How did you decorate your nursery?

[anna lisa]

I'm having a hard time deciding on the decor of our nursery. I live in a two bedroom condo and will have to use the one spare bedroom for all future children as well as a nursery now. It's a rather large room, so space isn't an issue just the decor is.

I didn't find out the gender of the baby yet. We're undecided if we really want to know just yet. I was thinking of decorating the room in the Whirligig theme since it's gender neutral and would be fine if in a few years another child is in there too. But if I have a girl, in my heart I really would love to have a pink girly room. But would hate having to redecorate the whole thing if next time around we have a boy to share the room. Ugh! decisions!

I have no idea what to do.

I do like whismical, childish rooms. Nothing traditional with white walls.

Any thoughts from mom's who have only one spare bedroom for all future children. How did you decorate???

Thanks,

[egoldber]

If I were you, I would keep things that are hard to change gender neutral and get gender specific accessories. This provides a lot of flexibility. If you have gender neutral crib/furniture and paint, you can still have girlish bedding and accessories if you like (and if you have a girl!).

This is what we did. Although I have other bedrooms, our plan is to only have one "nursery" and move kids as they get older to their own rooms.

HTH,

[COElizabeth]

Our place is a 2BR also, and our nursery is right now functioning as our guest room also (even if my sister is the only one willing to visit and sleep in the baby's room!). We will use it for a second baby if we have one while we are still in this house. Since I didn't know the gender and needed bedding for both a double bed and a crib, I chose the PBK puppies bedding in blue and green. That pattern has been discontinued, but PBK has lots of other options that I think look good for both kids and babies.

Elizabeth
Mom to James
9-20-02

[Tondi G]

We painted the room a tan color with crisp white walls and then did a blue ceiling... we were planning on putting clouds up there but never got around to it! Our crib,bookshelf and dresser are all natural wood and we plan to use it for all babies... only have our one DS so far! We went with an underwater theme... white sheets with bright colored fish and kelp and star fish on it(PBK) and I got a bumper off E-bay with the discontinued PBK seahorses pattern... quilted shades of blue and seahorses and star fish on it! If our son had been a girl we probably would have gone with the same paint and gotten more girlie sheets and bumper.... I'm thinking Minty or sage green and lavender!

Go neutral on the walls.... not white but maybe a soft yellow, sage/mint green, we chose the tan cause it worked with the blue ceiling.... have a look in a Pottery Barn kids catalog... it'll give you great ideas! Right now they have an adorable animals pattern... white background with lions,giraffes etc.... brigt colors and very cute... the bumper reverses to green I believe... if I was looking now that is what I'd have choosen for my son!

My BIL and SIL painted their daughters nursery white with a double chair rail (moulding) half way up the wall.... in the middle of the rails was blue and silver stars handpainted .... their furniture was white and the glider had blue denim fabric... even though it was blue and white it was very feminine...so who knows!!!! A stars/moons pattern could definetly go both ways... boy or girl and it's very pretty..... I toyed with that idea but then they went with it so we chose something different! Good Luck!

~Tondi and Mason 7/8/01!

[mharling]

We also have one extra bedroom and figured at some point there would be a toddler sharing it with a baby. The challenge was finding a gender-neutral them that wasn't too babyish.

We decided on an alphabet theme and started with an alphabet rug from PBK (I've only seen it in stores; not online or in catalogs). We painted the bottom part of the room royal blue and the top part a honey yellow. We found an alphabet border to go in between. Here's a link to a picture of it:
http://www.imperialwallpaper.com/global/content/findwallpaper/detail.asp?pid=52;8;6:8#

Furniture is natural maple and as others have suggested, we'll be more gender-specific with some of the accessories. HTH!!

Mary
EDD 4/5/03

*Edited to try to fix the link. You may need to copy and paste the entire link into your browser.

[Jen841]

We are going with yellow walls, and a Curious George theme for our small 2nd bedroom. I plan on using a lot of solid red and blue, and adding more bows if we have a girl. Curious George was my husband's favorite growing up, and I figure it is not baby-ish, but more childlike.

Finding Curious George items is harder than I thought, and more pricey ($200 crib bumpers!!!!)- but I am fortunate to have a mother who can sew and we discovered 3 Curious George prints at Walmart of all places. She is making a bumper and quilt for us, and the rest I will do in solids.

We are going with white furniture (large dresser with a changing station on top and a white crib) and a blue rocker.

We are not sure how long we will be at our location, so I want to prospective buyers down the road to be able to picture the room as a den or guest room, not a "baby" room. We will have the only baby in our condo association, so it is not a really child friendly area to date. I fear resale problems with a "baby" room.

The only item not Curious George will be an Alphabet picture that my Aunt made for me as a child that was in my room as a child. I figure it is of animals so it will fit in fine!

