Stylish Sunday - Toddler Bedroom

Inspired by the fact we are currently selling our house I have put together a few items that I would love to use to create a wonderful new bedroom for Nye.  I started the design with the wallpaper I spotted at Ferm Living  a few weeks ago, and worked from there on a scheme that included grey with orange pops.  Enjoy!

- Sources

Nursery fit for a king

This nursery post has been a long time coming, Nye is now 8 months old.  We did most of the big jobs when I was still pregnant and of course the room was 'ready' for when Nye arrived back in January.  (Although, once they arrive, you soon realise the baby spends a lot more time in your bedroom than their own to begin with.)

This reveal was spurred on by the arrival of his new cot bed and gorgeous natural mattress.  It is such a wonderful feeling to know that your baby is spending his days sleeping on wool and coconut coir fiber (while we snuggle down on Ikea's finest!!)  It sounds so cliche but I find it incredibly fulfilling to do those little things for him.  It's something I breath in when I find myself lovingly folding his reusable nappies every day!  How lucky I am to have him and how wonderful it is to love and protect him.

But here we have it, a grand old room full of fun and laughter for my big boy.

Most of it was kindly picked up via freecycle, lovely friends with a few special gifts from mummy and daddy.  I like to think it combines a good mixture of modern and vintage bits and pieces.  I'm terrible at 'picking' a theme and colour scheme.  I'm like a magpie with an eye for anything colourful and fun and that's sort of how every room turns out when I'm in charge.  Thankfully, I like how it all comes together.  The pictures here look a little more cluttered than many a nursery photo shoot but I like to think that this reflects that it is a little boys place to play and cause havoc at will.

There are a few sneaky DIY bits and bobs mixed in here, including a personalised lamp shade which I made last week with a £2.50 balloon shade.  I have to say, it's the best £2.50 I've ever spent.  I'm also so proud of learning to crochet and making him a blanket, just like my mum made me when I was small.  You can catch a glimpse of this, peering over the edge of the cot above.

So to my 8 month little boy, here is your first ever room.  It has evolved with you and you may never remember it but it will always be a place of sunshine and happiness.

I hope you all like the way it's turned out.  Do let me know if there's anything you like and I can probably tell you where it's from.  It has been many months of love, tender care and tweaks to get it to where we are now.  Now I just need to find the bobbin for the sewing machine and finish the black out curtains!

I feel so close to you right now!

This is me today, oh boy I feel on top of the world!

There has been this HUGE list of things to do for oh so long and finally I think I can confidently say we are getting to the end of it, or at least getting through it!

Life is made up of lots of small achievements like getting the washing on while you text a friend and hoover the lounge. Multitasking at it's best I like to think!

Anyway here is my list of achievements from the last few days and a few choice pictures to celebrate.

• Pick & Order bathroom floor - We used the final bit of cash we got for our wedding to purchase the floor, 3 packs of this beautiful vinyl floor (manufactured by Polyflor in the UK) The sample is gorgeous. (I'll report later on how easy it is to lay.) I originally wanted to pay £10 SqM but this has worked out at around £15 which I am stonkingly impressed with seeing as, in my opinion, it's the same quality as my original dream floor (Harvey Maria).

• Find and buy bathroom light - This has been one seriously EPIC battle to actually decide on something, I was debating posting a few of the ones we *almost* went for but I don't want no disagreement so this is what we FINALLY went for.

Ok, tiny I know, M&S arent keen on letting me show you the full thing - it's here 

I originally wanted to get a chandelier but I haven't really found one (anywhere in my price range) that really floated my boat. And although I was trying to ignore the issue, all the taps in our bathroom are brass so anything really modern is not going to look great! I'm hoping this will give our room a classy yet perhaps a little industrial feel which will be contrasted with some coloured accessories.  BTW the lights £28 in the sale (Huzzah) and free for us as we purchased it with some wedding gift vouchers. 

• BOILER repair - OK, this isn't totally solved but we have moved 90% towards the finishing line, I've booked a repair man to come round on Monday at 7.30am.

• Choose and order nursery stencil - Done and done! Many thanks to groupon, it's the first voucher I've bought. So I got the stencil for £9.99.  Will look gorgeous over our little mans cot me thinks :)

Tree & Swing Wall Decal 

Big love, now back to the cleaning!  Did I mention we're off for the weekend with Neil's family who have booked a lovely murder mystery weekend away for us.  Cannot wait to see them and show off my ever increasing baby boy bump.

