Our First Nursery, Second Baby

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Our son is our second baby. But his room is the first nursery I’ve had (possessed) to decorate. We brought our daughter home to our 1400 -ish square foot 2 bedroom apartment and the only place we had for her crib was in our guest bedroom, which did triple duty as her nursery, our guest bedroom and my home office when I went back to work. In it we had a queen bed, an end table we were using as a nightstand, a desk, a chair, a bookshelf that was there only because we had nowhere else to put it, a dresser, a crib, and a large rubbermaid container or 2 we used for storage. There was hardly enough room to move around the room and so little space between the bed and her crib that I regularly tore up my shin on the old bed frame as I tried to scoot between the two to get to her crib. The most decorating we did in that room was to hang blackout curtains to help our baby girl sleep. (We could have done better with this space, we just weren’t willing to make the investment).

Here, our daughter and her brother have their own rooms. In our son’s room — the nursery — we combined pieces we had from the apartment with a few new ones. The rug, which I’m very attached to, was the living room rug we used in the apartment. The chair was my daughter’s rocker/recliner, which we had also kept in the apartment living room. Finally, the “nightstand” is, you guessed it, the end table we used as the nightstand in our daughter’s room/guest room/office in our last apartment (which was from a furniture set Hubs bought as a bachelor for his condo (the first place we lived together after we were married)) . The blackout curtains are new from Pottery Barn Kids. I had to have them and basically designed the whole room around them. Their chambray color and linen texture are perfection. (If you’re interested, they’re also great at blocking out the light from the window).

When picking the crib and dresser/changing table I waffled between white and a natural wood tone. I felt white would be too preppy for the look I was going for (but could have looked great as well!). I wanted the room to have a richness to it but a lightness at the same time. I didn’t want to go full on lodge but I wanted it to be masculine and give a nod to the outdoors. Ultimately, I decided on the Davinci Baby Autumn crib and Charlie 6 drawer double dresser (with the Universal Wide Changer Topper) in Espresso (available here). The crib is great. The dresser isn’t amazing quality but the price was right. It’s good enough and works well for what we need it to do.

I left the walls blank for a few months after we moved in, waiting for just the right pieces. Then I learned about a mom-owned and run company called Helmsie Baby and in perusing their website found and fell in love with this poster (available here). It’s called The Hunt. It features a German Shorthaired Pointer hunting a rabbit and a quail surrounded by plants commonly found here in Georgia. It was perfect for the feel I was trying to capture in the room and true to my son’s heritage, coming from a family of outdoorsmen, but neither rustic nor preppy. A few moths later I found this print (below) of a water color of the clubhouse at Augusta National. Hubs, my dad and my brother are all golf nuts and our family are biiiiiig Masters fans. And we’ve been fortunate enough to have the privilege to go to a few rounds. So when I found this print on Etsy I knew I had to have it (available here). (I had it printed in size 36″W x 24″H by MPix and ordered a Dark Walnut Wide Gallery frame to fit it with a 2.5″ whit mat from Simply Framed). The colors go great with colors in the Helmsie poster (greens, blues, with touches of orange and yellow) and it represents special family memories and interests. Just as I was hoping to find for this room, these art pieces have sentimental value even though they’re new.

What’s not shown in these pictures is the golf ball case we hung next to my son’s closet. It’s actually a collection case I bought for Hubs a few years ago as a Christmas gift. After we moved, he hung it in our son’s room. The wood tone goes with the other furniture in the room and I thought it was such a sweet idea. It contains a number of golf balls with the logos of some of the best courses in the country that my husband has played and which he collected at each of the courses represented. He plans to pass them on to our son some day and hopes he will add to the collection. I was completely on board.

This room is both “done” and far from it. I don’t plan to actively look for anymore decor for this room but if the right thing comes along, I won’t hesitate to add to it. This is in part because it’s a nursery now but will someday be his boyhood room and it needs to be flexible. But also, I want this room, like the rest of the house, to feel cozy and well considered but to have room for us to collect other treasures in. Like the golf ball case.

As a side note: One thing I’ve learned through decorating our home is not to hesitate to ask vendors, sellers, or whoever to work with you to create something custom. The artist who painted the Masters print only sold it in much smaller sizes than I needed. When I asked, he was more than happy to work with me and sell me a digital file instead of a print so that I could have it printed and framed independently. He even formatted the piece and provided me with the file type I wanted. I’ve had similar experiences in other instances. The old adage “you don’t know until you ask,” is so true.

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