Over the weekend, we did the impossible.
Alright, fine, “impossible” is a relative term here. I should rephrase that to, “We did what we’ve found impossibly difficult to begin due to a thousand other to-do’s flying around.” We started working on baby boy’s nursery!
Of course, we’ve been preparing for this for a long time. Since we moved in, in fact. You see, this room was Josephine’s initially, but we always had hopes that soon we’d be expecting and thus Grace and Josephine would share a room. So, both of their old rooms were kept fairly simple in anticipation for a big mix up down the road.
Now, we’re 10 weeks out from baby boy’s due date, and while we’ve been thinking of nursery plans for a long time, we just started to implement everything this past weekend. I thought it’d be fun to share all we accomplished over the weekend, and what our plans are for the nursery moving forward, to take you along on the journey.
Our Plans For Baby Boy’s Nursery
Kicking Off Baby Boy’s Nursery Has Required Multiple Phases. Here They Are.
The first big task in Operation Nursery was to combine and organize Grace and Josephine’s things, and officially have them start to share a room, to free up the nursery for baby boy prep.
We started this at the end of December, which lead to a big closet renovation project in their newly-shared room that I’ll share soon! Once all their room items and things were combined, the girls started to fully sleep in their newly shared room together, and so far it’s been….an adventure. Ha! Again, more to come there, but let’s just say that bed time with two toddlers sharing a room has become a heck of a lot more difficult.
Phase Two: Sort through all the items from Grace and Joey’s baby days
Of course, we kept many things from when Grace and Josephine were babies! Phase two was all about determining all we had currently, and all we needed to purchase for baby boy. So, we spent some time pulling old items out of storage, going through them, and putting them into categories.
Category #1: Items we kept that are of use for baby #3
Luckily, there was more in this category than in the others! While some of the items definitely need to be refreshed (see below), others are perfectly usable with some cleaning. Josephine’s nursery/room was actually fairly gender-neutral, so we were able to keep a lot of the items from before and will be “revamping” them into a new theme. We’ll be keeping Joey’s dresser, baby rocker, and crib — lots of the big items are perfectly usable for our little guy!
Category #2: Items we kept that are no longer of use or need to be updated
While going through the girl’s old baby items, there were actually quite a few things that we realized we needed to have updated. The reasons were varied — some items didn’t age well in storage and had funky stains that were revealed (i.e. Blankets or onesies), others simply were used so much that we needed to update for sanitary purposes (i.e. Josephine’s diaper pail. Words can’t describe how terrible the smell is.)
Category #3: Items we need but don’t currently have
This essentially made up our list of items to purchase for the new baby. Things like non-pink clothing, a new changing pad, or general decor items that honestly won’t matter to the baby but I totally care about and have fun with. 😉
Phase Three: Decorate Baby Boy’s Room
The most labor intensive element was that we decided to do wallpaper on an accent wall and its corresponding closet in the room, so that’s what we did first. I have to say I LOVE how the accent wall turned out! We used this removable wallpaper from Target, which was only $25 per roll, and we were able to cover the entire wall and closet with 4 rolls. Not bad, huh?!
From here, we’re going to keep going on decorating and adding in final touches. My goal is to have the nursery done by mid-February — the baby is due in March so this timeline will definitely help me to feel mentally more prepared for his arrival!
We’ve decided the baby’s nursery will be Safari/Jungle themed.
This kind of organically evolved because we already had a ton of animal items from Josephine’s room, such as this adorable giraffe print and elephant play mat, that didn’t quite look right in the girls newly shared room. We asked Joey if she’d share these items with her new baby brother. And she sweetly agreed, so we’re reusing lots of those where we can. 😉
Items I’m eyeing to purchase to make the room complete include fun prints like this jungle print, functional items like this side table, and cute accents like this elephant decor head. Shop some of the items we’re eyeing below! We’re trying to budget, especially with the holidays coming to a close, so TBD on how much we’re actually able to swing from my want list. We’ll likely have to get creative with a lot of the stuff we have. Which, honestly….sounds like FUN.
PS – My second trimester pregnancy update + “Twinkle, Twinkle” Baby Shower Decor. Also — here’s Grace’s nursery + Josephine’s nursery. Can you pick out what items we’ll be reusing in baby boy’s nursery? 😉
