Javi's Nursery

 OK, let's talk about the nursery, shall we? It's such a fun and happy space, and I am so happy with how it turned out. I won't review the before pictures again, but my goodness, this room looks nothing like it did before! :-) 

I wanted a simple, fun room for our little munchkin. When I started planning the room we hadn't found out if we were having a boy or a girl, but I knew that either way I wanted the room to be a fun, functional place for a baby, without being gender specific. 

So I decided on a color scheme of soft, sunny yellow, deep blues and pops of happy red. I also wanted a very loose circus/ animal scheme. Nothing like this room, 

which I thought might be a little over the top, but just some fun, simple touches. :-) Plus when I showed Lover this picture, his eyes kind of glazed and he muttered something under his breath which sounded a lot like "not on your life" :-)  I also found this quilt online and sent an email to my quilting expert mom asking her how hard it would be to reproduce this for the baby's room. 

I have a thing for pennants, they are just so happy and fun, and I liked how they tied into the circus theme very subtly. My mom responded that she would be happy to make the quilt for Baby K - awesome! So I set to work finding the right fabrics to make a fun, primary colored quilt for baby K. And not long after, I found this super fun elephant fabric:

It was perfect for the nursery - primary colors? Check! Slight circus theme? Check! Elephants? Check! Throughout the course of my pregnancy and pulling Javi's room together I became mildly obsessed with elephants. They are just so adorable to me! 

But back to the quilt - I picked out a bunch of complementary fabrics, and after snipping off a few pieces for another project, I shipped them off to my mom to work her quilting magic on them. The resulting quilt is beautiful and fun, and I need to do a separate post on it to really do it justice. 

Next up I made a "sprocket pillow" out of the fabrics from the quilt. 

I used this tutorial, and it went really quickly. I use the pillow every night to nurse Javi. It's the perfect thickness and size to support my arm on the armrest. And it's so happy with all those fun fabrics! 

The pillow and quilt rest on the chair that used to reside in the living room. It's a super comfortable, rocking armchair, and I made a slipcover for it out of bleached dropcloth. The fabric is super durable and it made a tired old chair look much much better! I've logged a lot of hours in that chair in the last five months, and I am so glad I chose something so comfortable! :-) 

The cradle is the one that my brothers and I used when we were babies. Turns out before we moved to Spain my mom asked my aunt to store it for her, and it's been in storage for the last fifteen years. It's none the worse for the wear - and I love that it's a family heirloom. And look- there's another elephant! :-) 

Above the cradle is a sweet paper pennant banner that my sister in law made for my shower. It says Baby Javi and it is just the perfect bit of color for this side of the room. Javi noticed it really early on, and loved looking at all the paper patterns. 

Here's the other side of the room. My craft supplies still fill up those two cupboards on the side for now. Once the munchkin is bigger and requires more room I'll have to move it all out of there. we converted the desk area into a changing station and it's working out famously. The curtained off area hides extra diapers and wipes, and the humidifier. The two drawers hold all sorts of baby goodies, and the little blue caddy on the desktop holds diapers, wipes and kleenex. I made the curtain and the changing cover from a striped flat sheet from Walmart. $5 for a ton of fabric! I made a mobile to hang over the changing pad, and Lover built a shelf to hang above to hold more little baby items. I then commandeered the shelf to display cute baby stuff, including another elephant! :-) 

I wanted something fun and different for the mobile, and it took me a while to land on this design. I found the instructions for these paper ornaments, and just strung them all up together to form a mobile. Because they are so light they move in the slightest breeze, which is really neat. 

Baby's view is pretty neat! :-) 

The shelf above holds a framed verse, two little picture frames and my favorite little shoes that Javi's worn so far. A few other decorative items round out this shelf for now, and I love it. Here you can also see the little wooden animals that we put on the wall - they were each 69 cents from Hobby Lobby, and Javi's current favorite thing to do is try to pull them off the wall! :-) 

These frame cubes were a shower gift, and they've got a few more decorative doo dads. That ceramic elephant planter was a gift from my grandma, and of course we have a Green Bay Packers monster truck so Javi will grow up to be a good fan. :-) I bought the sign at Goodwill a few years ago and it worked perfectly in here! 

The curtains are just simple white sailcloth curtains from Target that I added a yellow ribbon stripe to. The little table is also from Goodwill - four bucks! 

I made a muslin curtain for the closet and trimmed it out with some of that sheet fabric. All of Javi's teeny tiny little clothes, blankets, etc hang out in there, in a somewhat orderly fashion. :-) 

In that picture you can also see the blue ribbon that Lover added to the light pull chain. It is super functional - at night I can walk in with hand outstretched and immediately find the light. Plus, Javi's new favorite thing is to turn it on and off himself (while we're holding him of course). Its super cute to see him reach his hand out when we walk in the room, and he is incredibly proud of himself when he manages to yank the ribbon hard enough to turn on the light! 

We bought the rug on eBay after searching all of our local stores for something that would work in our price range. Lover found it and I love it. The blue ottoman is from Walmart and holds a bunch of toys.  

Lastly, we replaced the door trim with the style that matches the rest of the house. We'll slowly be doing this in each room upstairs, but Javi's is the first to get the fancy treatment! 

So that's it! A fun little room for our awesome little man. I think my favorite part is still the mobile. Or maybe the quilt my mom made. Or the elephants! :) What's your favorite?