Our Home // Books, Art & Baby

As promised, I'll be sharing some of the decor projects of our latest abode. When we first moved in (quite a while ago now as I shared in my first post), I wasn't far off from bringing our little one into the world. So my very first motivation once I had the energy and ability to decorate anything was naturally the nursery. I didn't do much to it because we wanted to keep the space simple and safe. I wasn't concerned with a theme as some (very adorable, might I add) nurseries are decorated. That's just not my style. We live with a style - if you can call it a style - that's flowing and easy, very livable while thrifty and DIY. We just don't see the value in spending a lot on our space until it's a more permanent. Plus with a little one, your view on your awesome stuff changes really fast.

With that in mind, I wanted the room to be centered around safe, fun!, and neutral with colors from nature as a base - light blue, ocean blues, lighter greens, browns, wood tones, white - whatever felt calm and welcoming. I steered away from all loud colors - especially since babies' focus takes time to develop, and I also didn't want something matchy-matchy that would be hard to decorate as toys and other items move in and out of the room.

We also wanted the room to be focused on things we feel are important to expose our child to regularly (besides love!!) - and two things that worked well in the nursery were books and art. Before I decorated the room I naturally pinned tons of ideas on Pinterest and a super popular idea for books is to create a tiered bookshelf out of Ikea picture rail shelves. I've seen it done many different ways but since it's a focus for the room and the room had one large wall as a canvas, I chose this space as a good place to get baby's nicer books up out of reach until we are able to read them together. I can't credit the original source of the idea, it may be pinned somewhere deep in my many pins, but many clever bloggers out there have shared this idea, so thank you all for the inspiration.

At the point when I took these photos, the art theme was still under way but a few items in the room to point out are the original photos taken by a friend of my mom's who went on Safari in Africa right before our little one was born. She sent these great photos along to us and they were perfect since we also got lots of safari gifts at my shower. So we have a little bit of a theme and it works well with the earth tone themes. The photo in the corner is a piece of art that was in our little one's Auntie's room when she was growing up. Above the dresser we hung my husband's favorite Picasso that has special meaning to him.

We've since had several friends do paintings for the room which I will photograph and share in the first update of this room. We are entering toddlerville so the room is in transition now and when it is ready I'll reveal the next phase. The map on the wall is a DIY project, which I will also share soon. It's secret is it's magnetic! Which will be fun because LO is ready for magnet play now.

So this was our nursery. We'll be sharing our toddlers room and plenty more other beautiful house projects so stay tuned. Share/comment if you love it. And as always, enjoy!