Baby Bargain!

Hooray, I can now tick off one of our 'to buy' items from the baby list and something we knew we'd have to buy rather than pick up off friends!

And naturally it was an ebay bargain @ £16.  And completely by chance it is being posted from the Village in Norfolk I used to live in! I paid for it today and cannot wait for it to arrive. YAY

Nursery Painting: Day 1

Yesterday I was called by the agency I work for and asked if I would like to be put forward for a job working in HR part time for the next 3 months.  With the interview tomorrow and the job possibly starting on Tuesday I thought I should make the most of today.  I'm an impatient thing anyway so the massive tin of yellow paint was just too much to keep my mitts off.

The unfortunate thing is that Neil is still working on his Thesis and there is A LOT of furniture in the Nursery so I was limited to a small corner near the door but nevertheless I have achieved 2 coats of yellow paint.  It's probably for the best that I wasn't able to go crazy with the paint fumes anyway.  But I do feel the urge to test out which of our greys will go best with it.  I think the lighter one but Neil thinks the dark will be better.

So here's what the end result should look like in the end.

And this is the first corner, the one by the door on the picture. (Again this is not a true reflection of the true shade)

Neil thinks the story of the colour is a bit like this -

Nursery Update - Colours chosen

I spent yesterday afternoon clearing out a few more shelves on my bookcase which enabled me to use one just for baby books which we've been collecting.  Many of them aren't really suitable for newborns but we've plenty of bedtime story material for the next few years!

There's obviously still a lot more to get rid of in the Nursery and I'm even considering getting a smaller desk and giving mine away as I really don't need one the size I have at the moment.  In an ideal world I'd like a nice wooden one but we shall see if something suitable comes along on freecycle.  Yesterday out of interest I also decided to look up paint colours online as Neil and I have been discussing painting a few walls in the nursery a nice and bright yellow sunshiney colour.  Lo and behold I find an absolute bargain on the exact colour we were looking for at Homebase and in the tough durable paint that is probably most appropriate for a room that is likely to have a small child dribbling all over it!

This is the colour we went for, it's on sale as it's about to be discontinued for £12.93 for 5L which seemed too good to resist so I reserved it immediately.  On collection it is clear it will look nothing like the image above and is much more akin to a very bright yellow sherbet. (It's so difficult to describe colour and the feeling it brings isn't it!) We're pretty sure we're going to team it with some of the grey we have left over from our downstairs rooms to tone it down a bit.  I'm itching to get the paint brush out but the room still has so much clutter and I am not looking forward to covering over the lovely Laura Ashley Cranberry that I have on one wall at the moment.  Nevertheless it will get done and look so different and really mark the fact that it's no longer my room and that the baby will have a lovely sunny room to grow up in.

For inspiration I'm compiling some images to keep me motivated.

Via Baby Centre

Via. Project Nursery

Via. Project Nursery

Via Project Nursery

We wont' know for a few more weeks whether it's a boy or a girl and at the moment I'm liking decorating whilst not knowing, that way our decisions aren't influenced by thinking about pink and blue.  And in the end something that isn't so gender stereotyped will probably last longer in terms of suitability for any new residents.

Via Heather Thompson

The image above is purely just for droolovision, the bookshelves are gorgeous (if a little bland all in white) but the cot is a Stokke and I have been admiring these heavenly things for a few weeks.  I have to say I think our Ikea Donation is just as classic and probably more practical as it's not round!

That's all for now folks, I am exhausted!

A Long Weekend

It has been a long weekend but I'm already not looking forward to work tomorrow.  I do like the prospect of the money it brings but not so keen on the actual work itself.  However at least as of yesterday I can seek solace in the fact that I have got through the first two stages of the John Lewis application proceedure for a Buying Assistant Role.  Now I have to wait up to 4 months for them to call me for interview, but an actual human will review my application now, not just a computer!  Just thinking about working there gets me excited so excuse me while I have some water to calm my nerves!

Anyway, back to the story of this weekend! For a while I've been dreaming of tackling my somewhat unruly study which has been filled with lots and lots of bags of baby things through the kindness of friends and freecycle.  We actually already have most of the things we will need for the baby believe it or not! Did I mention we even have a pram! It's actually pretty cute.  Here's a very quick picture straight from my mobile. Apologies for the terible pictures at the moment I'm feeling monumentally lazy.

Yes, amazingly enough Neil and I picked this up off a freecycle in Brixton about a month ago now. Her mum had bought her a new bugaboo for her second child so she was passing this one on.  I have to admit the steering is slightly unruly (when pushed on carpet...)

