sifted words — a lil’ nursery tour

I needed a little breathing time/downtime earlier this week after the whirlwind that was the release of my new eCookbook, so I decided to take that downtime to not make a recipe and instead snap some photos of my upcoming babe’s nursery to share with you. I hope you don’t mind! Slash welcome to my home, sort of? Maybe I’ll do a full house tour once I do the dishes. For now, bebe’s room. Focus.

I’ll start by addressing two things: 1) This is the teeniest room in our house — our storage space in the basement is bigger than this room — so it was a bit of an ordeal getting good angles/photos of the whole thing. So bear with me on the janky photography, kthanks. 2) The color on the walls is not gray nor blue (nor pink nor brown), but instead a purple that apparently cannot get its act together on the whole staying-the-same-shade in photographyville. The wall color is actually Heirloom Orchid, if you want to know what it looks like in real life.

Mmmmk, now that we have THAT out of the way: To the nursery we go!

The photo above is what you see when you first walk into the room. Look, that’s where I sleep! JOKES. That’s where baby will sleep! I sometimes imagine her in the crib (it’s the Sundvik from IKEA) and think about how teeny-tiny she will be in this giant bed. It’s like a king size bed for a baby. So yeah, I’m kind of jealous.

Oh, and every little girl’s room needs twinkle lights, methinks, so we put those in the corner to use as a night light for those late night/early morning hours we’ll be spending in there (goodbye, beautiful sleep).

Above her bed is a mirror window I got from a garage sale an eon ago and a cardboard “A” I bought from JoAnn Fabric (LOVE that store — in my other life, I am a crafty old grandma) and painted gold. Oh — the “A” stands for Avery, which is what we are naming our daughter, in case you didn’t see it on the Instagram!

To reiterate my crafty old grandma ways, I also constructed the mobile from this DIY. OBVIOUSLY I am not a craft blogger, as my mobile does not look nearly as neat as the one in the original post — but if you squint it looks mostly OK.

And yes, yes I do sing “Purple Rain” to myself every time I see the mobile. The irony is not lost on me.

Onward! This is the rocking chair (Poang from IKEA)/nursing chair/chair where Stephanie plans to watch re-runs of “Gilmore Girls” and drink wine while rocking Avery to sleep (OK OK, no on the wine… maybe sometimes sangria). The pillow on it is made from heavenly angel feathers, I think — it’s SO SOFT. And from Pier 1 Imports. (The rug is from IKEA.)

The wall across from the crib is a chalkboard wall — for extra fun! Well, fun for adults now, fun for Avery when she is old enough to draw. My naive sense of parenthood leads me to believe that she will know to draw on this wall and ONLY THIS WALL, forever and ever. Heh.

And on the wall across from the window/rocking chair sitch is the changing table/dresser (guess where from?? IKEA). I didn’t intend to do a deer/nature theme on the wall there, but it happened and I like it. The “Oh My Deer” print is from Lulu & Georgia; the cardboard deer head is from Cardboard Safari (via Etsy) and the butterfly shadow box is from… oh my goodness, get ready… IKEA. And the gold frame holds our very first photo of Avery. I can’t get over the cuteness that is her little fist above her head, like she was waving to us (hi, baby! See you soon! Please stop kicking Mommy in the ribs!).

Side note: How neato are these organizer boxes for the dresser? They were in the display version of the dresser at IKEA and we fell hook, line and sinker for the product placement. But I love them because they compartmentalize all the miniature clothes that would otherwise get lost in the grand canyon that is the dresser drawer.

We think this little nook in the wall used to be a window before they built on an addition to the house? In any case, it has turned into a nifty bookshelf. I also have naive notions that Avery will not pull down every one of these books within her reach and that they will stay as perfectly organized as they are now until she outgrows them.

Oh yes — the rocking horse! It was Elliott’s when he was a wee lad so it’s ANCIENT (he’s six months older than me so I can say that). His grandfather made it for him so it has sweet sentimental value — and I love that it is being passed down to our wee one.

Whew! I think that about covers it. I hope I didn’t bore you to death with a million words and pictures about a room smaller than a walk-in closet, but there you have it. In about 10 days, this room will no longer be empty but finally have a little baby girl in it. I can’t wait.

P.S. Raise your hand if you still have Prince stuck in your head! Puuuurple rain, puuuurple raiiinnnn…