Think'n of Green

No, this is not a blog about being more environmentally friendly. (Though it is never a bad idea to conserve.) In my world green, is green...and that means the color green and I am really thinking of the color green lately-- for the nursery of course!

I can honestly say that I have never been much of a decorator. I think becoming a polished decorator comes with practice and being that this is our first house I have never had the opportunity to practice.

For the nursery, we have chosen the bedroom across the hallway from our master bedroom. The room is a good sized room (13'x11'3") so I am hoping that we have plenty of room to create a really cute space for this little man. The room is pretty dated looking with it's brown string wallpaper, but it has some other pretty good features: a nice quality chair rail, good sized closet with solid oak doors, and my FAVORITE PART a window seat! Below are a couple pictures of the room...really not the best pictures, but you get the idea of the VERY dated current look.



Lately, I have been trying to think of the best way to go about practicing this newly wanted artistic trait of 'decorating'. When I was in undergraduate school, for my graphic design degree, in one of my first classes we created an "idea book". The book consisted of magazines ads, coasters, stickers, or really anything of the print media sort that we really enjoyed the design elements. The idea was that before you started designing a project you would flip through the book and it would get those creative juices flowing. I can honestly say I use the same sort of method today at work, but now I click through award winning graphic designer websites.

My first thought about the overall decorating of this nursery was to create my own "idea book", but this time share my ideas with everyone and hopefully get some great feedback. It will be a perfect way to get ideas and practice the art of decorating. The problem I am having is that every picture I find, I like parts of it, but not necessarily the whole thing...which I guess is all a part of the 'practicing'. Without further ado, here are my ideas for the nursery.

In my vision of the room, the top half of the wall will be painted a light green. The wall would be separated by the golden oak chair rail (which is already in place) and stripes would be on the bottom half of the wall. I haven't decided to incorporated the color brown in the stripe or just use 3 different shades of green. Here are a couple ideas of the stripes I like:

Really I would like the stripes to look something like this below.
I just can't decided to add brown in or not...
The main part of the room that I really LOVE is the window seat. I can just imagine our little boy curling up in the window seat and reading his little books. There are just so many ideas I have had about this window seat, but I think I have narrowed it down to a couple.

Idea number one, bookshelves! I just think it would be so great to add bookshelves to the sides, above, and below the window seat. It will be functional for storage and also add a finishing touch to the room. Here are a couple of ideas I have found that reflect what I am thinking:

In addition to the super cute, functionality the bookshelves will add, it also will be a great woodworking project for my husband and a good opportunity to help in the creation of the nursery. He really enjoys building projects and I think he would really enjoy building this addition to the room. I showed him what I wanted yesterday and he had this look of doubt on his face. There is a heating vent in the way, so we would have to move that and I think he is afraid that it might turn into this HUGE project (and it probably will!) I figure he just needs some healthy encouragement to get the project going. I guess we will see if I can convince him to add the built-ins bookshelves. :)

Idea number two, curtains! I know genius, right! Who adds curtains to a room?!? I would like the curtains to be long, thick, and green, that can be tied back when needed. The whole purpose of the curtains are to create a small, little hideaway within the window seat for the little man. He can climb up in the window seat, close his curtains, crack open a little book and read in his little hiding place. I know, my imagination has really run away with me.

As for bedding, pillows and all the other finishing touches...I just haven't found the right ones. I am debating on refreshing my sewing skills and possibly creating my own bedding for the crib and toddler bed to make it match all that is in my mind. Again, I might be a little too ambitious with this project, but a girl can dream right?

Well, those are my ideas for now. They might change or I might add more as time progresses, I guess only time can tell!

~Beth