I’ve had a vision of what our baby’s nursery would look since way before I was pregnant – it was a nice thing to focus on when trying to conceive. Every room in our home has had some tlc except for the spare room, so now with Baby Caton on the way, it’s the final project for us to complete – that makes me so happy and excited!
I’m going to walk through my ideas, as well as share some bits and pieces we’ve already purchased, plus some items which remain on our wishlist for now.
The Nursery Theme
I’ve alway wanted something unisex – I don’t plan to raise our baby gender neutral, but I do like opting for gender neutral designs and clothing to some degree (it’s certainly made baby shopping easier when we’re yet to find out the sex). A safari or animal theme however has always been top of my list: the colour palette of greens and neutrals with some pops of colour to help make it come to life, the animals, and just the sheer amount of options that are out there to do a nursery up in this theme – it’s overwhelming but exciting all at once.
We’re painting three of the walls in a very light sage green and have then ordered this mural wallpaper for the final wall to finish the theme off nicely. I originally wanted to hand-paint the mural myself – it’s something my mum did for us as kids and I wanted to carry that on, but after planning it all I decided I’d rather not stress over making sure it’s perfect and just have it look good from the get-go. So wallpaper it is!
The Furniture
One piece of nursery furniture has kindly been passed down to us; my mother-in-law kept the cot both my husband and sister-in-law had thirty years ago. It’s not like the standard wooden cots you see in shops today, and instead is a white metal frame cot with gold wheels on one side to make moving it around easier. I love it, especially because it’s already part of the family, and as it’s still to cot standards there’s no reason we’d say no and spend £££ on a new one!
As for a nursery wardrobe, we’re not opting for anything like that or changing tables. Instead, we already have a large chest of drawers which will more than do and I’ll purchase some draw organisers to help sort all the baby clothes I’ve been buying. I’ve been hooked on the Vinted app and managed to get a drawer full of clothes and accessories for £50 including postage, so I’m pretty pleased with that.
The last piece of nursery furniture we do want is a rocking chair or nursing chair – depends on what you prefer to call them. I refer to it more as a rocking chair as I link the name “nursing” to breastfeeding which I won’t be doing, so to us it’s just a rocking chair where we’ll rock them to sleep, read them stories, and bottle feed. We haven’t decided on one just yet, but so far we both agree on this one but I’d rather test it out in store first than faff around with returning it if it’s not suitable – it’s so difficult to gauge these things based on pictures and measurements alone.
The Nursery Accessories
For the cot I’ve then seen some lovely personalised name cushions for the cot from a company called Cotterpillar – they’re designed to protect the parents stomach and ribs when bending over the cot, but also as a fun cushion for the baby to look at too. So once a name has been decided, we’ll be ordering our set right away.
I’ve then seen this beautiful basket in Home Bargains for just £9.99 which I want to get a drawstring bag to pop inside and store toys and teddies. I’d love to find a smaller version to sit by it which would be used as the baby’s own laundry basket too.
We’ve already been gifted so many books, as well as purchasing some ourselves, so lots of little shelves for the wall is necessary. We want one novelty one like this one we’ve seen, but the rest to just be plain white picture rails which we can display books on instead.
We’re unsure at this stage whether we’ll change the flooring (we’ll decide once the furniture is cleared out of the room and the walls are decorated – that’s the first and biggest task), but I would like an animal rug to add some more colour to the room. I’d prefer one which is a big animal head rather than a plain rug with lots of animals on it. I’m thinking this one or this one.
Lastly, we’ve purchased some drawer knobs from Melody Maison to fit with the theme and add some nice gold accents to the room.
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