nursery | a little old fashioned

We are now less than 9 weeks away from bringing a baby into our home and I’m feeling the time crunch. I’ve been focusing a lot of time and energy on our house lately. It could be the “nesting” part of pregnancy or it could just be that I want our house to feel inviting so that we can welcome friends and family after the birth to visit with us. Regardless, looking at every room and thinking through all of the options and lists of projects is overwhelming. It is time to focus. So I hope you don’t mind that over the next few weeks I’m going to be using the blog as an outlet for all of my ideas and I welcome your thoughts, feedback or just plain old encouragement! First up, the nursery.

This is really the first room, maybe ever, where I will be starting from scratch in terms of furniture, decor, the whole lot. On one hand it seems lot a lot to tackle, but on the other it’s kind of nice to be starting fresh rather than always trying to fit what you already have into a space regardless of whether or not it actually works. I could spend months looking for inspiration and browsing nursery pinterest boards, but see above… I have 9 weeks or less so it is decision time.

I found this great article a couple of months ago that I saved to come back to when I was ready to do some serious decorating in the house. I love the idea that a room should ultimately be about you and how you want to feel when in that room. It makes perfect sense! (Also, Emily Henderson follows the same rules with clients and herself. What more do you need?) So I’m going to give it a try with the nursery and if the formula works here, I’ll apply it to every room that I want to re-decorate.

The three things I would like to feel when I walk into Denning Beta’s nursery are:

Calm, Cheerful, Creative

Now that I have my 3 words to guide me, I next moved to gathering images of nurseries that embody one or more of my words in hopes that I could identify some themes to use in my own mood board (coming soon).

I definitely want the room to be a place where we can relax with the baby and not feel anxious or stressed about everything else. I want to enjoy the time I get to spend with him or her and I want time to pass without me being aware of it.

On the flip-side, I want it to bring out the kid in me. I want to be able to laugh and smile and play with our kid and I want the room to be a cheerful place in which we can do that.

And lastly, I hope that the room will inspire creativity. I want to DIY and craft a lot of the decor to encourage an environment where my son or daughter can create, be imaginative and appreciate ideas.

Now I just need to find the actual pieces that will help me create a calm, cheerful and creative nursery. Wish me luck!

I am so excited to share this project with you! I have been knitting up a storm these last few weeks trying to finish a very special gift for very special friends whose due date is fast approaching. If you knew these two, you would understand why this could not be just any baby blanket. The little man for whom I was knitting is going to live in a well-designed world. His parents run a furniture/home design shop and their house has some serious style! The standards were high.

When I saw a photo of the baby mobile they had purchased for the nursery, the wheels started turning.

For months now I have been looking for an excuse to make this pinwheel baby blanket. But for each baby that came along it just didn’t feel like the right fit…until Harper (that’s his name by the way – love it!). His beautiful mobile needed a complementary blanket. So I set off in search of the perfect yarn in the perfect colors.

Do you know how difficult it is to find baby-appropriate-yarn that’s not pastel blue, pink, yellow or green? It’s tricky. But with the help of my local yarn shop, I think I came pretty close to matching the colors. I’ve never actually seen the mobile in person – just a photo posted on Facebook. That’s what happens when you live 700 miles from your friends!

It ended up being 36″ in diameter, which is a great size for a baby blanket in my opinion.

Here’s a photo on our queen size bed for scale:

The border is just a simple seed stitch to give the edge some structure.

I am so pleased with how it turned out. I hope to be able to share more pictures with you once Harper arrives. And now, it’s on to another baby project!