So today has basically been part of my mission to clear out the poor unborn babies room and re-locate my mountains of books, pulications, essays, notes and even crafty bits and pieces.  I thought I wouldnt get round to it but I am pleased to announce that I have completley cleared one small bookcase (which is being collected by a freecycler tonight) and re-located a large bookcase to it's previous location.

Here's the bookcase that has been relocated from my study to our bedroom and is now fit for purpose as Neil's bedside table!

The next task after I had cleared the bookcase out of the way, please admire the space to breath as documented here - (please ignore dodgy house pipework we do are best to do the same!!)

I then moved the other bookshelf from beside my desk to the space created. Please see offending bookshelf here on the right.

Here we are mid book re-location

It then took me a lot of heaving to slowly drag even the empty bookshelf from one wall to another, but I got there and it felt good, then all I had to do was rearrange all the books back on the shelves (taking note that there are still lots I need to get rid of.)

And here we have it,bookshelf bliss -

And what is this I spy!? A half an empty wall you say? Crazy times!

The other good news from this weekend has been the fact that Neil didnt have to leave Teach First this afternoon.  As he has to go into his school tomorrow they agreed he could stay at home tonight. And he'll be back on Wednesday for our scan on Thursday. (Although away all next weekend in Warwick...  boooo)

We had a lovely Saturday yesterday as well, I got quite into the spirit of the Tombolla as I flogged 4 tickets for £1 on the Lib Dem stall at Lewisham Peoples Day whilst Neil scouted out chips and churros for me! It's amazing how crazy people go for it, in the end we raised quite a bit which is great news.

And if people's day wasnt enough excitement for me for the one day we then headed in to Lewisham to check in ona light fitting we both liked in BHS which was in the sale but still a bit much for stingy me to fork out.  Naturally it was gone  by the time we went in to check on it this week, doh!  But instead we did find this Steiff bear for the baby in TK Maxx! He's a soft workman bear if you couldn't tell.

Bump Update - Week 11

I'm off work today to go to the Annual General Meeting of a lovely charity based in the ward I represent as a councillor called Downham Nutrition Partnership.  I've been so impressed with their work since I first heard about them around 2 years ago now.  I'm hoping the weather clears up a little as the meeting is supposed to be taking place on their allotment!

I'm also very pleased to have the time off as working has been wearing me down somewhat, the last two days of my pregnancy have been tough.  My sickness came back with a vengeance on Tuesday and was even worse yesterday but I managed to make it through with the thought that I wouldn't be back until Monday.  I managed to stem the sickness this morning with some chocolate ice cream for breakfast! So today I am pleased to say I haven't actually been sick, although I have had a banging headache on and off.

In addition to my sickness I've also had trouble with pain on the left of my lower back which often shoots down to my toes when I walk or at night when I lie down or turn.  I went to see the doctor on Friday and he gave me a referral to the Physiotherapy Department at Lewisham Hospital.  As I've been at work until today I headed along at 11.00.  I assumed it would be just a 10min session of actual physiotherapy, it turns out it was purely a consultation to see if I needed further appointments.  It was actually really helpful, the Physiotherapist was really lovely and suggested some very simple Pilates exercises and gave me a pregnancy belt to help support my waist.  I'm now on the waiting list for physiotherapy although fingers crossed I wont need it as I can imagine it will mean I need more time off work and I really need to get saving for the baby.

So now that's done I can look forward to next weeks 12 week scan.  I think as Neil said it will be the moment when it actually feels real when we get to see what's been living in there.  I mean the physical affects of feeling sick and emotional for the last 4 weeks confirm that I'm pregnant but they say seeing is believing don't they!  I only wish I could find out if it was a boy or a girl as I am so impatient to know so I can ratchet up my search for names.  We're pretty certain on boy names, the girl names are in complete disarray, the names Neil and I like don't seem quite right.

Baby stuff has already completely taken over my study, and I have so many plans for what I want to do in there.  I'm thinking different colours, fabrics, lots of sewing and probably some painting and framing inspired by some of the lovely images (as above) that I've spotted on Etsy.  My main issue is that I need to have such a good clear out.  I don't think it's fair for the baby not to have a proper room of it's own so I've plans for book shelves in the hallway to make some space and hopefully a nice literary feature.

Here are some other baby related things from Pinterest which I am loving.

In other news, I also received my new sandals today!