Chapter 4: The Complete Nursery!

The post you have all been waiting for :)

We are so proud of this room. It is everything we dreamed of for our little boy.

Here is the room before:

Remember, this is the previous owners stuff.... not ours!

Here's the closet before:

And here is the after:

Brand new closet...

Here are a few more angles of the overall room.

The picture above is looking at the room from the closet door.

Above is looking at the room from the opposite corner.

We used Benjamin Moore's Gray Horse for the paint and White Dove for the trim. We took down the curtains and shutters and installed silver roman shades from JC Penney. We painted the ceilings and closet a flat white. Thanks again to our friends that helped us paint! It was a fun paint party :) We also installed a new Hunter ceiling fan, because there was just a little light bulb in the ceiling with a cheap glass thing over it. It was really ugly. Plus, I read that having a fan in the nursery reduces SIDS, so that was a plus. Oh, and the rug is from Pottery Barn Kids.

Now for all the little details :)

For his crib, we went to Ikea and got the Sniglar. We painted it white. Bedding and bolster pillow, all handmade by my mom, Preston's Mimi. Fabric from Ikea. The Preston blanket is from my friend Bev. The sign above the crib was made by my friend Hurt (you might remember it as a decoration at my Nashville shower) and the fun poms above it are from Etsy.

For you moms out there, don't worry. The pillow and bumpers will be removed when Mr. P sleeps in his crib. We have breathable bumpers we'll use until the risk of SIDS declines. Wow, this is my second reference to SIDS. I am not a paranoid mom, I promise!

The chair where we will spend lots of time together feeding and snuggling is a hand-me-down. It was lime green and had some stains on it, so we got it re-upholstered. I love the simple fabric and am so happy with how it turned out.

We already had the little glass lamp. It came from Target a long time ago. The side table is just a round sawdust table. I bought a cheap, round, white tablecloth to go on top, and finished it off with some fabric from Ikea. In the chair is a pillow my mom made with fabric from Ikea and a sweet monogrammed blanket from my friend Candice.

Please note that next to the little owl on the side table is Preston's iPod. That's right, our unborn child has an iPod. It is filled with Rock-a-bye Baby songs and all kinds of sweet classical lullabies.

I found these prints on Etsy and I love them. They say "You are so loved," "You are my sunshine," We are all made of stars, " and "You are not alone." Then, the print below is really special. It hung in Brian's nursery when he was a baby. It says, "A baby is God's opinion that the world should go on." How cool is it that it matches the colors of the nursery, too?!

Next is the changing table area...

My dad got the changing table a few years ago and it has just been in their garage waiting for Brian and I to use it one day :) It is solid wood and really nice. I was a little concerned about blending it with the white furniture, but I love how it mixes with the white.

Hanging above the table is this print:

Also found on Etsy, it is the Italian alphabet represented with different animals. I love this print. I picked up the mat and frame at Michael's for 50% off. Preston needed something in his room to represent his Italian heritage :)

Cute monogrammed burp clothes from my friends Meghan and Kate. We got all the blue and green bins from Land of Nod. The sock monkey is from Brian's mom, Preston's Mimzie.

And his diapers are all ready to go!

Now for this side of the room....

First, the little rocking chair.

It belonged to Brian was he was little. That's why I was okay with putting his little Georgia pillow there. ;) See the writing at the top of the rocking chair?

Apparently, Brian was really excited when he learned to write cursive.

Next, is his little bulletin board. This was actually a gift from my big sister in Delta Gamma my freshman year of college. I used it all through college for pictures. It works perfectly in the room!

I put Rudyard Kipling's "If" on there. I knew I wanted it somewhere in his room, and this proved to be a good spot. Along with that are a few cards and shower invites.

Next to the bulletin board is this cross and a little quote that I love in a frame below. It says "You are the tiniest thing I have ever decided to put my whole life into." Love it.

The Expedit bookcases are from Ikea. I am pretty sure every nursery or playroom has one of these in it.

We have two in the room and they are both great for displaying things at the top and for toys at the bottom. Just to point out a couple things on the shelves that are extra special...

This picture hangs above the bookcase. It is four generations of the Fields family men. The baby in the pic is Brian. Preston will be the fifth. Speaking of family photos, this is also in the bookcase:

In this picture are my great-great-grandparents and their children Thelma and Samuel Preston (he went by Preston). Preston, my great-grandfather is our Preston's namesake and is the little blonde boy in the photo. My grandparents got this for us for Christmas and it is perfect for his nursery.

Ultrasound picture from the day we found out Preston was a he.

Next to the bookcase is a little rack from Ikea for us to hang stuff on. His diaper bag is packed for the hospital and ready to go!

Moving to the next side of the room...

We've got the other bookcase with all kinds of fun toys and books for Preston to play with.

His first train set.

We can't wait to play with him and read him books. One of the most meaningful things in Preston's whole nursery is this quilt.

Brian's godmother made it for Preston. It has a Noah's Ark theme and it is just amazing. Every time we look at it, we find new things. This is so special to us and always will be!

That's pretty much his room... let's look at the closet.

