Gertie's Girlie Room

Chad's now laboring under the Field of Dreams philosophy:

"If we paint it, she will come."

We're just about finished with Gertie's room. The only thing missing is a crib rail which will be installed later this evening after Chad gets home from work.

I finally got around to taking a couple of pictures today to show off a few of our craftier projects.

Side note: Decorating a girl's bedroom is so much easier than doing a boy's.

We don't have much space in Gertrude's room. Most of it is taken up by our spare bed which we are loath to part with. For one...we need an extra bed for the random parental/sisterly visits. For another...we really want to have an extra bed in case we end up with co-sleeping kids post baby. That's not the plan, mind you, but we're realistic enough to know that the best laid plans of moms and dads provide nothing but laughter for their offspring.

First things first...when Mom visited way back in June (or was it early July?) we started painting Joseph's old bedroom set from black to "Young Blush". It's supposed to be a pale pink but no one sees that but me. I replaced the wooden knobs on the dressor with silver floral knobs. I'd originally planned on using glass pulls, but my inner cheapskate wouldn't let me spend $6 per knob.

We decided to put her changing table in the closet, replacing the doors with curtains. This still gives us a bit of storage in the closet while keeping a bulky piece of furniture out of the main section of the room. (Her changing table doubles as a dresser.) Over the changing table are a few bins for diapers, wipes, blankets, etc. On the wall, Chad painted wooden cubes to match the crib and I added decorative paper, canning jars and ribbon for a practical, but pretty, place to store Q-tips and cotton balls.

We put the crib on the opposite wall as the bed and then got stuck with ideas for non-bulky wall decor. I didn't want to go the quilt route like we did with Joseph, but I'm not too thrilled putting anything solid over my baby's head. (We don't get earthquakes often, but on the off chance...) I saw a picture of a really cute tree wall decal in a magazine, so thought we go that direction. I quickly ran into two problems.

First of all, I couldn't find exactly what I was looking for. Everything was either too busy or too...adult. Second, I really couldn't see spending $60 for, essentially, wall stickers. Poring over the websites, I came to the conclusion that I could do this on my own. I hit up Wally World and bought a $5 roll of white contact paper. The results are pretty darn good, if I do say so myself. My original idea was to hang small framed pictures of family members to make up a "Family Tree" of sorts. I abandoned that idea after hanging a couple of samples. Even with tiny frames, our family is just too big for the tree not to be cluttered.

Then, after putting up the tree, we realized that we didn't have much space for a lamp. We finally decided that the paper lanterns I used to decorate my room in my mid-20's made a perfect, airy addition to the room. A single bookshelf later and we're done.

I love how relaxing the whole space is. It's not too cluttered, but seems warm and inviting. I love the color combination of pale green, brown and pale pink. It's feminine but not poofy.

Once we get the crib rail on, we'll have to see if Chad's prediction is true. In the meantime, it's a relief to know we're done.