jindc wrote:well, my baby has to sleep in what is currently the dining room...so...

But the more in think about it, the more I'm looking for cheaper items. I was like "wow that pottery bark dresser is so beautiful!" then realized it's probably a piece of junk, and an ikea one will work fine with a changer on top.

We ARE having a dimmer installed. I figured it'll be useful for the next owners, too.

I don't want to do too much because eventually we'll move, and it's hard to imagine a nursery as an office or dining room more than the other way around!

I LIKE my kids PBK dresser. It's great quality and will last years.

Our walls are neutral colors with jungle animal sticker decals. We have a crib and a Land of Nod dresser (total waste...overpriced and not that great), a glider, and a jungle animal toy box we were given by family. Also, there is a rug from Target (a POS from day one, but it serves what we thought was a temporary function...almost 3 years later). We have blackout curtains on one window and shades on both that window and a door/window, which is also covered in a aluminum foil (we like a dark room). i asked my grandmother to make valance curtains out of an extra crib bedskirt. we stopped using the bedskirt after about a year and use the valance on only the door/window, from which we hung a baby quilt with the same jungle animals. basically, the room is a mish-mash and was largely decorated by gifts from family (who i think thought we needed to do more to decorate the room...ha!), but it's functional and works for us. once the first moved into his own room, the second baby arrived and used the baby room just as it was before. that not-a-baby-anymore will move in with our oldest in the fall and baby #3 (what were we thinking!) will move in and continue to use it just as it was.

it's not a special room by any means and i do really like friends' rooms that are more put together and better designed. i don't have a good eye for design and i always thought the decorations would be short-lived, making it not worth the effort to put something nice together. that didn't work out to be right, but i'm ok with it.

Anonymous wrote:I've never once thought of nor referred to either child's room as a nursery. Maybe breaking free from that mindset will help you?

OP here. That's an interesting idea. Such a great technique of naming things to drive the desired mental state.

I've never once thought of nor referred to either child's room as a nursery. Maybe breaking free from that mindset will help you?

I don't have a theme for either child, other than a color scheme, and kept it simple. My son's room is Blue, Red, Brown with dark brown furniture, a blue and brown rug from West Elm that I'd decided no longer to have in living room. I coordinated the sheets, changing table cover, and blackout curtains. As he's gotten older, I've added things he's interested and picking a really simply boy color scheme helps just about anything fit in... fire trucks? Red!... Fish and the ocean? Blue!... Dogs? Brown! Build a simple foundation and go from there.

I did the same thing in our daughter's room.

We knew DD would stay in her room long-term (only planning one kid, small house with only one option for his room) so we went with neutrals. Sandy beige walls, light blue ceiling, crib from a friend (we converted into a toddler bed at 3) and a dresser, bookshelf, and new ceiling light from Ikea. We did get nice blinds and put up original pieces of art by friends of ours. We also got a colorful rug. It should take her through early elementary at least (I hope).

DS's nursery is pretty basic, I guess, but I love it. It's not super baby-ish - it would definitely be appropriate for a boy up to around age 4 or 5, which was my intent. We bought inexpensive dark wood furniture online (crib, dresser and hutch), which was a pain to put together (thank you, Dad!) but looks really nice. We painted the walls a coffee color, and I found a few non-cutesy, non-pastel things for the walls to fit a theme - there is a circus canvas print, some inexpensive sepia-toned 5x7s of giraffes, zebras, and elephants that I put in white frames, and a huge, plain white wall decal of a small giraffe leaning against a larger one. The splurges were a great crib mattress, a really comfy glider (I fell asleep in it while nursing more often than I'd like to admit), and an awesome mobile from etsy that DS loves. His room feels peaceful and happy to me; I hope it makes him feel that way, too.

We just got the basics (crib, changing table top to go on a dresser, storage cubbies) and put some colorful pictures on the walls. I have a decent chair in there but wish I'd gotten a big recliner type chair . . . something I could nurse and sleep in at the same time. Nursing in bed was not very comfortable for me.

DD's nursery was nuetral color and had wall cling-on type stickers (jungle animals). They were easy to remove when DD got older and had a personality and interest (ends up she loved bunnies so found some wall adhesives with bunnies).

The furniture is fine for any age. The dresser is also a changing table, but now that she is potty trained we took off the changing pad and have a "regular" dresser.

I bought an Ikea crib and dresser and crammed it into my tiny office. Baby has mostly slept in our room, and doesn't care about her nursery. Once she's old enough to move into a room a little further down the hall, the nursery will return to being an office. No regrets. My plan is to involve her in decorating her "big girl" room instead of expending too many resources on her nursery.