Ella’s Nursery

I am so excited to finally share Ella’s completed nursery! It’s taken a little longer than expected but I am so pleased with the results. She loves waking up and pointing to all of the flamingos on the wall by her crib and just starring at the prints on her bright green gallery wall. For those who may not be familiar, my family (aka my parents) have a foster baby girl named, Ella. She’s lived with us for exactly one year, today! At first, she slept in a sitting room connected to my parents bedroom. It didn’t have a wall, it was just a small open space with a crib. After they realized she would be with us longer than a few months, they knew she needed her own room, so they had a wall- with an actual door that opens and closes, built onto their bedroom. I petitioned that we should have an elf door where you have to bend down to get in but was quickly outvoted on that idea.

When they first started the nursery project, I asked if I could design Ella’s room. My mom, the one who normally decorates our house, gave me the go ahead! I could design it any way I wanted. The color scheme was going to be determined between the flamingo or triangle wall decals from Urban Walls. I loved the black triangles, but I ended up choosing between my first love, which is bright colors, and ended up going with the pink flamingo wall decals. From there I based all of the decorating and colors around the pink decals. Kind of like how I get dressed in the AM, I grad a top or bottom and just add pieces to pull it all together and that is exactly what I did with her room.

I am not afraid of color at all and knew from the beginning I was going to use pink, green and yellow (my favorite color). I needed to balance out the pure white wall and pink flamingo decals with some color, so I decided to paint an accent wall bright green, which is adjacent to the flamingo wall. At first, I had this super awesome bright green patterned rug in mind from FLOR. Then my dad lost his job, and it was no longer in our budget (actually it was never in our budget and my mom would have NEVER paid for it, but hey, a girl can dream, right?), but I still really love the patterned rugs from there and you can make any pattern, with whatever color you want. It’s super customizable, which is what drew me in the first place. My second option was this Indoor/Outdoor rug by Threshold for Target. It ended up being super small and didn’t look right in the space, so back to the store it went.

Pineapple and Popsicle Prints are DIY. I just traced the shape on Cardstock paper, used Crayola watercolors, and outlined in glitter. Nothing fancy. Just very cheap! The safety pin and letter E were items my mom already had laying around the house waiting to be hung on the wall. The lamp was handmade my a sweet guy at our church specifically for Ella and the basket was a local thrift find!

Shoe wings from Shwings online!

Shoes from left to right: Thrifted Mint Vans (love these galaxy ones), DIY Moccasins, Thrifted Pink Converse, and Freshly Picked Pineapple Moccasins

DIY Pineapple Garland via Studio DIY

Her dress is from Peru when I visited my Compassion Child and the hanger is DIY. I used Modge Podge, Glitter and lots of layers! Here’s the tutorial I followed!

Behind those curtains is a giant piece of furniture that holds tons of family pictures and albums. I didn’t particularly like it because it was black and felt it didn’t blend well with the room. I thought hanging curtains along a curtain rod would help pull the room completely together. I decided to make my own curtains and found fabric from JoAnns and used this tutorial to sew them. Ella even decided to help me make them. Puttin that babe to work! Well, fast forward to when my dad helped me hang them (thanks Dad!!!) I really hated how they looked. I think it washes out the walls and would have preferred if the yellow was either darker and more solid or just went with a whole different color all together, like the green on the pillow from TinyPrints.

You probably can’t even tell here, but the curtains aren’t even hemmed and I still haven’t hemmed them, I’m lazy! I like to think of it as a good reminder that I am not perfect, but I do have a Savior who is! I’m human and flawed, and my designs will always be flawed, in someway, somehow, even if I am the only one to notice. As a creative I don’t think I am ever truly satisfied with my work, but that’s okay because I am truly satisfied in the one who saves me from my work and that’s Jesus! I do think the curtains would look better if they started at the top of the wall instead of awkwardly 1/4 way down, but that mean’s I will have to add extra fabric to the bottom. Maybe sometime in the future, but for now I am perfectly okay with them hanging there unhemmed.