Wildflower Nursery

I hope you all had a great Christmas holiday. I've officially entered the adult zone and got useful gifts like snow boots, and pots and pans. That's just fine by me. They are things that I probably wouldn't buy for myself, but I will use nearly every day. Well...I should speak my truth. My husband will use the pots and pans every day. I will use them begrudgingly when my husband is working late, and I've ran out of frozen meals made my mother-in-law. Cooking is not my thing y'all. It does not bring me joy.

Speaking of joy and Christmas, my husband bought me the Girlfriend's Gift Box by Jen Hatmaker. I have just discovered the amazeballs that is Jen Hatmaker. She doesn't know this, but I'm pretty sure we're meant to be bff's. To be fair, I'm pretty sure I'm joined by a million other women that feel the same way. I'm working through her new book, For the Love, right now. I think my biggest take away thus far is to make sure I am doing what I love rather than what I think I should be doing. Although I think that I probably should continue to feed my family even if cooking is pretty much the worst. So, in the next year there will be much crafting, mommying, blogging and laughing. I'm going to start to try to do a bit more blogging that is more on the humor/essay side. So, if that's not your thing, skip past it, but ranting and laughing is kinda my jam.

Anyways, back to the point of this post. We finally got the last few pieces of our nursery put together, so I figured it was time to share the finished nursery. Designing nurseries is pretty fun. I mean, you can do things you can't do in other rooms like go over the top with a theme or make everything pink or neon green, and no one is going to care because it's a baby. The baby doesn't even sleep there for six months or so, so you really are just decorating a huge closet. I love it. My other kids are starting to get big enough that they have opinions (and rather strong ones at that) and when I have a fun idea I feel like I'm having to run it past a tiny human HOA board.

My oldest came along when I didn't have any money for a fun nursery (or even a room to dedicate as a nursery). The theme was owls because that wasn't a thing back then. I had to search high and low to find owl related items (and now they are everywhere). Click here for that post. The middle little came when we had a bit more resource wise. His room was supposed to channel a vintage hunting lodge. Click here for that post and here for his current room.

With our last little, I decided to make her theme wildflowers. I found some fun fabric in my favorite colors, so that's pretty much what I went with. I hate painting, so the aqua from my office was going to stay no matter what. Forewarned...it's not a great nursery color. The light reflects off the walls and makes her look like she's turning blue. You know what you don't want with a newborn? A baby that you're constantly checking to see if they really are turning blue or if it's the walls. I pretty much had a constant anxiety attack the entire first week she was home.

With each of my children, I made a custom mobile. It's a fun project to work on because each one is so different. The oldest got a owl mobile, the middle got a pheasant and short hair mobile and the youngest got a fabric flower mobile. I've since shortened up the mobile so it's not wacking her in the face, but she is pretty obsessed with watching it while I change her diaper.

The other DIY projects in the room include two new changing pads. The changing pads were surprisingly easy to make. I used this tutorial from a Small Snippet.

I used my oldest's old crib skirt as a template for the new skirt. I just ripped out the old fabric and added new fabric. I hate measuring out large pieces of fabric, so using the old skirt made the project very quick and easy.

I also made some wooden stacking blocks. Amazon Prime Day had the blocks for just a few dollars, so it was a easy fun project. My oldest has had the most fun with them thus far especially with her increasing vocabulary.

Just like the growth charts in my other two kids rooms, I made one for the newest little.

As I posted about in another post, the two oldest children made this artwork for the baby.

I decided to use the closet for the desk turned changing table since the nursery is one of the smallest rooms in our house. There's a couple of DIY touches in this area too. I reused the curtain from my printer stand to cover up the piles of diapers stacked up under the desk, I repainted the mirror and took out the mirror portion, so now it's a frame for a photograph that my daughter colored. Target happen to have some fun aqua/mint contact paper in their dollar section that covered some old diaper boxes to use for outgrown clothes. I also updated the 1970's oak closet doors with trim, paint and new knobs.

The room has other unique touches like the custom painted artwork by June's Wildwood and wildflower animal prints I found online. I knited a navy, pink and grey blanket. The bookcase is from my daughter's namesake, my grandmother. (I updated it in this post) On the bookcase there's a mixture of new toys and my own stuffed animals from when I was a baby. The final item was a set of Mickey ears from our trip to DisneyWorld earlier this year (where we did our big pregnancy announcement).