beautiful, inspired nursery I designed for them. But after a couple weeks of my sleep-through-the-night-at-2-weeks babies waking each other up multiple times a night, I decided that for my own sanity things were going to have to change.
So into our bedroom Gracie's crib went. Our very very white-walled bedroom, that is...
Prior to her moving in, I hadn't really done alot to this room. I certainly don't spend much time sleeping, and Nate doesn't care as long as he has a place to lie down...so I've kind of been focusing on the living room, my art studio and kitchen and just adding random bits of decor when I got the time. However, I'm a big believer in having babies surrounded by color, so I made her little corner a priority this past week.
Here's a peek at the only real decorating that I've done to the room...just to give you an idea of the colors.
My first order of business was to find a quilt that matched the colors of the room since my old childhood pink girlie quilt she had been using was going to clash horribly with our green bedspread. But after searching everywhere for a colorful girlie quilt that had a little funk to it, I was getting a little discouraged...until I pulled out this colorful afgan that I found in the attic in my old house in Ohio when I moved in (and discovered was handmade by the deceased mother of a good friend of mine!). I immediately knew I was going to design the entire area around it and got to work.
Next, I desperately wanted to get a curtain up on the window. The white blinds on the white wall (both came with the apartment) just weren't doing it for me, so I decided to go the same route that I did with the kitchen windows...add a shower curtain. And this blue polka-dot one just seemed perfect with the handmade afgan. After the curtain was up, I pulled the little animal mobile that I had despised right up to that point and had stored in our Goodwill donation box. But once I added it next to the afgan and curtains it didn't seem nearly as wretched...I'm sort of even loving it now. (Don't you love when that happens?) Next, I added a few throw pillows from Target to leave in there during the day when she's not using it.
And for the final effect, I switched out the plain white shaded lamp for this retro green one (the green is the exact color of the bedspread in real life) with it's blue and yellow flowers on the inside that shine through when the lamp is switched on on top of my little sewing supply holder-turned nightstand. (You can view that make-over project here.)
And that, my friends...is the story of a new little corner of our home that we like to call Gracie's Space.
I can't say for certain since she can't talk...but from a purely selfish-mama standpoint judged by long nights of babies sleeping straight through...I'm going to go ahead and call it a success. And from the look on her face when she wakes up in the morning, I think she might agree.
P.S. The crib itself is a hand-me-down from Nate's uncle. It started out as a Winnie-the-Pooh bed, but I painted over the Pooh decals with the blue that matches the rest of the room (inside the little circles on both sides of the bed).
