You’ve seen a couple of sneak peeks of our nursery in my pregnancy diaries, but it’s time for a few more details! This isn’t the “big reveal” by any means as we’re still half way through – in fact, I’m going to call this a “nursery update” as it’s still in progress.
You might remember this room as my sewing room and home office. Since we bought the house back in 2015, this room has been through a few changes, but that post shows its last big change and previous incarnation – and it was only last year! But circumstances changed, and the room I’d always had in mind for a kid’s bedroom or nursery, our little spare room, was just going to be too small for comfort. So I made the sacrifice – I know, so selfless! – and gave up my big sewing room to move my machine into the little bedroom so that baby could have the room.
Even before we knew she was a girl (although my dream the other night tells me she was a boy, born wearing a onesie that said “Niahll” on it, so we had to just accept that was his name and move on…), we’d decided to go for a more gender neutral space in the nursery. We also wanted to ensure that it was a room that could grow with her, so it wasn’t just baby-oriented.
That’s why we decided the navy wall was to stay. It’s a pretty bold choice for a nursery and one that I know isn’t for everyone, but we’re pairing it with grey, mustard and gold for a look that’s playful and fun but can also be used for years to come.
The first thing that we purchased was our nursery furniture so that we could ensure it fit, then we could build the rest of the room around that. We bought a 3 piece set with a cot (which turns into a toddler bed), chest of drawers with in-built changing top and wardrobe – it’s the Harrow set by Mamas & Papas from Argos. We did actually initially buy it in white as the grey wasn’t available, but when the grey became available, they were very happy to change our order.
What works so well about this furniture is that it’s an excellent base for the rest of the room, being soft in colour but slightly more interesting with the natural wood elements. And as such, we started to build a bit of a theme around the rest of the room: nature and adventure inspired. This worked well with the existing navy wall, which I like to think of as a calming night sky and gave us a good base to start building around.
So when Desenio offered to send me some prints to use in the room, it wasn’t a hard decision for me which direction to go in. I picked out 5 prints for the nursery – see below for each of these:
Wanderlust | Little Deer | Adventure | Mountains | Hakuna Matata
If you want to get your own Desenio prints, I’d highly recommend their service! I have a discount code which offers my readers 25% off any posters or prints at Desenio with the code REBELANGEL at checkout – this excludes frames and handpicked/collaboration posters. Code is valid from 27/11 to 29/11.
These pick out the elements that we plan to use in the room: woodland and forest creatures such as foxes, deer and squirrels; mountains; adventure; travel; and, of course, there’s a hint of Disney there too!
It took me a little while to make my decision over which prints to go with, simply because I’d picked out so many I liked and I wanted to make sure they would all work as a gallery wall together. Fortunately, Desenio has this handy gallery wall tool which I played around with (and some scribbles with good old paper and pen!) before deciding on this configuration.
Interestingly, this sort of theme seems to be showing me only “boy cave” and boy nurseries on Pinterest when I search it, so I hope this post shows that it can work perfectly for girls too – after all, girls like adventure and nature too!
While many people are expecting me to go all out Disney in our nursery, I like the idea of adding little Disney touches here and there in a subtle kind of way – like we did for our wedding. There’s the Desenio Hakuna Matata print, but I’ve also got a Peter Pan print from Etsy (currently propped up on the changing table!) ready for another wall, plus Mickey taking centre stage on the bean bag. I do feel that there’s even a Disney element to the adventure, nature and wanderlust theme of the nursery overall – I’m thinking Up! and Bambi, but Peter Pan also ties into the dark night sky wall that we’ll be decorating with the wooden stars from She In The Home rather than decals (as the previous owners of the house destroyed the walls with stickers – we’ve been put off!).
You’ll also hopefully have noticed the wooden mountain shelves that I bought from IshBuild on Etsy for Ben’s birthday – yes, our gifts for each other mostly focus on baby rather than ourselves right now! I’m SO in love with these and they fit our theming perfectly. I’m planning to get some little wooden forest creatures to sit on these shelves soon that can double as ornaments now and sturdy toys in future.
As you can see, the other side of the nursery isn’t quite so complete! We plan to have our old IKEA cube shelves upright and used for storage for stuff for us rather than baby at first, but when she’s older, they can be laid down horizontally so she can access her own things safely. The chest of drawers still requires some organisation, as well as the changing section, and the wall behind needs a new coat of paint, but we’re not far off!