Modern and Colourful nursery for a little girl

I finally have photos of Eloise's nursery to share with you all. This room has a very small window and gets very little in the way of natural light (which explains the dark photos I'm afraid). To combat this we painted the room white and decided that we'd bring in as much colour as we could through art and accessories.

We didn't know the gender of our baby, so we tried to play the room safe until we knew for sure. We haven't done much since Ellie's arrival, though, and I'm figuring my subconscious knew I was having a girl because the room seems more feminine to me. What do you think?

 

The pouf was a DIY that I plan to post about later. It's serving us well as a footstool for when I'm nursing and Brigham loves to jump off it and roll on it all over the house. The fabric I used for both the pouf and the roller shade came from this twin size duvet cover from Ikea. I really liked the polka dots and thought they'd be perfect in a nursery, and the price is hard to beat when you think about how much fabric you get from a single duvet cover and sham. I still have tons left for another project down the road.

 

The letter 'E' is something I've been eyeing at Anthropologie forever and was waiting eagerly to pick up the appropriate letter. If I had a bit more time these days, I would have liked to have made something like it myself with a thrift store oil painting glued onto a generic craft store letter, but I so liked the Anthro 'E' option that I sprung for their version. 

The hamper is this Ikea purchase that I painted with the yellow and white stripes. 

 

The armchair belonged to my great grandmother, which makes it Eloise's great-great grandmother's. I love that she has things that belonged to generations past in her room. It's in good shape and the slipcover that was made for it a few years ago is washable and neutral. To add some colour to it, I picked up the bird cushion at HomeSense (Home Goods in the US I believe), and grabbed the yellow chevron blanket at Indigo on clearance.

 

I love this guy! I picked him up before Brigs was born at the One of a Kind show here in Toronto. He's made of felt and sits on the back of the door keeping an eye on things.

These prints are a personal favourite from the Animal Print Shop. Have you seen them before? I feel like photographer Sharon Montrose is getting lots of much deserved attention around the Internet for her gorgeous prints. I highly recommend a visit to her site.

I made the mobile for Brigs when he was born and I thought it would work for Eloise too. The feather on linen print hanging over her crib was another DIY. Obviously my sewing skills are lacking as I can't seem to sew a square, but printing the feathers on there was fun. I carved a sweet potato as a stamp and thought it turned out pretty well. I'll post more on that one later.

 

The geometric art was a cottage craft a few weeks ago. My 8-year-old niece and I were having fun with masking tape, paint and canvas. I thought they look cute on the white wall. 

The crib skirt was a plain white one that I found on clearance and I just glued a piece of yellow grosgrain ribbon to the bottom. The skirt is white-white while the rug is more of a cream, so that yellow really helps divide the two and make the contrast less obvious. And of course, the hit of pink in none other than sweet Eloise.

I had a lot of fun with this nursery because so much of it was done myself. I still have a bunch of projects I'm working on for in here, but I'm happy with the progress I've made so far, and as far as I can tell, Eloise likes it too!

Big news

So it turns out that blogging is a bit like exercise. You do not want to interrupt your routine thinking that a few days away won't hurt, because it seems that days turn into weeks and months very quickly. I realize that I haven't posted anything since April (whoa), and I miss it. I did have a baby, which in my mind is a pretty good excuse (more on that below), but I still wish I'd been a bit better. The thing about not blogging for so long is that I've stopped paying as much attention to the amazing little things that have been going on around me - or at least I don't focus on them for as long or as with as much interest - or take a thousand pictures of whatever it is thinking I'll post about it later! But I'm ready for that to change.

There have been lots of amazing little things that I'd love to write about, but to start, I have to mention the biggest thing that's happened in my life since 2011. Eloise Diana, our gorgeous girl (who we so thought was a boy) was born on June 7th. The loveliest, sweetest baby girl a mama could hope for. I can't stop sniffing her head and snoozing with her on the couch. I attribute my inability to put her down to the fact that we aren't sure if there will be more babies to come, and I realize with my second baby that the days of cuddling and napping with a baby on my chest are so short and fleeting, that I'd better soak up every second of this loveliness. 

Since her arrival, we've been getting used to being a family of four and trying to get 2-year-old Brigham used to the idea of having a new baby in the house and me used to having absolutely no spare time in the day. But, it's amazing how different it is having a second baby compared to the first, and there's a lot less anxiety this time around.


I can't wait to share photos of her nursery, all the DIYs that I did to get it ready, as well as a zillion other home and work projects that have been keeping me busy since I last posted. I'd love it if you'd check back in soon to see what's been going on. Until then, check out this cuteness...