Fun Kid Rooms - Girly Pastels

After going with a rather elaborate (for me) room for my son, I knew that I had to go big for any future babies too. December of 2009, when Little Dude was only 8 months old, I found out I was pregnant again. After a few months we learned that it was a girl so my mind started going on what her nursery would look like.

Once again, I would like to start at the beginning and give the room's history. This is what Baby Boo's room looked like when we bought the house:

It had mint green walls and a dirty pea-soup-green carpet. Blech.

Since we didn't need a 2nd kid room at the time, this room became an office when we first moved in. For the office, we washed and painted the walls, ripped up the carpet, and refinished the hardwood floors. We went with green again for the walls because we had some free green paint given to us. I am not a huge fan of green, but it cleaned up the room and was a little more neutral than the original mint green. 

Unfortunately, we never took good photos of the cleaned up office. It was a cluttered little room that was often very messy. Here is a shot of me at around 16 weeks prego with Baby Boo taken in the office:

I look HORRIBLE in this photo. I was on some meds for the first trimester that made me bloat up like a balloon. Basically my whole 2nd trimester, I didn't gain any weight at all because I was losing the water weight I had built earlier. There isn't much of a point to this story other than to ask you to please look past the bloated pregnant chick in the picture and notice the small amount of room that you can see, LOL. Here is another snapshot that shows part of the office:

Definitely cluttered!

Once I was ready to get started on the new nursery, the whole office was taken downstairs. The hubs had to do all the heavy lifting for me.

Little Dude's room was designed around his mural. I decided to take a slightly different approach with Baby Boo's room and I picked the color scheme first. Here is what I came up with:

I did not want pink walls because I really dislike the overkill of pink that most girl things tend to have. I decided the walls would be a light blue.

I started looking around on craigslist for furniture to fill the room. I found a beautiful white crib for $30 and a set of dresser, bedside table, and writing desk/hutch for $100. These items were all feminine and went with the color scheme perfectly. Since all the furniture was white, I figured the trim work and doors in the room should match. Hubs was very married to the natural wood look in the room, but he begrudgingly agreed to let me paint it white.

So I got to painting. This part took the longest by far. I was working over 40 hour weeks at work, I was in my 3rd trimester of pregnancy, and of course I had a rambunctious 1 year old as well. It took several weeks but finally I finished painting everything. The walls were light blue, the ceiling a very light blue, the trim white, and the doors white.  

This was me after a long day of painting at around 38 weeks prego:

By the way - I kept the room VERY well ventilated the whole time I worked on it, used low VOC paint, and took frequent breaks.

With the bulk of the painting done, I started thinking about a mural. I decided that instead of having a complete scene with ground, sky, and everything in between, that I would do a slightly more abstract scene. Little Dude always loved the animals on his mural so I wanted to have animals for Baby Boo too. The focal point of the scene was going to be a big plum colored tree with hot pink leaves.

I started by painting the tree 1st. My mom helped me along the way as well. Once the tree was done, I free sketched the animals onto the wall and painted them in. This was totally different than Little Dude's mural where I had everything planned out in advance. With his, we used a projector to project my design on the wall and we trace in the animals. I kind of just winged it with Baby Boo's animals, but it worked out well. 

Here is a shot of the mural part of the way through:

It is difficult to photograph but all the leaves were painted over with a very fine and light glitter to add some shimmer:

 As were all the animal eyes:

Here is the completed mural:



Yes that is a circular mirror on the tree. My mom came up with that one and it is a cute detail.

The furniture had been brought in while the mural was being painted. The finishing touch was the crib bedding that my mom custom made for Baby Boo:

Once again, here is a 360 degree tour of Baby Boo's room today:

The wall with the entry door and the closet:

The full length mirror came with the house and I chose to keep it after painting the door white.

The quote on the closet door is a fairly recent addition:

This is a ridiculously simple detail that needs to be finished:

The light switch currently has a plain white rectangle plate. I need to switch it out for this cute decorative oval plate. Seriously, this takes one minute to do. . . why haven't I done it yet???

Here is the desk/hutch and the crib. As you can see, the furniture works perfectly with the room colors. I didn't paint the pink trim on the furniture, we bought it that way.

 You can imagine how excited I was when I saw the whole set for $100 on craigslist!

My MIL made this for Baby Boo much like the one she made for Little Dude:

It needs to be hung but I am rather disorganized about pictures and frames in her room.

Speaking of disorganized:

These beautiful Cynthia Rowley frames were purchased at TJ Maxx for $7.99 each. They desperately need pictures in them. I have a few different white frames (not pictured) that need filling and hanging as well.

Here is the canopy over the bed:

The colorful butterflies are gifts from my grandpa and family in Chile. They are hand woven by local artisans. The canopy itself will have to be moved soon since Baby Boo is pulling up on her own. I plan to drape it to the side until she is old enough to have it again without ruining it.

The dresser and mural again:

Even her's Diaper Champ matched the room!

Here is a detail shot:

The garbage can and Baby Boo's hamper (not pictured) match the tree almost perfectly. On the right you can see the wooden outlet cover that I painted to match the tree too. No detail spared here!

The glider was moved from Little Dude's room into her room, and the cushions covered to match by my mom:

Close-up of the beautiful afghan knitted by hubby's grandma:

You can see part of the bedside table that also came with the furniture set in the above picture. I want to find a nice basket for the bottom part. The lamp is from Target and the other thing is the baby monitor transmitter.

The rugs were from Target:

Both kids love the shag rugs; they are so comfy to lie on.

Finally, looking up is the ceiling fan:

I love all the butterfly details that tie in with the canopy over the crib.

Baby Boo's room was done on less of a budget that K's since we weren't in the middle of remodeling the rest of the house at the time. None-the-less, we did decently on the budget overall when you consider the all the new (to us) furniture. Here is a breakdown of the prices I can remember:

• Paint - Roughly $80 total for the walls, ceiling, trim, and mural.
• Crib - $30 craigslist find
• Desk with hutch, dresser, and bedside table - $100 craigslist find
• Rugs - $120 for both at Target
• Ceiling fan - $70 at Manards
• Lamps (purple one next to the crib and pink one next to the glider) - $15 each at Target
• Glider - Hand-me-down from Little Dude's room
• Matching bedding, diaper holder, and glider cushion covers - Free from my mom
• Pink diaper champ - $30 from Amazon.com
• Garbage can and hamper to match the tree - $20 or so for both at Target
• Pink canopy over the crib - $17 from Amazon.com
• Full length mirror on door - Free, came with house
• Curtains - They were already part of the room from when it was an office, but they were less than $30 for both windows from JC Penney.
• New blinds because the old ones were beige instead of white: $6
• Light switch plate - $7 on clearance at Babies-R-US

Phew! Well there you have it; Baby Boo's room in intense detail. I loved the whole process of designing and creating both rooms and I think the love really shows.