Remember when I used an outfit of mine to inspire our powder room makeover (which will still haven’t finished)? Well it happened again, sort of, this time with the nursery!

I guess I should explain a little of what I’ve been thinking for the nursery first. I haven’t really had a chance to put my thoughts here on the ol’ blog, so here it goes. First, Mike and I will be finding out the gender of our baby next week. Second, we are not telling a soul. Many people have asked me what this means for the nursery, assuming that when we paint the room, everyone is going to figure out the gender. Come on guys, did you think we’d be that easy to crack? 🙂

When we say we’re not planning on painting the walls a gender specific color, everyone assumes we’re going with a yellow ducky, green frog or brown bear themed room (not that there is anything wrong with any of those). But, what we plan to do is paint the walls a neutral gray/taupe/greige (TBD), add some tall board and batten paneling around the entire room and keep all of the same furniture regardless of whether the baby is a she or a he.

Molding Inspiration via Decor Chick

We figure that is going to take us quite a bit of time, so everyone will be filled in with those updates as they happen (we also have some plans for stenciling the ceiling, yaaay!) Most of our gender specific elements will come in the form of textiles: The curtains, area rug, sheets, changing pad cover, etc. Those are all things we can buy/make in advance and add at the very last minute. So no, no one will be finding out the gender before our baby arrives 🙂

I will go into more detail with what we want to do furniture, bedding, area rug and curtain-wise another day, but for now, I just wanted to share my general inspiration. Which goes back to how I started this post, which is with fashion!

I’ve been on the lookout for a Kate Spade baby bag. Read: I love Kate Spade. I’ve scoped out the outlet and I’ve been stalking the store and the website for sample sales. In the process, I’ve noticed and fallen in love with her latest color campaign, this fabulous multi-colored stripe.

Lately I’ve been loving all sorts of bright and fun things on Pinterest so when I found out I was pregnant, I knew I wanted bright colors. I wanted bold pinks and purples, or blues and greens. I had just never seen a bunch of bold colors together that was done well that sort of hit the nail on the head for me. And then Kate saved me.

iPhone 4 cases, $35 each

Flying Colors Idiom Bangle, $58

Live Colorfully Medium Heddy, $70

Live Colorfully Gift Set, $30

There are so many great colors to pull out of all of these designs. The general plan is to use two gender neutral-ish colors, maybe teal and yellow? Maybe orange and teal? Then throw in some gender specific ones like pink and purple or blue and green to complete my bright and classy nursery. I hope to find a lot of great fabrics in different prints to bring in a lot of fun elements to the room. After all, it is for a child.

So yes, our boring neutral walls, combined with a playful, bold color scheme of accents, I promise will not be boring for our baby.

Yes that’s me there smiling, complete with disturbingly creepy smile. Drawing in Photoshop (which I am still a rookie at), with laptop touch pad is not the easiest. But it’s comical…

Of course, as with any home improvement project, it’s going to be a process that won’t be completed in a day. And sorry, we won’t be sharing the final reveal here until after the baby is born, but I think we have plenty of fun projects up our sleeves to keep you entertained for the next 4 months 🙂

All item images, as well as stripey images via Kate Spade

Ps- I announced the winner of the Black & Decker Rapid Roller giveaway! Check the post for an update!

I managed to write 35+ pages of papers since Thanksgiving, so needless to say I’ve been a little busy. However, we do have a few minor things to report on, so why I figured why not throw them all in one post? So here you have it, our random ramblings…

1. It gets dark before we get home from work now and the 3 spare bedrooms do not have lights in them. Taking pictures of the new floors all cleaned up has been difficult. Even more difficult when I finally got a spare minute to take pictures and the camera died on me… and the battery charger was missing… as was the extra camera. Here are the lone pictures of the new floors. This happens to be the new office.

2. The future office will soon be getting more action because this weekend we decided to paint it! We picked out paint then proceeded to run a bunch more errands and by the time we got home, we only had an hour before darkness. The color we chose is Olympic’s Denim. Unfortunately I could only find this tiny thumbnail of the color on Olympic’s site…

Hopefully this weekend when we’re a little less chaotic we’ll get some paint on the walls before the sun goes down. We really need to get a light in that room.

3. Speaking of lights! (you like that segue?) We went to Ikea last weekend to pick up a light I wanted for the playroom (the old office). You know, this room with the stripes…

No we didn’t clear the room out yet, but I chose this picture because you can see that we currently have a ceiling fan in there. We need the fan for whatever room the office is in because all of the hardware we have produces some major heat. We decided to take the ceiling fan from the stripey room and put it upstairs in the new office. To replace the ceiling fan, I wanted something fun, but that would still look classy as it will be seen from the entryway. We picked up this guy…

Of course, he still has to be put together and hung.

4. Speaking of lights! Does that work twice? Anyway our Jonathan Adler giraffe sconces arrived early!

I think I have an idea of what I want to do with the nursery and I’m planning to write something up in the next few days. Right now I’m leaning towards giving the baby the room with 1 window, as it’s known around here. This one…

Bedroom 2 is still a consideration. At first I always imagined using bedroom 2 since it has 2 windows and a walk-in closet. I imagined the pretty window treatments I could have, but I think that bedroom 1 has more wall space for a better furniture arrangement. Decisions decisions.

5. While we’re on the topic of window treatments, the 6 white roman shades that we ordered for our master bedroom came last week. We’ll throw those on the weekend to-do list too since they won’t take very long to install.

I think that pretty much catches you up with what’s been going on around here. Thanks for hanging around through the chaos. I’m looking forward to December 21st when I can finally put my feet up. But then we’re hosting Christmas events on the 22nd and 24th… so maybe I’ll put my feet up on the 26th 🙂

I will not paint stripes in the new nursery.  I will not paint stripes in the new nursery.  I will not paint stripes in the new nursery.  I will not paint stripes ever again.

Okay I feel somewhat better.  It’s funny that while browsing on Pinterest, I find nurseries with stripes.  You’d think after painting stripes in the office, I’d refuse to look at any inspiration involving painted stripes.  Oh and crap, I just admitted I browse Pinterest. Wife, I am NOT painting stripes in the nursery.  But don’t these look awesome?

Especially this one posted on Color Chats.  The stripes are very similar to the office which is probably why it immediately caught my eye.  I also love how the light fixture’s dark color really stands out against the rest of the room.

And then I saw these zig-zag stripes featured on Chic & Cheap Nursery.  Why do I feel like I’m going to be painting something similar one day?  Again, similar colors to the office, but with a splash of yellow.  And if you check the link, the design board also includes our giraffe lights.

Rebecca and I had once talked about doing stripes on the ceiling so it was no surprise when I stumbled upon this nursery on Project Nursery.  I love the stripes on the ceiling with the black-ish wall and furniture.

Enough with the stripes.  The sconce on this nursery below first grabbed my attention.  I always enjoy simple lights like these especially used over bedding.  And then I realized what the sconce was mounted on — barn doors.  How freaking awesome?  Where does this guy get barn doors from?  The muted colored crib against the doors is awesome, too.

And the typography on this wall above the crib?  Um.  AWESOME.  Love the fact that it’s an alphabet mural but they totally thought outside of the box with it.

Looks like I’ll have plenty of painting to do between the crazy stripes and the alphabet mural.  You win this one wife.

Mike and I haven’t decided which room to give the baby. We don’t know too much about what we want to do with the room yet (though I feel like I’m getting closer, maybe I’ll share some inspiration next week). But today, I spotted something and I had to have it. Okay I spotted two things and I had to have them.

While reading one of my usual daily reads, Centsational Girl, I stumbled upon this inspiration image.

(Honey & Fitz via Centsational Girl)

This image was included in the post at Centsational Girl because of the painted dresser. I most definitely want a bold painted dresser to use as a changing table, but that’s not what caught my eye. The abacus (from CB2) is also insanely awesome, but that’s not what I had to have right now. Okay have you figured it out yet? Yes, the giraffe sconces!

(via Honey & Fitz)

I love how clean and sophisticated these sconces are, but that they still hold the whimsy of being a favorite childhood animal. Plus I love the added light around the changing area and that they were put on a dimmer in this image. Even smarter for late night changing 🙂

Dina, the genius behind Honey & Fitz that discovered these sconces, was kind enough to include a complete source list at the bottom of her post for all of the materials used in her nursery. From there I learned that these were Jonathan Adler sconces and were about $150 each. I then went to my buddy Google, and searched for “Jonathan Adler giraffe sconces”, hoping to find them on eBay or something for cheap. I even briefly considered somehow making my own, then I realized that anything involving electrical is probably over my head. THEN! I saw that Macy’s sold these online…

(via Macy’s)

You’re probably wondering why I cared about this. Well, Mike and I are gift card hoarders. I mentioned the other day that we’re hoping to carpet our office with a Home Depot gift card we have hanging around. We just so happen to have a bunch of money remaining on some Macy’s gift cards from… our wedding. Mike also has received rewards at his job that he gets in the form of credit to a gift card mall, so he redeemed some for Macy’s gift cards. We’ve been waiting to use to our Macy’s cards on a major purchase that we really wanted rather than just use them for odds and ends.

They were a little bit more on the Macy’s site, $167, but still less than the $195 listed on the Jonathan Adler site. I was able to use the Veteran’s Day code advertised to save another $30 and received free shipping. Then I used my gift cards and paid a total of… ::drumroll::: $50.96.

