A Nursery in the Making

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

Photo credit-Design Seeds

Greys/Melon Tones

Photo credit- Design Seeds

Greys/Plums

Photo credit- Design Seeds

Spring Pastels

Photo credit- Design Seeds

Flower Hues-Pink/Moss Green/Coral

Photo credit- Design Seeds

Ocean Tones-Blues/Greys

Photo credit- Design Seeds

Summer Bolds-Pink/Purple/Green

Photo credit- Design Seeds

Of course, pink ninja wallpaper was given a very short moment of consideration just for Nate...

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!

Nursery Designs by Nate

So here we are about a week and a half after the crib has gone up and the nursery has been painted and have we settled entirely on our nursery colors? --- that would be an emphatic "No!"  For some reason, we thought this was going to be simple, really. Doesn't everyone just come up with the nursery colors easily?  Well, I have come to discover that the real issue exists with the fact that I am in love with way too many ideas, colors, designs, and crafty projects that I can't settle on one in particular. (ahem--no comments, Nate Rockey, on this sentence) I originally had thought I knew what direction we would go, but then revealed it to Nate only to realize it was "too girly". (Hmmmm...of course I would imagine this to be a typical husband response, right?)  The funny thing is that I generally don't drift towards "extremely girly colors" at all; however, since it IS a nursery and it IS for a girl, I thought I would "live life on the edge" (whoa- watch out) and go with some color schemes that were girly in moderation. So now you have it--on my first attempt I was vetoed. 

Back to the drawing board we went- literally. I began putting together some colors/ideas together for round two and there were a few Nate and I both liked, but something still wasn't quite right- it wasn't so much just colors we discussed, but also patterns. What we have decided is that we will have several colors in this room and I think we're almost there with the decision and hope to have it settled very soon. We have decided on a nursery that has some colors and items that can transition into both a toddler and a little girl's room in the future. But in fun, would you like to see some of the possibilities that I think Nate might have come up with if he were given free reign over the design? Here is a quick "room in review" of what our nursery might have looked like if Nate had been able to design it:

DESIGN OPTION #1:
Super Pink Ninja Warriors

Design by Spoonflower

...An obvious choice for a husband who trained in karate- need I say more?


DESIGN OPTION #2:
Chinook Army Helicopters

Design by Spoonflower

...They're pastel military helicopters so it's ok for a girl's room, right?


DESIGN OPTION #3:
Coffee Cafe Craze

Design by Spoonflower

...because we need to start her out young and besides, they ARE pink and purple coffee  beans.


DESIGN OPTION #4:
"Oh Deer" in Pink & Green

Design by Spoonflower

...Because we know every girl loves Bambi and what girl wouldn't want pink deer heads in her nursery?


DESIGN OPTION #5:
Ice Cream Cone Craze

Design by Spoonflower

...because everyone knows that ice cream is one of the food groups and subliminal messages regarding ice cream are always ok, right? (this pattern is actually very cute with vintage colors--but it will not be finding it's way into the main theme of the nursery- sorry)

So there you have it, what could have been. 

(**Disclaimer: Alright- Nate really didn't pick out the above patterns though I'd like to think he might have...he has actually given some good feedback in this process when asked (even though he says this part is more "my project"...haha- I guess he's not ready to play with glue guns and fabric)  

If you think nursery designing has been a fun process in our journey, wait until we share a little about our conversations that recently commenced about what to name our daughter; however, for now- we'll save that for another day. So, give us your thoughts-- any recommendations as we finalize our room colors?  We have a ton of ideas, it's time to just narrow it down to our final few.