Flashback Friday {Nursery Tour}

Our baby girl is 7 weeks old now and doing great! I feel like all I'm doing is taking care of her. I'm not sure how I did it all when her brothers were younger. At one point I had a baby, a toddler and a preschooler, plus I was doing home projects and blogging about them!

My favorite project of all time is my third son's nursery. (That's him in the picture with Jocelyn.) The window wall reveal post has gotten over 38,000 hits in the last 4 years! Since I'm still super proud of this room, I thought I'd share the tour with you today. Enjoy!

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Welcome to our nursery!

The first thing you'll notice when you enter the room is this big window framed with blue silk curtains and chippy barnboards. You can read about it here.

In front of the window I added a child-sized rocker with a basket of books. Perfect for entertaining big brothers!

To the right of the window is a tall chest of drawers that was recently featured at Better After! So proud of that!

Here is my post about this dresser's amazing transformation.

I love the look of green plants in every room; not only do they add some fresh green to a room, they're good for the air! Yes, that's my middle son in the frame. I need to print some current pictures!

Next to the dresser is my favorite chair. I've had it forever and it rocks and swivels, so it's perfect for nursing and rocking Baby. I've included a small table for my Bible and water, or my laptop so I can try to catch up with my favorite blogs.

 Above the chair is a gallery wall. You can read more about it here.

Baby's crib is next to my chair. It used to be plain wood, but I painted it and installed the board and batten right before Baby was born... and never blogged about it! I will milk this nursery for as many posts as I can do a before-and-after post soon.

No crib is complete without a mobile! Here is what I created (and here is where you can read more about it).

The door to the hall is at the foot of the crib. Besides painting it white, I've done nothing to it, so there's no picture except the glimpse you get of it next to the closet. Here is a post about the closet.

 I added the sign today and thought I'd skip a tutorial cuz everyone has fancy vinyl machines... Not me! This is my trusty sharpie marker and kindergarten teacher skills!

My older boys (ages 2 and 4) love to play in this little nook.

Of course they prefer the bedspread-turned-curtain down so they can hide!

Next to the closet is this vanity I redid, also featured at Better After and blogged about here. You won't believe the before pictures of it! Now it has been reinvented as a changing table. I bet it never saw that one coming! (Looks like a need a bigger basket for Baby's laundry so it will hide the cords!)

I made this sweet little banner using a receiving blanket.

Hope you enjoyed the tour. Thanks for visiting!

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So what do you think? I just love that room. I'm curious how it would have evolved if we had stayed in that house. I know I'm not over board and batten and can't wait to buy our own home again so I can add more!

Have a great weekend!

Nursery Print {Free Download}

A few weeks ago I shared my Baby Girl Nursery Moodboard with you. One of the pieces I would like to hang in the room is a verse from the Bible. I took a little time to print up just how I'd like the verse to look, complete with a few butterflies in the color scheme of the nursery.

I made this in PicMonkey and honestly, I haven't printed it yet. However it is a JPG file and should be high enough resolution to print in an 8 X 10. Won't it be darling in a white frame?

Since things are super easy to edit in PicMonkey, I made a few other versions. Feel free to save the images and print them for your little one, or for a gift.

Keep scrolling to see: Plain Pink, Blue with Stars, Plain Blue, and two Chalkboard versions! Enjoy!

Nursery Tour-2006 {Day 4}

I figured since I showed you a little bit of our oldest son's nursery yesterday, and I was searching picture files for that one shot with his name, I might as well copy the rest of the pictures I had of his room and share that with you too.

Please remember, this was 2006. I was using a point-and-shoot and it looks like it was night for some of the pictures. I've also chosen not to edit the pictures, so brace yourself!

We lived in a little raised ranch house in Iowa. This is before the house in the country. Before we knew we were going to have Jonathan, his room was first a guest room, then Gary's office. About as soon as we heard his heart beat, I started clearing out the room that would be his.

We ripped out the carpet and Gary refinished the floors. Gary installed a bench under the window, and I used a hand sander for the first time before painting the built-in bench.

We left the bottom of the bench open for storage. It was great until Jonathan was crawling around and would get into stuff! Still it wasn't that bad. I wish the bench had been a bit deeper--I intended to be able to sit and read while I nursed him, but it just wasn't quite wide enough. I remember being so uncomfortable while trying to feed him in the middle of the night, recovering from a c-section and exhausted. How I wished that bench was wide enough to lie down!

I made the lumpy bench cushion from pillows stuffed into a long tube of material I sewed. It worked ok, but that bench was never as comfortable as I had envisioned.

I got the curtains from Target from gift cards I got at my shower. The other Classic Pooh stuff came as hand-me-downs from two different friends. The crib had been my nephew's but had been given to my in-laws to use at their house when my nephew no longer needed it. They were happy to give it to us--it wasn't even set up at their house, so that worked great!

I used the space under the crib for more storage. We kept his bathtub in there, and a bouncer or something like that, when we weren't using it. I eventually made a crib skirt which hid the things underneath and that made me happy!

Of course I hung his name above the art work. Still like how that looks!

