Elise's Nursery

Before we found out Carter was a boy I was hard at work planning out his nursery.  I fell in love with a picture on pinterest of a nursery with light gray walls while the ceiling and top portion of the room were painted blue.  I knew I wanted gray walls with a pink ceiling for a girl or a blue ceiling for a boy.  Ty painted the room gray and then we waited to find out boy or girl to finish the painting.  Years ago I had found 3 really cute Curious George wall hangings at an antique store.  I bought them to decorate my classroom with the thought in the back of my mind that they would be perfect for a boy's nursery.  I didn't have anything specific for a girl other than that I knew I wanted to do an elephant theme.  When we found out Carter was a boy we went with a monkey theme using blue and yellow, centered around the Curious George paintings.  I had less direction with a girl nursery so I was excited to first turn the nursery into a boy room.  See pictures of Carter's nursery here.

This time around when we found out we were having a girl we took a different approach.  We knew we wanted pink and a teal accent color so we started at Lowe's.  I picked out paint strips that I liked and we worked from there.  The teal accent color is more of a mint color and I love it.  Teal is my favorite color and the color we ended up with is a lighter, more pastel version of it.  When my mom was visiting we went out in search of fabric and found the perfect teal and pink fabric for valences.  Then Ty chose a light pink fabric with white polka dots for the curtain and it was a perfect match.  I had a few ideas for decorating the room and shared them with Ty.  One weekend he disappeared in the garage for a while and returned with 2 wooden elephants he had created.  They are perfect for decorating the dresser.

Ty took a cool panoramic photo of the nursery for me.

Here's a close-up of the wooden elephant Ty made and then painted.

I played with different ideas for creating 3 elephant wall hangings to replace the Curious George ones that had been above the crib.  At first I planned to trace an elephant on teal scrapbook paper and glue it onto pink scrapbook paper.  Then I thought about using the wooden elephants hung on fabric.  But eventually I came up with an idea that I absolutely loved.  I had Carter finger paint 3 different pieces of paper pink.  Then I traced an elephant outline and cut them out, glued them to teal scrapbook paper, and framed them.  Not only did I already have all of the materials for the project so it was cheap, but now Elise's room is decorated with Carter's artwork!

Elephants finger painted by Carter, crib skirt and pillow along with crocheted elephants made by Oma, and of course our beautiful crib made by Papa. 

Here's a close-up of Carter's marvelous artwork!

Quite a while ago I saw this adorable elephant handprint craft online.  I saved it knowing I wanted to make it some day with Carter.  When we were coming up with ideas for the nursery I knew I wanted to make it with all of our handprints.  Ty, Carter, and I would all put our handprints on the paper and turn them into elephants for a wall hanging in Elise's room.  I was so happy with how it turned out and I love the way it matches the room.

The elephant hand print painting is on the left.  You can also see the wooden elephants Ty made on the dresser along with a crocheted elephant Oma made on the cubby holder.

A close-up of our elephant hand print picture with Ty's hand on the left, mine on the right, and Carter's in the middle.

We re-used all the furniture with no need for any changes other than painting the drawers of the dresser from blue to pink which my mom did for us.  I moved Carter's lamp over to his big boy room and we were debating whether we wanted to get a new lamp for the nursery or just go without when my mom found the perfect teal/mint lamp at Wal-Mart for $10!  We weren't sure what we would do for a lamp shade and then one grocery shopping trip we found an adorable pink lamp shade with fabric flowers.  We bought it and the whole drive home I was regretting the decision.  I thought it would be too much and I would hate it, but once Ty stuck it on the lamp, I was in love!  It worked perfectly!

Loving the lamp and the afghan my mom made for the glider.

When we were first putting the room together I felt like there was just too much pink.  I like pink, but it's not my favorite.  I wanted to use it in the room, but I didn't want it to the too much of a focus.  Teal is my favorite color and I was wanting to bring more of it into the room.  The tricky part was that we could find baskets, changing pad covers, and sheets in pink.  We couldn't find them in our teal/mint color.  So we ended up with all pink baskets and changing pad covers.  That paired with the ceiling made me feel like the room was drowning in pink.  Once we added in the lamp, I pulled in some frames from my dresser that matched the color, and I got the elephant wall hangings in our teal/mint color, I felt much better about the amount of pink in the room.  To help cancel out some of the pink of the curtains I asked my mom to make the valences longer than typical valences so we would have more teal in the room.  All of that combined to make the room the perfect combination of our 2 colors and I love it!  I still wish we could have found baskets in a lighter teal/mint color, but the pink is growing on me!

Update:
I wrote this post too early!  At my sprinkle I received a few decorations for the nursery which we hung up when we got home.  Carter really loves the Elise banner and points at it saying, "Lelers!" while I change his diaper.

The cubbies with our wall hanging on top.

Close-up of the sweet wall hanging along with a new frame from my mom.

Cute chalkboard print from the hostess.

Close-up of the chalkboard print.

Burlap Elise hanging the hostess made for me.

Close-up of the burlap hanging.