Before you judge me harshly today, assuming that our post would be very serious and written entirely about Good Friday or Easter, let me take a moment to start off on that subject, but I'm going to segway into something entirely different. While Good Friday is an amazing day of reflection for believers and today we do pause to reflect on God's sacrifice of His one and only son Jesus, it's what followed on Sunday that we most celebrate- a risen Savior. For Nate and I, Good Friday will always be a day that we will also remember because it marks when our dossier (a.k.a. our entire life history in a binder that practically killed a forest in the making of it) went to China to get logged in.
When Nate and I first began the adoption process, like many couples we began to occasionally talk about some of the little things that we "would get around to" eventually once all of the paperwork was behind us. We all know that one of those topics was the nursery and the other was baby names. Being the overly practical gal that I can sometimes be, I began to think that we would go with the whole "neutral nursery" idea so that we wouldn't have to change it again should we have future children join the family in the years to come. (ok, yes, I didn't want to do all of that hard work again, so thought neutral might be extremely smart) What surprised me was Nate's reaction when we talked about it. He looked at me when I asked about colors and styles and at this point the reaction on his face was probably reflective of what was inside his head at the moment which was probably something like, "Seriously? Do I look like I work for HGTV? Do you really expect me to have an opinion on this?" Well, that's what I thought his face might indicate was going on in that genius mind of his, but what came out of his mouth was quite different. In that moment he clearly defined that since we were adopting a girl it needed to be a "girly" room. To say that I was shocked was an understatement. I really expected him to go for the "neutral, yet touches of girly" nursery look. I was wrong. (and trust me, it's not the first time since we've been married)
So with that little conversation behind us, I went about looking at color schemes and trying to determine a direction for the nursery. Now, anyone that knows me knows that if I could pick from one of a few other jobs aside from what I'm currently doing, one of them would be design. I just absolutely love it and find it extremely fun to get creative and think through colors, patterns, textures, fixtures, etc. the list could go on and on. For some it's sheer torture, but for me- it's life-giving and creatively satisfying.
I will say that one of the first places I go when I have a lot of varying color thoughts in my head is a wonderful website called Design Seeds. If you click this link you'll understand why. It is such a practical website with beautiful and natural use of colors in nature and in objects and includes photography (yes, another of my favorites) in ways that can get your creative color juices flowing. (if there really is such a thing-- it just sounded good at the moment) It will give you a lot of great ideas and uses of color. So with that, I began looking at both colors and then various fabrics for the nursery to try to narrow down which direction we would go. I think for many of you that know me, our final result might be a bit surprising to you, it actually was to me too!
Here were some of the color palattes that we started out considering (please note that not all colors represented were going to be included):
Grey/White/Yellows
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| Photo credit-Design Seeds |
Greys/Melon Tones
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| Photo credit- Design Seeds |
Greys/Plums
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| Photo credit- Design Seeds |
Spring Pastels
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| Photo credit- Design Seeds |
Flower Hues-Pink/Moss Green/Coral
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| Photo credit- Design Seeds |
Ocean Tones-Blues/Greys
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| Photo credit- Design Seeds |
Summer Bolds-Pink/Purple/Green
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| Photo credit- Design Seeds |
Of course, pink ninja wallpaper was given a very short moment of consideration just for Nate...
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| Wallpaper design from Spoonflower.com |
OR
MAYBE
NOT.
Keeping with the idea that we will most likely be bringing home a child that falls between the ages of 12-24 months, a few things determined our decision and were non-negotiables:
- We wanted it to be fun and have some elements of "girly" in it (which is actually a little outside of my comfort zone- I don't normally go for "girly" or pink for that matter)
- We wanted it to be light and whimsical
- We wanted it to be flexible for either an older baby or toddler
- We wanted it to be something we didn't have to change every year or so as our child grows (obviously this was the personal choice we made because we just wanted it to be easier to "grow with" her as she got older and also allow us to be able to work other items/elements into the room as she ages. We didn't want her to outgrow it too quickly.
- We wanted it to be modern yet playful
- We wanted it to have different forms of texture and elements that would be evoke a stimulating environment as she gets older
- We realized Pinterest and Etsy could get us into trouble (ok, who am I kidding, get me into trouble, as I'm pretty sure it wouldn't affect Nate) and wasn't always financially savvy, so we decided that we wanted to do as much of the nursery through DIY projects as we possibly could and save some money that could easily be tempting to spend on nursery items or art on these sites.
We decided on the base wall color for the nursery, which as you've seen from previous posts, were painted in grey.
We chose to use white furniture to ground the room and make it light and bright.
While preparing our nursery, I lost my grandmother last summer to Alzheimer's and that also became a factor in some of our color choices. Grandma loved cheerful colors and her favorite was any shade of purple/plum, so because of that, we decided to incorporate pops of plum into the room in her memory knowing that if she would have lived to have met "Little Miss" she would certainly have loved her nursery and I'm pretty sure that something purple would have showed up.
Anyone that knows me well knows that I actually don't normally decorate with bold colors and generally tend to prefer muted/modern tones and patterns, but apparently I was bitten by the "girly" bug when we began working on this project and before I knew it, I started liking a number of brighter tones and decided to integrate a number of fun colors into the room. These were also colors that were very easy to find and mix and match for the future.
From the above sample color swatches, we finally ended up choosing the following color palette:
DARK & LIGHT GREY
PLUM
MOSS GREEN
TIFFANY BLUE
"FLOWER HUES" PINK (ok, it's not really a name, but I wasn't sure how to describe the pink we have in some parts of the room and called it from the name I gave it above)
As we begin to show you all how this is starting to come together, you'll see that we integrated these colors throughout the room in various ways, from the fabrics we used, to the curtains, bedskirt, and art that I made throughout the room. We've been busy with many months of projects and our labor of love is now slowly coming together. For those of you who have asked, we are excited to start to show you all of the various nursery decisions we have made along the way.
More to come............(and for the guys that read this, we promise everything we post in the weeks to come won't just be about the nursery)
Have a restful and reflective Good Friday everyone!
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