Nursery / Guest Room Pictures

SLOW day at work today.  (Long story short, my job might be ending next Friday, or it might not be.  I work on a contract that is expiring and we are waiting to hear about whether or not it will be extended.  And even if it is extended, my role will probably be changing from full to part time.  Nothing like employment, health insurance, AND finances all being up in the air with less than a week and a half to go . . . )  Anyway, as things wind down the amount of work to be done on my end is dwindling.

So keep in mind as I ramble on and on about nursery options, that money may be tight.  There are not many splurge items at all in the room, but the ones I do have may have to go (or be "financed" with gift money for my birthday and Christmas).

Here is a 3D layout of the room.  Keeping our queen size bed is going to make it tight.  While I would love a more open and less cramped room, I can't bring myself to completely eliminate our only guest place to sleep.



That is a bookcase under the window, so even though the far corner of it will be blocked by the dresser, it shouldn't be a problem to slide stuff into that area.  (I think it might look better to have the dresser and bookcase swapped, but then you can't open dresser drawers, so this is what we have.)

As you can see, there is LOTS of open wall space to be decorated.  And I have thousands upon thousands of pictures I have taken that I would love to use to make the space more personal.  (Not to mention, save money by providing my own art.)  I found a color scheme / inspiration nursery on the website projectnursery.com and started sifting through my pictures.

The color scheme is a very soft gender neutral palette with a beachy feel.  Unfortunately my husband does not love the beach and he and I don't have any beach pictures that are meaningful to us.  I really wanted to be able to incorporate one of our Alaska pictures, since we have very few of them up in our home, and it's the most meaningful and memorable place we've been together.  (We got married there.)  But almost all of the landscape pictures seemed too harsh for the softer look I wanted in the room.  Hard landscapes (mountains, barren fields, etc) or really really bold colors.  Then I stumbled across one that was perfect.  We did actually go to a beach in Alaska!  And of all the placed we went in the state, the beach happened to be in the tiny town where we got married.  (Honestly, if I hadn't taken a picture, I probably would have even forgotten the town had a little beach.)  Is it the best picture I've ever taken? Far from it.  But it will work beautifully for the colors I wanted in the room, and it's the closest we will likely ever get to a beach picture that means something to either of us.



This will be printed on a large canvas to hang over the dresser.

And then I just started pulling ideas together from there.  I have an "inspiration board" of products that right now I would love to see in the room, and am having a hard time figuring out where to start.  I think I need to start with the queen size bedding.  Finding bedding in the right colors and for less than a small fortune is going to be tricky.  If I get the right bedding, matching the other smaller accessories to that bedding should be easier.  Furniture will be all white.

Quick run down of what's below:

- Main wall color will be a taupe-ish gray.  Light yellow and light aqua will be the accent colors and may or may not be incorporated with stripes on one or more walls.

 - Bookcase in the top right corner will the the one under the window and will be half that size (2 cubes tall by 4 cubes wide) and will have some open storage and some storage in the yellow bins shown below it.

- Queen bedding in the lower right corner.  Oh my goodness, I love this bedding.  LOVE, LOVE, LOVE it.  But it's a big splurge.  Particularly if I want both the yellow and aqua.  And it's very hard to tell true colors on the internet.  I've googled around and in some pictures the colors look significantly more pale than they do in the image below.  It's also very hard to tell if that's more yellow or more tan.  Purchasing both sets me back by more than a couple hundred dollars, so I'm keeping my eyes open for more budget friendly options.

- Chevron curtains on the top row . . . Most likely not what we will end up with.  I think we are going to do chevron curtains in our master bedroom and being right across the hall from the nursery, I don't want chevron overload.  The reviews for these curtains are also fairly mixed for the price, and I'm a sewer, so we will likely end up with something custom instead.



The other thing that is bothering me right now is the seemingly disproportionate amount of blue I have relative to yellow.  Impossible to know how it will really look and will likely depend on what ends up being the primary color on the queen size bed.

Thought process right now . . . Buy the yellow bedding and see what it looks like.  If I hate it, then I can rule out this bedding and start looking for something else.  If I love it, then I can either splurge and get the matching aqua set, or save and just do some aqua throw pillows and maybe a matching throw blanket.

Sigh.  If only I didn't have a room full of CRAP to sift through before I could really start this.  And if I only I knew whether or not I was going to have a salary at the end of the month . . .