Saturday morning we headed to Lowe’s to pick up our paint for the nursery. We went with the colors we decided on last week.

To keep things simple since we were walking in with 4 different colors in 3 finishes, I wrote what we needed on each color we wanted.

Yes that is my iPhone shadow. It was inevitable.

Anyway, the colors are Crumb Cookie in semi-gloss (trim & paneled wall), Lettuce Alone in eggshell (closet), Comes The Dawn in flat (ceiling) and Gray Beard in eggshell (walls).

We painted the ceiling in about an hour on Saturday night (after getting haircuts, buying paint, caulking and attending an engagement party an hour away). We loved the result.

It gives this infinity sky feeling– when you look at it you almost feel like you can jump in it and it never ends.

Then yesterday we started to paint the walls the gray color we chose… and this happened.

Yes, that’s it on the left (and there’s the paneled wall primed and partially painted!) But the gray paint looks like baby blue. Suddenly our modern looking neutral nursery turned into a Pottery Barn boy’s room. Not the look we were going for, so we stopped right then and there.

The problem is that the ceiling is reflecting on the walls, so the true gray is appearing blue. I went back to my pile of swatches and decided we needed something with some brown undertones, to counteract the blue reflection. We picked up a tester of Olympic’s Gray Goose and stuck it on the walls.

Definitely doesn’t look baby blue, but we’re not sure if it’s too brown. Or if it gives off a purpley pink undertone….

Here it is at the top of the closet, which I don’t mind so much. It definitely varies depending on where it is in the room…

I didn’t get a chance to see the new color in daylight since I got home late, so I’m going to check it out again tomorrow morning. It looks great with the curtain fabric and bedding (which I can’t show you) but I’m nervous about it with the charcoal colored glider we’re planning on getting. We have both brown and gray fabrics to mix in, so I wanted the paint to be a little bit of both. Like the bridge that brings the neutrals together.

I have a feeling the solution to our problems may be right in front of my face, like maybe, in our striped walls downstairs in the current office/future playroom…

We might have to dig out the leftovers of one of these colors tomorrow….

I went to Lowe’s tonight to pick up a few paint chips for the nursery. We have plans tomorrow night, Saturday afternoon and Sunday afternoon and I reeeeally want to get the painting done this weekend. Which means that we need to decide on colors by Saturday morning so we can go buy paint, start to paint at night and hopefully finish it on Sunday morning/Sunday night. But I think I may be in over my head…

(please excuse the dirty floors in the nursery, no point in cleaning when we still have a lot of work to do!)

All of these colors are for Olympic’s No-VOC paint. While at Lowe’s, I grabbed grays pretty quickly (there never seem to be enough gray options)…

The greens were extremely limited…

And then I was completely overwhelmed by the amount of sky blue colors. Really, there were rows and rows of blues and I just stopped taking them after a while. I figured one of these has to work!

Yeah, so those are the “few” paint chips I was going to get. We started by looking at them in the kitchen, where we decided that we liked the big chips against the baseboards the most.

The white one is the actual color of our trim throughout the house– Olympic’s Crumb Cookie. I grabbed one of those chips just to make sure it blended well with everything else, considering our entire paneled wall will be painted that color. Granted it’s dark out and we’re dealing with a simple lightbulb in the room, but we decided that the blue was too blue and the gray was too dark. Back to the drawing board it was!

Our preliminary, night time choices are looking like this…

It’s really hard to get a true picture of paint colors with a camera… especially at night. I think the blue is coming across more blue than the comforting blue/gray that it really is, but I don’t think we’re too far off from the colors in our inspiration schemes.

Actually, according to my monitor, we’re pretty damn close! Originally I was leaning towards a more true gray color for the walls, but it didn’t feel right. It appeared a little bluish, so we gravitated back towards one with brown undertones. I’m slightly concerned about the glider we want being a charcoal color, but I held a similar color up against it and it looked fine. Hopefully everything still looks good in the morning so we can get this process rolling!

ps- I think there may be some paint chip art in my future 🙂

What color will you paint?

This is a common question regardless of the room, but even more so since we are not sharing the gender of the baby. In fact, someone just asked me this question yesterday. I think many people have a hard time leaving the traditional nursery wall colors of pale pink, blue, yellow and green and often assume that our walls will be yellow or green. For people who don’t read my blog, I usually leave the answer at a simple “neutral walls”. For the rest of you, you get the long answer 🙂

First, I have always planned to paint the walls a gray/greige color. The panelled accent wall will remain entirely white. Maybe something like Benjamin Moore’s Stone Harbor for the walls…

I also mentioned that I wanted to paint the closet a fun accent color before we put our closet organization system in. For this, I think we’re going to go with a neutral, but still fun, green. Like Benjamin Moore’s Citrus Green…

I have also always wanted a fun painted ceiling. When I was a kid, I had baby blue sheets with clouds on them and always imagined my future kid’s room would have clouds painted on the ceiling. I really toyed with the idea of a mural, then a stencil on the ceiling, but I think I’m going to go with just a subtle sky blue color. I’d hate for a pattern to take away from the crown molding or paneled wall we just worked so hard on. Maybe something like Benjamin Moore’s Mediterrean Sky…

I know what you’re all thinking, I’m sure our parents are currently like OMG BLUE, IT’S A BOY!!!!! But shall I remind you that this was our plan from the beginning. I mentioned here that I wanted a multi-colored room and though I love the idea of yellow or orange, I tend to gravitate towards cool colors. I decided that I didn’t want to paint a ceiling yellow or orange and thought that the blue was such a nice soothing option for an area that a baby will stare at for so many hours. For those of you not convinced, girls can have blue ceilings too, see?

