Baby Beatrice’s Floral Woodland Nursery
As good ideas always do… it all started at IKEA.
My husband and I had recently found out that we were pregnant and didn’t know the gender yet. We really wanted to stay “gender neutral” because we are the cranky types of folks who think the gender-specific coloring is arbitrary and annoying, but I digress… so we had planned an IKEA trip (we don’t live near one; the closest is 300mi away!) and while we were there, we discovered the woodland stuffed animals and book collection. So we bought a book and several stuffed critters and decided that we would do a cute woodland forest theme in our nursery.
Then……. we found out it was a girl.
And…… I found this curtain from Bed Bath & Beyond. Correction: SHOWER curtain.
And I seriously loved the floral pattern and colors SO much, that we actually cut and hemmed the curtain in half and used it as the window curtain in the nursery. Then, we pretty much based everything off of that and the woodland theme.
We got watercolor prints from Etsy: these ridiculously cute animals, and this beautiful watercolor print with a quote from Alice in Wonderland, “Do you suppose she is a wildflower?” (Truthfully, I have mixed emotions about this quote… the pansies are being total Mean Girls because Alice looks different than they do; but it’s also a great lesson that even if people look different than you, they are humans with feelings and should be shown love… again, I digress). And – I actually MADE one of my Pinterest craft ideas (go figure!): The flower “B” to go above the crib using a cardboard letter, floral styrofoam, hot glue, and lots of silk flowers in the colors of the curtain.
The shelves and dresser were already ours; we just re-purposed them and painted them to match the rest of the colors. And then books! books! books! on all the shelves and jammies! jammies! jammies! in the drawers of the dresser. :)
The other interesting “woodland/outdoorsy” touch was the bookends and lamp. The bookends are mason jars we had around the house and my husband filled them with real rocks and dirt from our yard (our first home!) and then filled the rest with moss. Similarly, we filled the fillable glass lamp from Target with moss and swapped the lampshade to be gray instead of the off-white that comes with it. It added a little extra texture and earth to the room.
I was having a really tough time finding paint that I liked (story of my life) and then I found this color in… wait for it….. My sister’s bathroom! It is Zen from Behr and it’s BEAUTIFUL in person. I heard the advice that moms will spend A LOT of time in the nursery those first few weeks/months, so it should be someplace that you enjoy being, and have things you enjoy seeing (other than your baby, I suppose). So my goal was to make the room super calming, relaxing, peaceful, and beautiful.
I am stoked with how it turned out and loved the not-over-the-top girly qualities. Just because I like florals doesn’t mean that I expect my little future scientist to also enjoy them as much as I do! :)
P.S. The photos were taken before we got our LA-Z-Boy recliner – Joshua in granite. Is isn’t the most beautiful chair to look at but it is the.most.comfortable.chair.ever!! Super perfect for late nights nursing or rocking a sick baby.