That being said, I haven't accomplished much this week. Met the other mommies on Monday, E only had a minor meltdown [luckily we were at someone's house, not in a cafe], got our food delivery Tuesday, went for sushi with a friend [another meltdown there and a major one once we got home... nothing an hour of panic then a quick walk around the block didn't fix]. But the major news over the past few days is that E fell asleep on the sofa, on his own [i.e. not on top of me] more than once! It's a miracle! I am slowly trying to get him to nap away from me, in his nursery so that when we get back from the States he can start sleeping in there at night [at the moment, he sleeps in our room in a moses basket, but he'll be to big for it by then... he almost is now!].Anyway, I thought I would go through the budget breakdown for the nursery as well. I must say that we were gifted/had/made a lot of items in this room, so we didn't actually spend that much of our own money on this one.
I had a pretty clear vision of what I wanted this room to look like - eventually. When we found out we were having a boy, I changed my mind about what I wanted about a million times. Started with superhero, went to nautical, then rustic, then travel, and then I realized that I didn't really want to do a themed room. I want him to grow with it, and we don't want to have to change it up too much every couple of years [not that we'll be staying here forever... I just like to change things]. In the end, my major inspiration for the room was this one [from Spearmint Baby]:
Girly? Yes. But I knew I could take this and make it into my baby boys' room with a change in color palette, and maybe less flowers.
1. Painting the walls: We got all of our paint from Wickes [as mentioned in my last post],
which sells it's own name brand stuff. I wasn't sure when we started
the nursery, but it turned out really well. I have to mention that this was Dan's very first time painting, so it was quite the adventure. The color we ended up choosing was Pewter, and we love the
way it turned out. Still in my gray phase, but it was WAY better than the cream walls with the one red accent wall that was in here before. The wardrobes and skirting are in decent shape, so we skipped that [also, we were tired]. Total paint cost: £30 [5 liters in total].2 Crib. We bought this bad boy at John Lewis after much confusion [it was on the floor in white and walnut, but the prices were different on the tags, even though they were listed as the same online]. We got the mattress, sheets and bumper there as well, all using some vouchers we were given at the baby shower. Total cost: Free [to us... £340 in vouchers spent].
3. Dresser. Our landlords left this one for us, but again, in cream. So we painted it up in Mango [from Wickes, again] after testing a few colors out against the gray walls. We love how this pop of color is the first thing you see when you walk into the room. We put the changing mat on top along with the camera for our video monitor [bot courtesy of John Lewis vouchers] and the adorable bear and monkey booties [gifted by my cousin and boss respectively]. We topped the whole thing off with a long mirror that we had in our old apartment [flipped sideways and in desperate need of a clean apparently], and some bunting that I made from designer fabric samples [I didn't actually steal these from work, I just kept them in mind while sourcing for other projects] and some twine that I had. Total cost: £8.99 for the paint on the dresser.4. Chair. More ebay gold. Originally, I wanted a green one, but they were sold out, so I settled for white. Now that it's in there, I can't imagine it in any other color. It's not a real Eames rocker, but I'll take it. There was free 'next day' delivery on this bad boy too. I write 'next day' because it actually took 2 weeks and 5 phone calls to get it here. Total cost: £49.
5. Rug. Ikea! It's probably the only thing in the room that I had picked out from the beginning, and it's perfect. Great colors, good size, perfect. Total cost: £25.6. Window treatment. We bought the roller blind at Argos, and I almost threw it out the window while trying to put it up [through no fault of the blind itself]. Tip of the day: it's really hard to screw anything into a wall made of concrete by hand. Total cost: £12.99 [and 2 hours of my very pregnant life spent on a ladder]
7. Other Accessories & Decorations. The Cuban car canvas was in our living room at the old place, and I thought it was perfect for this room. The hanging basket/toy caddy thing is from Ikea [£3] and it's hanging from the cutest puppy tail hook also from Ikea [£2.25].
Total cost to us [so far]: £131.23. Bargain! We couldn't have done it without some generous family and friends!
There are still a few things to put up, including an awesome print set that my brother [Andy Bourne of The 305 Creative Company] and I came up with... but I'll save that for it's own post, since it's the coolest thing ever... The suspense is killing you, I know, but here's a hint:
