Nursery Photos (Finally)

At last I'm getting around to posting photos of Eden's 99% complete nursery. This room was a real labor of love and I was surprised by how long it took me to decide on each and every detail and actually set it up in the room. Before I got pregnant I had tons of cute nursery ideas and couldn't wait to get started decorating. But once it was time to put something together I realized I wanted to take my time and make good choices. We have a tiny house so we really need to love and use everything in it, and bonus if each item can serve more than one function. It's home ecology 101 to make sure that the things you buy fit your space and lifestyle.

Bee mobile.

If I had to choose a theme for the nursery I would say "garden" or "nature". Wholly appropriate for a little girl named Eden I recently realized. We just wanted birds and bugs and trees and all kinds of cute happy things. If you remember, the room was covered in dark cork and a hideous carpet when we bought the house.

We made the tiny room into our own personal catch-all for a while and enjoyed it like that. Our closets were and still are in the room so we created a dressing room/ I'm-too-lazy-to-walk-this-out-to-the-storage room. These are some pre-pregnancy room shots.

So after buying the crib which Scott and Chirag put together in record time, and putting up a tree mural LEAF by LEAF, I was ready to start decorating. Our eco-friendly crib is solid hardwood with a non-toxic finish and we bought it at Target for $200.00.

Here's how it all turned out. The closet was a big issue. Instead of tearing it out and building or buying something new we decided to do the green thing and work with what we have. Our clothes still needed to fit in the space since our 1940's house does not have a closet in the larger bedroom. But we needed a place to put clothes for Eden. We took out our laundry space and made the center her closet.  

There was no room for an additional dresser. We tried and tried to find something on craigslist that would be narrow enough for the space but we failed. So we hit up Ikea. We originally wanted to buy this small dresser but after much wandering and a few meatballs we somehow hit on the idea to build something ourselves with their wardrobe solutions line. We finally chose the Trofast system with basket drawers. It fit perfectly and we had plenty of room for all of her clothes. We had been gifted 99% of what we had and so we were overwhelmed by how to store it all. Of every outfit you see here we probably bough 10 of them ourselves so while we were lucky to have such generous friends, we were confused as to where we would put everything. 

We organized everything to make sense for us putting her clothes together by size and using the huge space up to to put things that we'll need later. On this side you can see her bouncer for when she starts using her legs more, bath toy storage for when she finally moves from the kitchen sink to the bathtub, and a food processor for when she starts eating solids. All stuff we will eventually need, but have to store for now. Ignore our cobwebs. :)

I think the closet was the biggest challenge. The rest came pretty easy. The only furniture we bought for the room was the crib. The dresser belonged to Scott's great grandmother and the chair goes with our living room set but doesn't fit in the living room. The crib bedding is a hodge-podge of a cute garden themed bumper from Ikea, organic sheets from Babies R Us, and a crib skirt I made myself using the Young House Love tutorial. We don't really use the crib bumper for safety reasons (I had to take it out of the package to photograph it) but we'll put it on permanently when she's a bit older and more mobile.

Beautiful blanket my mom crocheted for Eden.

Detail shot of the bumper.

Bed with monitor hooked up. I cannot recommend the Angelcare monitor enough. Best baby purchase ever!

All of the patterns together. 

The super-expensive Serena & Lily pattern I only paid a few dollars for at a local fabric store.

Again, we needed to be smart about storage so if you lift the crib skirt you'll find a flat storage box where we keep all of the crib linens and the 50 million blankets we received.

Our comfy little chair serves as a place to nurse and read books to Eden. We picked up the bright green pillow that same day at Ikea and set it up in the corner. I'm including a cute picture of the chair in use too.

We made the dresser into a temporary changing table and set up our diapering operation around it. A couple of baskets and a wipe warmer make the set up work and since the house is so tiny, we always change her here.

The view from across the room.

Diaper and bath baskets with the wipe warmer on top.

Cloth diaper cover collection.

Cloth diapers.

Now for the detail shots. First, I wanted to do a cool mural for Eden to be a reflection of her as well as to bring some of our favorite things into her nursery. This is what we came up with.

A picture of Squirrel Nutkin from Beatrix Potter because he's so naughty and Scott and I both loved his little bad ass when we were kids. 

A butterfly collage I made myself...

...out of recycled magazine pages.

This was supposed to be paired with something Los Angeles and/or Lakers related. Still working on that but I love the print from Etsy.

The letter E which we bought before we know Eden was a girl. Had she been a boy her name would have been Elliott. 

Eden's hospital bracelet.

Newborn footprints. 

We were excited to order these great recycled paper ABC and 123 posters on Etsy. And the thumbprint tree is from my baby shower. Each guest left a fingerprint and signed their name instead of a typical guestbook.

123 print. The safety pin was attached to my baby shower gift from one of my best friend's mom. Turns out it belonged to my friend when she was a baby. I just love it and until I find the perfect place to put it, I have it on the sheers.

Great baby shower guestbook idea.

Behind the door that leads to the bathroom (yes our house is that small) we have our diaper/laundry/trash system. And again, space is limited so we keep her laundry basket behind the chair.

In in the last corner of the room we have toy storage and books. Originally I wanted a book shelf over here, but you can see there just isn't room. Someday we can move the changing table out and create space for ourselves to put in a bookshelf. Until them we keep her little library in a basket I got for about $12 at Michaels. The larger basket cost me an unbelievable $.01 because it was supposed to be discontinued but was still out on the floor. Too bad they wouldn't let me go back for the others.

And added much later are some garden decals around the room.

So we did it. We built a nursery without going to the baby store and choosing a pre-packaged set off of the wall and we love it. We tried hard to keep it green and spent less than $600 total all while making sure not to overwhelm the tiny space. A great deal of the space (diaper genie, sheets, clothes etc. ) were filled by gifts from our super generous family and friends and we're so thankful. Let's hope Eden likes it.