My daughter is almost a year and a half and I finally put together her room. I felt really bad (read huge mommy guilt) when she was first born because her “nursery” was a crib in our guest bedroom. She slept in our room until she was about 8 months old. Then when we moved her into her room we were able to bring her in with us, so my in laws could use the bed when they came to visit.  Around the holiday season it stopped working. She wasn’t able to sleep well in our room so we decided to bite the bullet and take out the guest bed and make the room all for her.

I was so excited to be designing my little girl’s room, but I was having a hard time deciding how I wanted to decorate her room. I also used Pinterest a lot to try and get ideas for a little girl’s room, but a lot of times I felt like the rooms were very overdone and impractical. I actually saw a little girls room with a Cinderella coach for a bed. Although I am sure it’s a little girl’s dream room, but for us we had to make it simple and stay within a small budget. Since she is already a year and a half, I wanted it to be more for a little girl than a baby. I used a quilt that my cousin had made when my daughter was born as the inspiration for the rest of the room.I decided  that the biggest thing I wanted to add to her room was a reading tent. In addition to that we decided make new curtains, book shelves and some artwork for the walls.

I went to Joann’s with my mom, planning on making a simple tent out of a hula hoop and tulle, but when we got there we found this pattern for a much more intricate canopy.  My mom loved it and decided that she would get the supplies as a gift to Lilly. We decided to use all the colors from the quilt except for pink.  I was a little worried about her room turning into a bubble gum pink room where everything was covered in the same color.

After picking all the fabric it took us two weeks to sew everything. We made two curtains and a valance along with the tent and the floor pillow. It takes me a while to get things done because I only have a few hours in the evening after the kids go to bed and before I completely crash. I also had to line it up with my mom’s schedule since she was teaching me how to sew and read the patterns at the same time.


I think we got the seal of approval from the little lady.

While I was working on the tent, Mr. Train made her bookshelves. He made me show him the shelves I wanted on Pinterest and then he put them together. Luckily he is pretty handy so whenever I need woodwork done, he doesn’t mind helping out. I love the way these bookshelves look since you can see all the book covers. It really helped finish off our reading area. Even the boys love to run in there and grab a book to read. I am hoping that she will enjoy this tent and her bookshelves for a long time.

The last thing we added in was the wall hangings that I made.  We are big Disney fans so I wanted to add a few things in but I didn’t want it to be completely overwhelming. I decided to do some silhouette artwork of popular female characters and a quote from their movies. I used Tinkerbell, Belle, Cinderella, Mulan and Alice. I simply used Modge Podge and some scrapbook paper. These were done on 12×12 pieces of wood. I know this is going to sound funny, but I live in earthquake central. So I absolutely cannot hang things on the walls above beds. (I was hit in the head during the Northridge earthquake in 1994 and I can’t get it out of my mind.) Everything near the crib is nailed straight into the wall with a nail gun. We had the word “Love” on the wall before so we just decided to keep it up.

I know that she can’t talk much now ,but I am hoping when she is a little older that she will appreciate the work that went into her room.  I love DIY projects so I had a fantastic time putting everything together.  I am very happy with the way it turned out and now I am glad that I didn’t do a big fancy nursery when she was first born. It wasn’t really necessary at the time and it gave me the opportunity to make this big girl room for her. Now the boys are asking for their room to be redone and are requesting Star Wars and bunk beds so that is a little bit bigger project.

Did you wait to do your little one’s nursery or did you have it ready when they were born?

*photo credits to Wendy Saewert.