 I so so badly wanted a changing table. Because of the built-in bench we didn't have many options on where to put things in his room, so I measured and marked where an inexpensive (craigslist) changing table would go and it was just too crowded! We opted to spend the money on this toy bin organizer, and let me tell you, we still use this thing! It worked great for seeing shirts and onesies and for keeping diapers and everything handy. We changed Jonathan in the crib with the mattress on the highest setting.

I bought the little shelf at Michael's and finished it with the name letters. I still use it too. I also did a great job marking his calendar with little bitty milestones! I found that blank Classic Pooh calendar at a thrift store and loved it!!!

 I left the door of the tiny closet open for this picture so I could show Jonathan's neatly folded and organized clothes. We had so many clothes! Gary's brother has two sons just a little older than Jonathan and they were happy to give us all of their hand-me-downs. We also got a lot of stuff from our parents and church members, and a couple good sales at Old Navy and The Gap, like this Inspi(red) shirt that matched his Daddy's. Cuteness!

The ABC pocket chart was mine when I was a girl. My Grandma made it! Most of the books belonged to Gary. The POOH thing with the annoying flash glare is a picture frame, with cute pictures of me and Gary as babies. The shelf itself was built by my Dad and was in my room when I was little. It's been in each of the boys' nurseries.

Thanks for indulging me on walk down memory lane! This squishy little sweetheart is now 7 and looks like this:

 Yup! Still cute!

Hannah's Nursery

This little beauty is Hannah, my husband's cousin's baby. Gary's first cousin once removed. My mother-in-law's grand-niece. My sons' second cousin. She lives in Washington with her Mommy and Daddy, otherwise known as Kristen and Andy. I've never gotten to hold baby Hannah or even meet Kristen and Andy, but Kristen and I are Facebook friends and follow each other on Pinterest. 

I knew from following Kristen on Pinterest that baby Hannah's nursery would be a special place. Kristen loves shabby chic, frills, lace and pink. I think if I had a girl, her nursery would look a lot like this one! Kristen and Andy spent a lot of time making this room perfect while they waited for Hannah. Isn't it just delicious?

After deciding on the perfect shade of pink for the nursery, Kristen's aunt helped her pick out crib bedding and the glider. They purchased extra fabric to make the curtains. A friend made the tissue paper pom-poms for Kristen's baby shower.

Hannah's name hangs over her crib. Andy found them at Joann's and painted them white, then he and Kristen hung them with ribbon from the wall.

Isn't this just the sweetest picture? Sigh...

The pink-and-white pin-striped crib bedding is from babybedding.com. The glider is also pink-and-white pin-striped. Behind Kristen you can barely see a sweater and booties made by a family friend. They hang on cloud-shaped hooks that Kristen bought from an Etsy store called "Littles".

Not pictured is an attached bathroom with the changing table. Isn't that a perfect place for it?

Kristen enjoys rocking Hannah in the glider and says the room is very peaceful. They look forward to using the room more once Hannah starts sleeping in her crib. 

Thank you, Kristen, for sharing Hannah's nursery with us! You and Andy did a great job--with the pretty nursery and the beautiful baby girl!

*All photos in this post were taken by Shelley Mitz. You can visit her at www.shelleymitz.com.*

Nine Neutral Nurseries

Please forgive me for posting my own son's nursery first. I love it and it's soon to be packed up into boxes and hauled off to the storage unit, so at least I have it documented! I'll be the first to admit that it's not a neutral nursery per se, but if you changed the bedding and the bedspread hung as a closet door, the rest is very neutral! Who says blue is for boys?

Source: blog.mybigeyekids.com via Ellie {Beauty4Ashes} on Pinterest

This colorful nursery uses orange and green and blue for energy and gray walls for calm.

Source: elementsofstyleblog.com via Ellie {Beauty4Ashes} on Pinterest

Here's another gray nursery, but it's so versatile! I love the gray ceiling and the bookshelves flanking the crib. This room looks like it could double as a guest room, and it will grow well with baby!

Source: milkandhoneyhome.com via Ellie {Beauty4Ashes} on Pinterest

I love so many things about this nursery--certainly the barn door center piece! The textures are so much fun here and the colors are calming.

Source: projectnursery.com via Ellie {Beauty4Ashes} on Pinterest

Aren't alphabet walls fun? I love the bright green and red here, and would love to see the rest of this space.

Source: honeywerehome.blogspot.com via Ellie {Beauty4Ashes} on Pinterest

I'm allergic to this much white (especially in a kid's space), but I love that green dresser! The shades of blue with the bright green and navy are perfect.

Source: forexstrategytrading.net via Ellie {Beauty4Ashes} on Pinterest

What a fun mural! I bet this cozy nursery is a great place for sleeping! I love the texture on the rug too.

Source: blogs.babycenter.com via Ellie {Beauty4Ashes} on Pinterest

This nursery is more modern than most of my choices, but I like that brown and white zig-zag rug with blue and green. Very fun.

Source: blog.holamama.es via Ellie {Beauty4Ashes} on Pinterest

You know I love maps and maybe the pirate ship and the airplane stuff make it a little less than girly, but the colors are gender neutral, for sure!

So there you have it, Nine Neutral Nurseries. Which one did you like the best?

Be inspired!