Nursery progress

The hardest part (for me) about not finding out the sex of our baby has been planning the nursery.  The hardest party for Aaron is the not knowing part.  One of the first things I started thinking about when we found out we were expecting was the nursery, and I quickly discovered that baby bedding options are 99% gender specific and 1% gender neutral.  I need more selection than 1%!

Thanks to the blog-world, however, I did find some nurseries that I loved, which became my inspiration.  It was obviously pretty quickly that I was being drawn to one color: aqua.  Strange, because I've never had an affinity for aqua before, but when I saw it, it just looked like baby.  A baby that could be a girl or a boy.  I also wanted something light and bright, and I knew that white would do the trick.

Unfortunately, picking these light colors meant many coats of paint.  The walls started out tan, hunter green, with a navy blue chair rail.  I hoped that a coat of primer would take care of those dark colors.  It turned out that primer plus 3-4 coats of white paint would take care of those dark colors.  Needless to say, I was sick of painting by the time it was done.

I went with Benjamin Moore's White Dove on the bottom half of the wall and the chair rail, and Robin's Nest on the top half.  Don't worry, I didn't expose our unborn child to lots of paint fumes; I splurged and bought the BM Natura Zero-VOC paint.  I had heard of people having bad experiences with zero-VOC paint, but I recommend the Benjamin Moore stuff very highly.  It didn't smell at all, and it went on just like regular paint.

I also painted some furniture white while I was at it.  Here is in-process:

We now have the room painted, cleaned, and most of the furniture in place.

I found this precious owl lamp online at Target.  Yes, I am going with an owl theme, but I say that with hesitation, because I don't want 500 owls all over the room.  There is plenty of space for other species of animals and birds!

I love the look of bright yellow with the aqua walls, so I made these yellow chevron curtains and hung them yesterday.  I love how they turned out!

I love chevron!

That's it for now.  Hopefully we will finish the nursery in the next month or so, and I can show you the finished product.  And in a few months I can add some gender-specific touches!

Finally, I realized that I have almost zero pregnancy pictures of myself, and I don't want to regret not taking weekly pictures. So I started with week 28.  I'm just a little tardy.

The shadows on the wall make me look bigger than I am, I swear!