Extreme Makeover--Nursery Edition

Okay, so really this makeover was only extreme in the amount of time and energy it took me to complete... and was a project several months in the making... but our baby's nursery is now done and ready for her to arrive--any time now would be fabulous...

Before Coleman was born my friend helped me stencil really cute animals on the walls... and I splurged and bought a crib sheet and window valance from Pottery Barn to go with the quilt and bed skirt that I made... we kept the animals even when Coleman moved to a big boy bed (our crib turned into a headboard). When we found out this baby was going to be a girl, I was determined to make a transformation in the room (much to Ryan's dismay) even though animals really could go for a boy or a girl. I guess it stemmed from the fact that Olivia's nursery was gender-neutral (with tan and blue teddy bears, not even worthy of a photo apparently, because I didn't take any) and I just wanted this baby to have something girly. Let's hope she really comes out as a girl... because it IS girly now!

We had kept the changing table and used it as Coleman's dresser... so we have been able to reuse all of our furniture from before.

Priming is fun to do when you write funny messages on the wall for the kids to discover...

You can see that I was too lazy to even remove items from the closet before I painted. Luckily I didn't get any paint on the clothes or other things in there!

I made Coleman's bed skirt (yellow and white plaid) into a window valance AND bed skirt for the new baby with some fabulous, flowery fabric that I found and fell in love with. Ryan's brother and sister-in-law gave us their rocker (thank you!) as we had given ours to a friends for their new baby boy (it was blue and wouldn't have matched my color scheme anyway).

A soft pink changing pad and new shelf changed this from Lego stash to a place to actually change diapers... (not sure I'm ready for that stage again!).

I love the way the shelf turned out and found some great birds to go on it. My dad gave us all of the Noah's ark stuff when Coleman was born, and it fit right in.

This is my favorite part of her room... my very talented friend Amanda made the quilt that is hanging on the wall... I found a bedding set that I loved and considered buying, but when Amanda called and asked, "What kind of quilt do you want?" I only hesitated for a minute before asking if she thought she could do something like the one I found for our baby's wall. She was excited for the challenge and pulled off something way better than what I had seen or could imagine. I made the rag quilt with coordinating fabrics... the bed skirt is kind of hard to see, but it's got the same flowery fabric as the border of the wall hanging. Amanda sells some of her other wonderful creations (purses, door stops, holiday decorations) in her Etsy shop (click here to check out all that she has available).

I am so happy with the way her room turned out! I chose a neutral color for when she moves in with Olivia and Coleman gets to reclaim his bedroom... it looks a little more yellow than I had intended... it's supposed to be more creamy colored and the name of the paint color was "Creme Brulee" which appealed to me too... but I still like the way it turned out.

Now all we need is the baby and this room will be complete (even though we keep our babes in our room for several months, it's still nice to have her room all ready to go).

**Do you ever choose paint colors based on their names?
**Don't you wish Amanda were your friend and offered to make any kind of quilt you wanted?