Category Archives: Nursery/Office

A Colorful Nursery

As I began to think about how Noah’s room will transition into a big girl room for two once we bring her little sister home from Peru I realized I never shared a final reveal of her nursery. It’s been almost fifteen months and I can’t believe I let that much time pass. So before we go and completely rearrange the room I thought I would dedicate a post completely to Noah’s nursery!

Starting out as a guest bedroom/office, Noah’s room received a complete makeover. We kicked off the transformation by painting the walls (Sherwin Williams Silver Strand and Bohemian Black) and then adding a crib, chair, and changing table/dresser. Want to know how we painted the dresser? Check out this post. My sister painted the custom painting for above the crib and I got a little crafty and made the butterfly mobile. After receiving so many books we brought a little order to the book shelves by arranging the books by color and adding colorful boxes for storage.

And in case we didn’t have enough color I made a hot pink clothespin starburst mirror for above the changing table.

We also scored a great deal on this fabric and used it as curtains, crib skirt, and for the office chair we repainted. To add a little more personality to the room I added a Cabbage Patch Doll lamp I made back in college and colorful poms for above the book case.

Noah and I have logged countless hours in this room… day and night. It is by far my most favorite room in the house and I am so glad I took the time to personalize it before she was born. This room isn’t just where Noah sleeps. It’s where we hang out during the day and even at night once Michael Luke gets home.

In my original design plans for the room, I wanted something that would transition easily as Noah grew up. And because at the time I didn’t know if her next sibling would be a boy or girl I tried to keep a lot of the major design items gender neutral (minus the fabric). A room that transitions easily was also one of my driving factors for choosing bright colors instead of the typical pale pinks. That and I’m just not a pink person. Although I am trying my best to not let my color preferences influence Noah. If she wants to claim pink as her favorite color she can go for it. The transition of Noah’s room from a nursery to a big girl room will be fairly easy because of all the design choices. For the most part we will just be removing the desk and adding a bed. With a few other changes along the way.

desk Chair

Over the next couple of months we will begin to slowly transition her nursery in to a little girl’s room for two. A wonderful retreat for Noah and her little sis… and I can’t wait to share it all with you!

Do you have any plans to transition a room in your house? Or advice to give a mom preparing to convert the nursery into a big girl room? Did you share a room as a child? If so, what was the best part about it?

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She wore a Raspberry Beret

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So we finally decided to give the office side of the nursery some love. The black desk worked perfectly with the rest of the furniture in the room, but the desk chair just stuck out like a sore thumb.

(This picture is from way back… pre-curtains and dresser.)

Since in all practicality it still worked, I wasn’t going to go out and buy a new chair. Instead, I decided to shop from my own furniture supply.

A few years back, we bought a Duncan Phyfe dining room table (more about it later) and two chairs. The chairs had seen better days. But they were thrown in for a dollar, so how could I refuse? I had plans to refinish them but never got around to it. So I decided to use one as a desk chair. When I say “use one,” I really mean combine the two seen-better-days chairs into one complete reupholstered and painted chair.

This is what we started out with.

And here are the supplies we needed:

foam for a new seat cushion
spray paint (Krylon Indoor/Outdoor, Gloss, Color: Raspberry)
fabric (To tie the chair into the rest of the room, I used some leftover fabric from the crib skirt and curtains.)
staple gun
sanding block (so much better than sand paper)

The first step was to remove the existing seat from the chair. Then remove the fabric and batting.

After removing all the staples, I found there were two layers of fabric and this “lovely” batting. It made me want to sanitize my hands and hold my breath.

Meanwhile, Michael Luke was sanding the chair and adding a dowel rod for support between the chair legs. Originally, there was support here, but it was missing… so we improvised.

He filled in some places, but we left a lot of the dents and scratches on the chair to give it a little antique character.

I really can’t take any credit for the rest of the project. Michael Luke was kind enough to finish it.

We decided to go with a raspberry color for the chair instead of pink. Thought it would give the chair a little sophistication and add another pop of color to the room. I don’t think I can add anymore color though, or the whole room will be popping!

Here is the chair after one coat of spray paint.

I’ll go ahead and admit one of our mistakes. We should have primed the chair. I didn’t think we would need to, since the chair and paint both had red undertones, but we ended up having to add several layers of paint to mask the colors of the wood underneath.

