Operation Nursery Part 2: Getting there

No, the B is not a hint at Baby Girl Curtis' name...

(words by Meg, gifs by Kate)

As we alluded to in our last nursery post, we're going with a teal/aqua and gray theme for the nursery. Not super girly, which in our opinion is a good thing, and super cute. There might also be an accidental reoccurring whale theme.

Painted ornament ball mobile

Most of you know that we live in a rental apartment, so painting the walls in our soon-to-be nursery is out of the question. We also don't think we'll live here more than another year, so we're not investing too much money in things that will work only in this particular room (with its 3 doors and weird nooks and crannies).  Most of you also know that instead of nesting (which I'm doing plenty of), Kate is crafting:

Kate saw this idea on Etsy, but it was upwards of $50 and no coupons (!!) so she designed it herself. 
I gave plenty of helpful feedback such as "make the tail more flippy."

In addition to the whale posters, we are re-purposing some original artwork by my aunt and uncle (the cloud/fairies) and Kate's grandmother that already lived in the guest room.

How amazing is this thing?
Or have I just been staring at wall mounted
organizers for too long?

We're planning to use a dresser that is already in the guest room as a changing table. When we painted it last summer we wisely thought ahead and picked a color we thought we might like for a nursery so it's already teal. I've spent an unreasonable amount of time pondering what we could use as a diaper caddy because the dresser is small and will just barely fit a changing pad. It seems like we'll need something wall mounted (actually door mounted because there are more doors than walls in this room) behind the dresser. I really wanted to buy this 3 bin shelf from Restoration Hardware Baby & Child, but I couldn't bring myself to spend $179 + shipping (!!!).



As luck would have it, I found a very similar one at Home Goods, though it was missing a price tag. A sales woman told me it was $24.99, which I doubt was accurate, but who am I to argue?? Of course I took it home with me.


We purchased a lovely teal and white area rug from Home Depot (how very lesbionic of us!), along with some teal cloth drawers that we'll use in an existing bookcase. They were, of course, on sale. We nabbed some blackout curtains and an extra super cute whale mobile, too. Family members are generously taking care of some of the big ticket items (ie: crib, bassinet, glider) and we're going with simple white on those items. I was inappropriately excited to buy drawer organizers at Ikea for sorting all those tiny baby clothes!! That could be a whole post all on it's own. And maybe it will be.

So we have lots of the pieces of the nursery currently crammed into a room that is still serving as a guest room and as my walk in closet. And as a holding place for incoming baby gifts (thanks guys!). Let's just say it's getting a little cramped. Sometime in late August or early September we're going to start putting it all together. Stay tuned!

Operation Nursery Part 1: Before

(words by Meg, gifs by Kate)

For those of you who like to crash at Chez Curtis, I have some bad news for you. Our two bedroom apartment easily accommodated guests in the past, but pretty soon the guest room will be the nursery. This second room has also served as our foster kitten room, so we're saying goodbye to kittens for now as well.

Our master plan involves moving our futon from the guest room into our dining room so we can still house the grandparents when they come to visit! Aside from the futon, our guest room is also home to all of my stuff. And I do mean ALL of it. Clothes, shoes, school books, random collections of hair accessories, hidden Christmas presents and more. All that stuff either needs to be tossed, stored or moved into our (small) bedroom, which is currently quite full of Kate's belongings! Gotta love city living with its oddly shaped closets and lack of storage space.

Here are some "before" pictures that I actually took after we started collecting some of the nursery decorations, so you get a sneak peak of those too. See if you can spot the whale tail.

This room has three doors. The door you see
here behind the teal dresser leads into our bedroom.
WHY? I do not know.

Here's door #2, which leads into the dining room.
Again, WHY?

The beloved futon and a glimpse into the kitchen through door #3.

The tiny closet (and technically door #4)
packed full of my clothes. 

Here are the steps we've taken in Operation Nursery so far:





1. Bought and assembled an Ikea bed frame with drawers underneath for our bedroom so I can put some of my clothes in it.

2. Emptied out the nightstands in our bedrooms and replaced them with floating shelves (I can't take any credit for this- it was all Kate!) so that we can open said drawers. We didn't exactly think that one through when we bought the bed frame. But we're making it work!








3. Sorted through all our crap and freecycled, recycled, and goodwilled quite a bit of it. While sorting through some stuff of mine, I found 3 $100 bills tucked into the back of an old checkbook. I think they were wedding gifts and I put them there thinking we'd use them for a special occasion...3 years ago!  Oops.

4. Reorganized our little corner of the basement to make room for even more baby hand-me-downs that will soon need a temporary home. We already have a giant car seat box in our living room and though Batman loves it, it's not exactly our design style.

Next post: Operation Nursery Part 2: Getting there.

Meg's Vision Board as a teaser...