Yes, $50.96 out of my pocket for 2 sconces that would have cost me over $400 with taxes and shipping had I ordered them from Jonathan Adler. Granted, it wasn’t technically “free” money as people did pay for those gift cards, but I’m still proud to have gotten 2 sconces that we really wanted and would not have otherwise spent the money on. I now value those gift cards even more because they truly were the gifts that kept on giving… from wedding to baby 🙂

The shipping time is about a month, so I won’t have these to show off anytime soon. But that’s okay because I won’t have the baby or a room ready anytime soon either 🙂

Thank you all for your comments on the post revealing our big announcement! It has been rough juggling a full-time job, 2 graduate courses, writing posts and doing projects for posts… while being ridiculously tired and usually nauseous around 9pm. Today has been one of my worst days…strangely, considering I’m out of the first trimester. Maybe that flu shot I got yesterday me the sleepies? But I always manage to find a little extra time and energy to blog because well, I love doing this 🙂

One of the hardest part of keeping up with the blog while being pregnant hasn’t been the exhaustion or sickness… it’s been the fact that I could not share all of the plans we’ve been working on! We have 3 rooms that will be directly affected by this baby… THREE. And I could not really talk about everything we’ve been working on which was even more challenging.

But I finally can, so here are the preliminary changes that will be going on around here in the next 6 months 🙂

1. Remove carpet in 3 upstairs bedrooms and have hardwood installed

Last year we removed this carpeting from our bedroom and upstairs hallway. We waited on the other three bedrooms to save us some money since we weren’t using them. Now with the baby taking one room and the office being moved to another, we figured it’s time to remove this beast. This is necessary not only because hardwood looks pretty, but well, we have a cat who is fighting a form of kidney cancer and carpeting is our worst enemy these days (besides cancer). Plus Macky loves to shred this particular type of carpet (it’s the less expensive carpet that some moron decided would make a great scratching post material), so we figured we’d start ahead of the game this time and nip any issues in the bud before they come up. Oh and I have a horrible fear of our child being allergic to cats (both Mike and I were as children), so any dander collectors are out! Right now we’re scheduled for flooring install November 21-22 so our hardwoods will be nice and seamless upstairs 🙂

2. Move current office furniture upstairs to make room for playroom

We discussed moving the office and some preliminary plans a few times because that was the only room we could really talk about! The truth is, ever since we bought this house we knew that the downstairs office would one day be a playroom. That is why we never attempted built-ins in this room and instead went for removable Ikea furniture. It is entirely true that this office was no longer working for us, which is why we were moving it upstairs. Several people asked us what would become of the room with the pretty stripes and the answer is now obvious, it will be a playroom and the stripes will of course stay 🙂 The future of the room was indeed considered when we painted the stripes and we knew that it would one day make for a fun playroom.

3. Replace current office/future playroom carpet

This is the carpeting we currently have in the office. We added a bright green area rug, which will be likely moving upstairs with the office furniture to protect our soon to be new hardwoods from our rolling chairs. While we chose this carpet before our house was even built, we had no idea what it would look like in the room and had no idea that we would be painting gray stripes. But that’s not the reason why we have to replace it. The reason is that little orange guy in that picture. It’s one of those things a lot of people don’t talk about but hey! I’m saying it twice in one post! My poor kitty was sick and couldn’t make it to the bathroom at his worst and this carpet took the brunt of it. Anyone who has struggled with animal accidents (especially under heartbreaking circumstances) knows that they are not easy to resolve. I don’t think we can get this carpet back to it’s former glory so we plan to replace it with something more gray, fluffier and hopefully eco-friendly. We have a $200 giftcard to Home Depot that we’re hoping helps us a lot with the cost since this room is relatively small (11×11). No Darwin, we’re not mad at you, we’re happy that you’re still here with us and that you get to be a big brother 🙂 Now it’s time to get a job…

4. Choose a room for the nursery.

No picture here, we have no clue what room to choose of the remaining two. I’ll keep you posted 🙂

5. Decorate!!

Once all of the logistics are done, we can get around to all of the projects we have in mind for the 3 new rooms. We’ve talked a little bit about the new office (which is still very much up in the air), but we also have some built-in solutions for the new playroom including a storage bench and bookcases. The nursery is still a giant question mark but I have begun the epic search for an environmentally friendly crib and will of course keep you all posted on my progress!

I think this is the first time we’ve done anything in this house with a deadline. Though of course, the baby won’t mind if the playroom isn’t completely decorated in time for his/her May arrival (let’s face it, the baby won’t be doing much playing at that point…) But we’re hoping to have all of the new flooring down by the end of the year, then we can clear out the current office and the priority will probably be the baby’s room. I would like to get the built-ins done in the playroom to store the mass amounts of stuff that comes with a baby. The rest of the playroom will probably be evolving as we get used to this new gig we’re taking on 🙂

So that’s the overall, shortened version of what will be going on around here. Now I’m off to Pinterest to find some inspiration. Wait I’m lying… I’m off to go back to bed… 🙂