For day 25, Sunday July 27, I didn’t take any pictures, instead I was thinking about how happy the nursery makes me. We built the nursery ourselves, framing in a door, tearing out a desk, moving around electrical, re-drywalling and painting, and a bunch of stuff. It’s a small little room joined to our bedroom and bathroom. Hopefully when we go to sell, it will read like an extended master suite.

Later on I have an entire blog entry about the renovation project, but for now I want to show off the finished product. I was really worried it wouldn’t get done before Annabelle got here, but it did. It got done and decorated even. These photos were taken before her birth, it isn’t so neat and tidy now.

Initially I wanted an outer space themed nursery but that was changed for a woodland themed nursery. Actually the nursery theme is “animals hunted by your forebearers” but not everyone shares my sense of humor so woodland theme it is. I will add links to various elements as I can.

The area is small, too small for a twin bed or a proper bedroom, but perfect for a nursery!

Baby room, the main wall. It’s small, but so is she.

Crib (from David’s parents) and changing table are from Costco. The cubes are some old ones we had laying around. The baskets in the cubes say BABY and I got them on clearance at Michaels. The Moose is from IKEA (courtesy of my sister). The wall decal is from an Etsy shop InAnInstantArt. I love these vinyl wall decals. They look great and they’re a great way to customize a space fairly cheaply and easy to remove as well. The shop I used allowed me to choose the colors of the owls and birds. The quilt over the crib was made by my mom and the afghan by David’s grandmother. And yes I know not to leave them like that once we put baby in the crib.

Let the sun shine in!

Our nursery is entirely an interior room with no windows. I like to think this sun light fixture (again IKEA) helps. David hated installing it and made me swear to never buy anything again at IKEA. I don’t think he’ll hold me to it though.

Changing table space.

We took the doors off the closet and put the changing table in there. It’s such a small space, we really had no other choice. But it works out very well. We have just a few clothes hanging up. (Those are disposable diapers we used for the newborn stage.) And again the BABY baskets are from Michaels (sales + coupons). Just barely out of the picture is a diaper pail that we also got a cloth diaper liner for.The set up with all of our stuff seems to work very well.

Just in case we got confused about whose room it was…

Letters acquired from Michaels (Where else?) The letters were painted by Eliana (David’s sister) and did double duty as shower decor and then nursery decor. Owl hooks from IKEA. The door still needs trim around it. For that matter, so does the floor.

A little bit of geekery slipped into the woodland nursery

The Star Wars decal was a gift from David’s friend Dave. The painting was done by Eliana’s boyfriend Tom. And the fox toy tote is from Amazon. Please note David also installed dimmer switches which are a life saver.

This is the rug that started it all.

Finding this rug on the IKEA website is what changed my mind from Outer Space to woodland nursery. I love having the forest floor rug, tree wall decal, and sun light. It’s a very into-the-woods gentle and sweet feel. IKEA only ships to communities where it has a store (such a stupid policy) and thus not to Alaska. So I went to Seattle to visit my sister when I was pregnant and we went to IKEA to pick up baby decor item. We got the rug which was the point, but also fell in love with several other items (the sun light the various stuffed animals including the fox peaking out of the fox bin). She generously gave them as her baby gift to us!

And yes I do have a HUGE suitcase but even I was surprised I managed to get the light fixture and the rug back home. It only barely fit.

And that is our baby nursery. So far Annabelle seems completely immune to its charms. She’s taken a few naps in there but mostly she sleeps in the bassinet beside our bed, or in someone’s arms, or occasionally in her swing or vibrating chair in the living room.

Oh and did you see those nice floors under the rug in our nursery? As part of the nursery remodel, I convinced David to install those on the entire top floor. They’re amazing and I love them. That’s another blog post though. But I will say that all the work for the nursery (moving electrical, floors, drywalling, painting) was done by family and friends. Most of the decor, even if purchased like the decals, were placed leaf by leaf by family and friends. This is a room built out of love!