(via Young House Love)

Incase you’re not confused enough, here’s our targeted color scheme completed with our potential curtain choices:

If the baby is a girl…

And if the baby is a boy…

I absolutely love both of them. I thought I wanted a bright ceiling and closet but the more I thought about it, I decided the paint colors should be muted and more serene with pops of bold fabrics. We’re planning on using the chevron curtains on both the window and the closet, since they are extremely close to each other and multiple fabrics would be too busy. So that means that either of the chevron patterns would be against the green, as they are in the swatches. I have a chevron sample that I plan to bring with us when we choose paint colors this weekend. I will probably still scratch my head and be extremely confused, but seeing all of the colors together lessens the blow. Of course, we plan to buy no VOC paint as we always do.

So my short answer to my most frequently asked nursery question sounds a lot more boring than what we’re planning, eh? 🙂 I cannot wait to paint this weekend!

I haven’t slept well the past several days. Darwin had a urinary tract infection, on top of kidney failure, which led to many unpleasant accidents that may have occurred on my lap…while I was sleeping. I’ve been peed and puked on way too many times before this baby has arrived. I know, TMI, but I’m just being honest here 🙂 Throw in a super active baby lately and when I finally have the opportunity to sleep, someone is waking me up from the inside. Needless to say, I’m a zombie and I spent the weekend cleaning and organizing some baby stuff that we’re borrowing from my brother and sister-in-law. I felt very accomplished and feel much better about life (and Darwin started some antibiotics and has been accident free, whew!) But, it leaves you with a post full of randomness. Because that’s what’s going on in my head today!

On Friday, Mike and I returned to Babies R Us to test out the glider I wrote about last week. When I kicked my feet up onto the ottoman, I noticed something…

Yes I was wearing gray leggings and gray boots while sitting on a gray chair. At least now I have a good idea of the color and I might be carrying around my leggings as a swatch. Speaking of swatches, in the background are all of the other colors the chair comes in. I think we’re going to go for it, I’m just scoping out coupons and hoping for a Presidents’ Day sale.

Next to the picture of my gray boots on gray pants on gray chair on my phone is a picture of my gray cat…

Isn’t she pretty? She’s not often seen around here, as she normally resorts to a mean face when the camera comes out. Plus she’s often in the shadow of her two special needs brothers, though she gets plenty of loving. She’s my constant sidekick (sitting with me at the moment). I wonder if she knows how chic her gray coat is these days?

Something the complete opposite of gray (okay it’s rainbow), is my Valentine’s Day gift from Mike. I’m trying to organize my life (hence the mass decluttering I did this weekend), so Mike bought me this Erin Condren planner in the multi-colored chevron pattern…

(via Erin Condren)

Yes I know it’s early, but the box it came in was so obvious that I knew what it was when it arrived today. I wanted one last year, but this adorable video won me over.

(via Erin Condren)

I am already in love with it and it’s only been a couple of hours. I normally carry a small planner, a notebook for blog ideas and I end up sticking post-its all over my notebook/planner/wallet (yes I have a habit of sticking to-do lists to my wallet!) I figured this is only going to get worse as I juggle baby, work, blog and life, so it was time to upgrade my shabby little Target monthly planner I’ve been using for years. It comes with folders for stray papers and blank pages with each month, but possibly my favorite part of my new planner? The monthly and weekly goals and to-do lists…

The only way I managed to keep my head on straight through school, doctor’s appointments, work and blog posts in the fall was constant planning. I pretty much plan out my weekdays from 7am until 10pm in order to get everything done. I try to save Friday night for down time (but it usually turns into running errands) and weekends for doing projects. This planner has days broken into morning, day and night so I no longer have to cram things into one little box that I normally wrote on the top and bottom of. Michelle from Ten June also has one and she gave a nice little rundown of the features here.

Already filled in for this week’s goal? Install crown molding and baseboards in the baby’s room. Thanks to a 3 day weekend coming up, I’m feeling optimistic. Or maybe it’s the stickers with my name on them that came with my planner that made me feel a little brighter? 🙂

Mike and I were busy bees this weekend, working away at finishing our office.  I have lots of good stories to tell of trips to Ikea and long overdue purchases, but it’s been a very long day!

My rough day was made much better when I came home to see that some fabric samples I ordered from Fabric.com had arrived. How did I not venture into online fabric shopping before?? I am in love with all of the possibilities! Here’s a little sneak peak at the first round I am considering…

I think I have a front runner and seeing this picture has given me even more ideas. I love seeing different patterns together like this, especially when designers make it easy for you by matching the same colors in a bunch of different styles! I am just learning to venture out with patterns and textures, so the online option takes some of the intimidation out of the way. It’s like a whole new wooooorld! Cue the Aladdin! Wait.. more about that tomorrow…

Did I just pull a teaser? Maybe 🙂