One thing that seriously sold us on our house was the closet space. We are so thankful that he will have a closet he can grow into, although it is already almost full.

Love all the little onesies. I organized them by size and they get bigger as they go down. Brian's mom went through his baby/toddler clothes and he had some COOL clothes. Check out these blazers.

She even got cute little "Preston Fields" tags to put in all of them.

Well, that's about it. We've had a lot of fun putting together his room. We can't wait to see him grow in it and how we add to it and change it as he grows. We just hope he loves it as much as we do.

I'll leave you with a pic of my favorite person who is so proud of this room he can hardly stand it. He is also very proud to be Preston's dad. I love him so much and he did a great job with so many parts of this room. :)

Nursery Progress: Chapter 3

We have been working HARD at our new house. I can't believe how much we have accomplished in one month! Specifically on our master bedroom and P's room. I will post some before and after pictures of the master bedroom soon. We still need to hang some things on the wall and move out a workshop full of tools that is set up next to our bed :) BUT I do have a nursery update.

This is what the nursery looked like before we moved in.

This is the old owners stuff. I am not sure if you can tell by the picture, but the walls are dingy, off-white and the trim around the windows and floor is mustard. (Yes, mustard. It's everywhere in our house. We think the old owners must have gotten a deal on mustard paint.) BUT, what Brian and I saw when we walked into the room was the POTENTIAL for a beautiful nursery for our first born. We saw the three pretty windows and how light flowed into the room. When you look out the windows, it feels like you are in a tree canopy since it is on the 2nd floor. Then we saw this:

Chaos? Yes, but really it's a huge walk-in closet that Preston can grow into with a window inside.

The first thing we tackled was the paint. Here is daddy-to-be putting on the first coat. You can get a good look at the trim all over our house in this pic :)

We even had a little help from our friends the Pela's :) I cannot thank Robyn and JM enough for helping us with P's room. They are like family to us! I am sure JM will love that I posted this pic of him, haha.

As for the color, we went with Benjamin Moore's Gray Horse. I wrote a little post on the paint we chose - Natura. Turns out it is awesome! It has no smell to it at all, and since it is chemical free, I could even help paint the nursery. For the trim and windows, we chose Ben Moore's White Dove. It is white with just a hint of tan to it, although it looks very white in person. We also painted the ceilings and the closet a basic white to freshen everything up. We are big Benjamin Moore fans now and plan on using it throughout.

I am going to wait to show you the total picture when we are finished (which should be very soon!), but here are a few accessories we've picked out for the nursery.

The first is the rug... this was a tough one. In fact, we even lived with a rug from Capel Rugs in there for a day before deciding that it wasn't what we wanted. Finally, we decided on this one from Pottery Barn Kids in a 7 x 9 in navy.

We love the idea of gray, yellow and navy as the prominent colors for the nursery. We'll also be throwing in small amounts of green. These colors blend with our plans for the rest of the house. We liked this rug, because we thought he could grow into it. It isn't too baby, but it is still soft enough to play on and crawl around on.

Now for fabrics. I didn't want a traditional bed-in-a-bag for the crib. I relied on the efforts of my mom, who is an expert sewer to make us custom bedding for the crib. On a side note, it means a lot that she did this for us. It makes his crib so special and we can't thank her enough. For the crib skirt, we used this fabric from Ikea and I really love it!

We put it with a white crib sheet, a white super soft bumper, and a monogrammed blanket to hang over the side. It's perfect and I love it. Every night I look at his crib and I can't wait to have him in there!

Then we are using other miscellaneous Ikea fabrics for projects like an ottoman, window treatments, pillows, etc. Here are a few of those:

Next are picture frames from Ikea to brighten up the gray walls... we went with the navy, sky blue, and white.

Also, I have to say, what did I do before Etsy came along? Thanks to that website, we have found lots of cute things for P's room. Here are a few of them...

I didn't want a traditional mobile for his room, so what is more fun than these hanging from the ceiling above the crib?! For the colors, we went with white, gray and yellow. They are SO FUN and are much more interesting than a regular mobile.

We really wanted fun art to dress up the gray walls, and when I found these on etsy, I could not resist. I mean, how sweet is that?

Next up, I found this Italian alphabet poster that seemed to fit the color scheme perfectly. I love the idea of hanging this in P's room, because he has a little Italian in him and I studied Italian as a music major in college.

Some of the things I am most excited about are the very meaningful pieces we are adding to his nursery. We are hanging a piece of art that hung in Brian's nursery, family pictures, a few quotes that I have always loved, and lots of other items to make it more personal.

His closet has also gotten a huge makeover and we have some fun plans for it, since it is soooo big. I did five loads of laundry this weekend for Preston and put away all his little clothes, blankets, and burp clothes. I set up his changing table with all the stuff needed to change diapers and keep him clean :) While Brian was at the Liberty Bowl cheering on the Dawgs (pathetic game), I even put together his Little Lamb Infant Seat. It is so precious and I can see him snuggling in it.

It is all coming together so nicely and we should be done very soon so stay tuned!