Nursery Planning

Tim and I have started planning for the nursery. This weekend we will make a second trip out to the (Benjamin Moore) paint store and see what they have for low-VOC paints. I brought home a bunch of paint chips to review, and it is interesting that the longer we have them, the more I'm interested in selecting some of the ones I picked to use for the "white" trim! One is called Lime Ice, which also appeals because of the nickname Baby carried for a while.

Since we do not plan on finding out the baby's gender until baby is born, we are going with a gender neutral nursery. The gender neutral pastel colors we can choose are yellow, lavender, or green. Green has always been my favorite color, so an easy choice, which Tim agreed with.

On the very first weekend that we knew we were pregnant, I was surfing the Internet for "nursery decor" -- I wanted to see what was available now, compared to 28 years ago, the last time I was around a baby for any length of time. I found a wonderful website that had nursery chandeliers! Even Tim stood over my shoulder, mesmerized by all the wonderful, cheerful choices. We had decided it would be best to replace our tasteful office dome with something more fun. This is the chandelier we plan to buy. We found it here: Three Arm Bunny Chandelier.

I then went shopping at Babies 'R Us to look at the bedding options with Mary Anne, my mother-in-law. It was all pretty gender specific. The prettiest with green had pink rosebuds in it, so I figured that was out. There was a green bedding with frogs, but I just didn't feel we should settle for what's easily available.

At the paint store afterwards, we looked at some wallpaper books designed for nurseries and young children. Our two favorites coincidentally combined rabbits (think chandelier!) and gardening! This one is called "Sweet Peas", and although it is my favorite, it is only 6" tall, which is a little small for the high 10' ceiling in the future nursery.
Here is a close up:
The other border is called "In & Out of the Garden":
What I like about it are the lilies of the valley. At right is a neat wall accent called "Secret Garden". As you can see, it is installed along the floor trim, along with the previous border in this nursery example. It looks wonderful with the cloud patterned wall paper, of course, so it would look very different with pale green paint. Those are blue hydrangeas in a rusty iron pot behind the birdbath, where two bluebirds are perched.

So it is hard to decide what to do if we go with the smaller border. Do we install it at chair rail height? If so, do we pick two different paint colors, or manually stencil something above, so it won't look so odd?

Next project: to find some cute, coordinating bedding and of course, furniture!!