It ended up covering well though.

We wanted to add a new cushion to the chair since the old batting had collected enough dust to fill up a Dyson canister. The cushion we bought was square, which meant it fit perfect in length but needed to be adjusted in width. Thankfully, trimming the excess off of the back and placing on the front worked perfectly!

After securing the foam cushion to the old plywood seat with a little packaging tape, the chair was ready for fabric. Michael Luke used a staple gun to attach the fabric to the seat.

I think the chair ended up looking great! It’s hard to believe it is even the same chair. Isn’t it amazing what a little paint will do? Have you used spray paint to perform any miracles on your old furniture?

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Butterfly Gazing

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I don’t know about you, but I really enjoyed this past weekend. We had a great turnout Friday for our hosting of the Secret Church Simulcast. I worked tirelessly Friday afternoon to prepare an amazing supper for our guests… Little Caesar’s Pizza. Who doesn’t love pizza? I did take a few minutes to prepare pineapple angel food cake, a recipe of my mom’s. It turned out to be a hit. I will have to share it with you one of these days. We also had other nutritious snacks to keep us going through the night- chips, cookies, and Tootsie Roll Pops. The rest of the weekend Michael Luke and I just hung around the house and tried to enjoy some of our final days of free time with limited responsibility. Which gave me time to finish one of the few remaining projects I have been working on… The mobile for above the crib.

I decided to go with the butterfly mobile mentioned here but add my own twist to it by using colored butterflies instead of white.

I am really pleased with the way it turned out, and I don’t think it blocks or takes away from the artwork behind it. What do you think?

Making the mobile was pretty easy and didn’t take that long. Well, I guess that’s easy for me to say because I had help with some of the steps.

What you need:

hoop 10″ to 12″ in diameter (knitting hoop)
knitting thread cut in 8 -10 pieces 30″ in length (adjust as necessary for your ceiling height)
card stock butterflies (die cut)
paper piercer (I just used a nail)
ribbon
screw hook

Thankfully, my sister has a die cut machine and was willing to cut them out for me. She also let me have some of her shimmery card stock paper to use for the butterflies.

You can see a faint outline of the butterfly being cut on the paper.

Once I had all the butterflies cut, I gathered my supplies…

FYI: I started out using regular sewing thread but quickly learned it wouldn’t work. I would have been tying knots all day to get it big enough not to slip through the hole. So I went and bought some knitting thread. Which is a lot thicker and worked better.

I used eight pieces of 30″ long thread for my strands. Feel free to add or take away as many as you want. With eight strands I had six butterflies for each. Because the butterflies were large, this was plenty of strands for me. Any more and it might have looked crowded.

If you have a paper piercer, use it to pierce your holes in the center of the butterfly. I didn’t have one and couldn’t think of any other projects where I would need one, so I just used a nail. It worked fine. I did pierce it on the carpet though, so I wouldn’t scratch anything.

After piercing the butterflies, I tied a knot at the end of one of the strands of thread and slipped a butterfly on. I then went up a couple of inches, tied another knot and slipped another butterfly on.

I repeated these steps for all the strands until each one had six butterflies. I alternated the order of the colors so that each strand wouldn’t look the same.

Next, I tied two pieces of ribbon onto the hoop and then tied a knot in the center. The knot gives the hook a place to attach to. The ribbon divided the hoop into four sections, so I tied two strands in each quadrant and double checked to make sure the ribbon was balancing the hoop.

I wanted to use a silver hoop, but all I could find was a gold one. So Michael Luke spray painted it a hot pink for me.

I love how it turned out and how it picks up all the colors in the room. I hope our little girl enjoys gazing at it while lying in her crib.

Speaking of the crib… did you notice I finally got the bumper guard up?

It is a mesh bumper guard and will make it easier for her to breathe if she decides to face plant herself into it. I love the little bows on the front and that it weaves behind the center of the headboard. The white really adds a bit of elegance to it. I can’t imagine it another color.

So, thankfully I can knock this project off the to do list. Only two left… the artwork above the changing table and refinishing the desk chair. Both of which require spray paint and my husband. I’ll let you know when we get them finished.

Life in Progress Update: She likes it!

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