Curious George knick-knacks will be placed on white shelves from Linens and Things (set of 4 on sale for $20 right now.)

Good luck decorating! We purchased our paint yesterday (Behr- Moon Dance) and I am getting excited to put it all together. Time for my Mom to start sewing!

[Tanya]

Well, I didn't want the comforter (can't use it in the crib and didn't want to have to find a place for it or pay the money for it) or the bumper (not recommended anymore because of SIDS), so I just kept it simple with a crib skirt and sheets.

I did my decorating on the walls. Paint is easy to change and fairly inexpensive. I painted the walls like a lilypond with cattails, dragonflies, frogs, and lilypads. It's cute (if I say so myself) and gender neutral (we also don't know what we're having). It's also easy to change for future kids if I get tired of it.
Then my crib skirt has teh same colors in it in an almost plaid pattern. Then, I just chose a couple of the colors for solid colored crib sheets. The window valences will be a solid color. I have some inexpensive frog accessories. I'm not buying a kid lamp, but going with one that matches, but can be used later too.

Anyway, I did the painting myself and all of my paint supplies (6 colors of paint, homemade stamps, sponge...and I bought a respirator since I was doing so much painting while pregnant) cost less than $100 I believe. That's a lot cheaper to change than having to buy new bedding AND paint each time. If I wanted a girly room or a boy room, I could still pull it off with the bedding I have and just painting the walls differently. And I enjoy painting.

Flip through a Pottery Barn Kids catalog for some inspiration, then think about how you can simplify it and get the effect for less money and flexibility to change it later.

Tanya
edd 4/13/03

[C99]

We did not know the sex of our baby before he was born, so I chose a fairly gender-neutral theme for the baby's room. I used greens, whites and natural wood tones as the base of the room, and using a projector and transparencies, traced and filled in a few murals on the walls. I chose Kate Greenaway illustrations for the murals.
HTH

[elvisfan]

My dd(14 months) and baby #2(edd 5/03) will be sharing a room. We think #2 is a girl, but I won't believe it until delivery day.
Here is how the room is done:
colors: true red, true blue, white(walls, wicker changing table and toddler bed) and natural(crib and, when we get one, a large toybox)
theme: raggedy ann and andy-we got the bedding at Walmart and have been pleased with it
We feel the color and them can work with a boy and a girl-if it comes to that;)

[babyparker]

You can check out our nusery pictures on our web page [http://www.shanadrew.com]. Our nursery is primary colors with gingham and polkadot accents. The furniture is by Status and the bedding is by Kimberly House. Hope you enjoy!

[Andrea S]

I used the bunnies from PBK they have them back on the website. I painted the walls yellow and stamped a bunny border all the way around the room. I used blue/green/yellow b/c I knew we were having a boy, but you could use any colors in the quilt. This room is also the guest room so on the bed I used blue/green/yellow so it all coordinated. It turned out really cute.


Andrea
mom to Andrew 8/14/02

[parkersmama]

We didn't know if either of our first two were boy or girl until delivery so we had a gender-neutral nursery. The walls were pale yellow and the furniture was while. I had crib bedding custom-made: pastel stripes and green gingham. I have a wingback chair and ottoman in the room (rather than a rocker) and it was covered in a Waverly tropical fish pattern. I traced some of the fish and did a stencil of them around the top of the room. I didn't really try too hard to accessorize with fish otherwise but it was always our "fish room". :-) I really loved it. BUT, when we found out that #3 is a girl there was no stopping me from changing it! After all, I raised 2 boys in there...it was a boys room to me now! This time around we are using the Julia crib bedding from PBK and having the chair/ottoman recovered in a dot fabric...blue with pastel colored dots (but not really polka-dots). The walls are painted pale pink. :-) I loved the old room but it was fun to make a change!

[sweetbasil]

Annalisa,
We didn't find out DS#1's gender either, and went with the Sumersault Nantucket pattern. It's sage and periwinkle, and has matching patterns that coordinate- Santa Fe is plaids, Savannah (now discontinued) is raspberries and raspberry blossoms...they sold a dozen bunnies with that were mix-matched from all 3 patterns. We figured we'd throw in some extra pinks if it were a girl, but he wasn't, and neither is the little one we're expecting in June. Maybe baby #3 :), one day, will be a girl, and I'll get to use all the other coordinating pieces.

At our former home, we painted the wall to look like a quilt, complete with tufting and buttons. In this house, I just painted big diamonds in periwinkle and sage, to match the bedding. Then we placed the dozen bunnies (that's a lot of bunnies!) around the room for extra color- on shelves, furniture, etc.

Will use the same nursery for DS#2, and have already moved DS#1 into his big boy room- nautical themed.

Good luck...I can't wait to hear about your final product for the nursery! Oh, and congratulations :)