Hellobee

When I found out I was having a girl, you can only begin to imagine my excitement. I would have my boy and now my girl — how perfect! My mind immediately started going in a million directions as to what I would do for the nursery. I purchased a pair of handmade Joyfolie shoes and that sparked a great color combo. I went back and forth on the color combo, and even 1 month before we started working on the nursery I dropped my original idea of using coral, mint, pink, gray, and navy and went towards coral, mint, blush pink and gold.

My talented designer friend, Genevieve Ghaleb, wanted to participate in making my dream baby girl nursery come true, and with her great design flare combined with my DIY ideas, I don’t think we could have been a better design match. But then came the “crazy ideas” according to my husband. The first one was painting the wood floors.  This one was a tough one for him to swallow and he literally tried to make me change my mind a good 200 times. But when I told him it was what I wanted and there were no way I’d change my mind (I blamed it on the pregnancy hormones), he just followed along. Boy was I hoping it would look fabulous, otherwise I would have to live it down for the next 25 years! The floors, as my friend Gen tried to explain to him, was the core to the nursery. I wanted to do something you don’t really see in nurseries, and painted floors was just that. I don’t think they could have been more perfect! The perfect shade of mint with some white and coral piping…

The shoes were an important element to the room design, so I wanted to make sure to highlight them, and what better way than to frame them on the wall. I purchased some small frames at a thrift store and painted them gold. In one of the frames I framed the fabric found in the crib, and in another frame I put a quote I found to fit perfectly “Cinderella is proof that a pair of shoes can change your life.”

The first thing I purchased (apart from the shoes) was the blush pink waterfall curtain. I absolutely loved the ruffles and wanted them to be in the nursery. At that moment I hadn’t decided on the color scheme, but we made it work (yay!). Seeing as it was the only ruffle element I had in the room, I decided to make my own coral ruffle lamp shade.

You can say that this nursery is all about colours and textures — ruffles, bows and doilies. I’d seen great wall feature with cupcake liners. I liked the texture part of it and figured we could probably make something similar with paper doilies. The outcome was better than I could have imagined! I love the white on white and emphasizing the shapes and textures! I also framed some doilies in a mint colour backed frame to tie in with the feature wall.

I wanted to make my own mobile for baby girl. I’m not a fan of many of the ones out there, and I knew I wanted to add more bows in the room. I’d seen on Pinterest this great use of embroidery hoops for some table decor, and thought it would work really well for a mobile as well! So I painted the hoops gold, added fabric bows and hung it from the ceiling. I think it’s one of my favorite pieces in the nursery. So simple, yet so perfect!

I decided to print out fake book jackets that matched the nursery colors to put in the night table beside the glider. Sure they are fake — I mean there’s no way A Very Hungry Caterpillar would be 300 pages long — but I think it looks adorable and eventually I will swap them with the real books.

I wanted to have a piece that would grow well with Sienna, and I think the mirror is perfect for just that! Even though I’m not a fan of animals in nurseries, the coral elephant bank was just the perfect addition to the vintage dresser we found at a thrift store. But the best part of all, I was able to put a vintage teacup my stepmother gave me a few years ago (that belonged to her mother) in the room.  I love when there’s a little history attached to a room’s decor.

Do you think I was nuts for painting the wood floors? What’s your favorite part of the room?

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Room Details :

For those interested, here is the cost break-down of the nursery decor. I will be posting tutorials on some of the DIY projects I did for this room shortly.

Furniture & Lighting

• Vintage Crib : $50 // refurbished
• Vintage 5 drawer dresser : $20 // Thrift find Village des Valeur
• Vintage 6 drawer dresser (changing table ) : $75 // refurbished
• Night Table : already owned // Hemnes Ikea
• Upholstered Glider : already owned //  Dutalier
• Chandelier with pink crystals : $70 (got a new one on Kijiji for a steal) // Pottery Barn
• Ruffled Table Lamp (DIY) :  already owned //  Base Bouclair,  Shade (Arstid) Ikea
• Pink Glass Knobs : $30 // Look In The Attic
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  Furniture & Lighting : $245
  

Bedding & Linens

• Crib Bumper (Punch Basics) :  $115 // Serena & Lily 
• Crib Mattress Cover : $36 // Serena & Lily
• Ruffled Crib Skirt : $84 // Carousel Designs
• Pink Waterfall Ruffled Curtain : $64  (had discount code) // Urban Outfitters
• Vintage Knob Curtain Tie Back : $12.50 (had discount code) // Urban Outfitters
• White Throw : $25 // HomeSense
• Coral Pillow : $20 // HomeSense
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  Bedding & Linens : $358.50

Paint colors :

• Wainscotting & Floors : CIL Cascading Water 30GY 75/105 W/B
• Walls / Ceilings / Stripe (floor) : Plain White
• Coral stripe (floor) : CIL Pink Chablis 30YR 68/127 W/B
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  Paint & Painting supplies : $325

Since we painted our wood floors, we needed to prep, sand, prime, paint and varnish, so a big bulk of the nursery costs went to the paint. Sure bedding wasn’t cheap either (especially for the short time we will be using it), but to compensate, we made sure to choose furniture pieces (with the exception of the crib) that would grow well with Sienna. The total nursery cost  of $1061 was a little over budget (I was aiming for $750), but considering everything we did, I have no regrets!

Design & Concept : Myself & Genevieve Ghaleb
Images courtesy of : Anne-Emilie Sayegh