Cozy room for the baby boy

My growing belly has been a constant reminder that we have a little guy joining us very soon. This year has been rather distracting emotionally and otherwise, but we could wait no longer. It was time to put a cozy room together for the newest member of our family. Knowing that we had an impending move in our not-too-distant future, we were trying to figure out how far we should take things with decorating the baby room.

Up until now, that spare bedroom has been used for everything from storing our bikes to holding all our random junk to being a designated "cat room" for the little box. It was quite literally a mess. The walls were painted white and they were in terrible shape. It was making me sad that our new little baby boy was going to sleep and snuggle in this filthy space. It definitely needed a huge makeover.

When little r got his new bed last fall, we had moved all of the baby furniture into the room and we reorganized by finding new homes for other pieces of furniture. But it sat that way for months. I had a vision of a cozy room with warm walls and neutrally calm decor. Big R jumped on board pretty quickly with my vision and we found ourselves at the OBI (hardware store) buying paint. We figured, it needed to be painted white anyway, so we might as well put the effort into a color we truly wanted.

Let me preface this by saying that we are absolutely miserable at the whole painting thing. It clearly takes rocket science or an insane amount of paint here in Germany to make the walls look nice. These plaster walls and the different paint types than we are used to creates a disaster for our impatient personalities. We somehow salvaged the creative painting style on the walls, and we are just hoping visitors don't look too closely - haha.

Painting in progress - this doesn't do justice to how terrible it actually looked!

We also decided we needed to buy a little more furniture for the little boy. I'm sure you'll be shocked to hear that after some extensive internet searching and visiting several different stores, we ended up at Ikea. Haha. I'm not sure what we would do without that store. At this point I'm convinced that nearly our entire house is decorated with furniture and other items with Swedish decor (we also have an incredible collection of allen wrenches). We had a few options and ideas, and decided it was worth the drive to the Ikea in Regensburg because they seemed to have more of the items we wanted in stock. The Ikea trip was a success! We found exactly what we were looking for. It was also the first time we were able to leave little r in the supervised child play area because he is finally potty trained (only to be called on the loud speaker an hour later because he decided potty training was for the birds and my life would be far more interesting if I were to experience cleaning poop from underwear in an Ikea bathroom - ah, I love my life). As soon as we got home, little r helped his Daddy put the baby's furniture together.

I heart watching my boys work together

The room was painted, the new dresser was put together, and all the furniture had found its place in the baby's room. Only one thing missing - a chair for mommy. For some reason the German's do not typically put chairs, rockers, gliders, or anything along these lines in the baby room. I was talking to some of my other German girlfriends about this and none of them understood why this was. Let's just say, finding a comfortable sitting place for a nursery and snuggling the little one is hard to come by here. So, we instead just purchased a cheap glider from the large PX. I'm actually pretty surprised by how comfortable the glider is, especially since I'm not generally a huge fan. And it randomly matches everything pretty darn well. How do you like them apples?!

I got all of little r's old baby clothes out of storage and organized everything by size. Got things tucked away into drawers and smiled at how tiny the clothes were. I was surprised that I recognized and remembered every last piece of clothing from when little r was a baby. Wow, where did time go? I can't believe that little baby is now a boy. Amazing...

Decorating also included hanging some pictures on the walls. My friend, Nina, made some beautifully sweet artwork for me to give the baby room a personal touch. She knew I was sad that moving this summer meant I might not get to put much of a room together for the baby. It was probably one of the most thoughtful gifts I have ever received. The challenge was doing a proper hanging of these four pieces of artwork so they would look nice. Wow, and we thought painting was the biggest obstacle! I am seriously not cut out for this whole interior design deal. We ended up using a string, ruler, and level method. It took forever and the process was intensely frustrating. I'm still not convinced the pictures are properly straight or hung in a good place on the wall, but somehow I doubt the baby will mind much.

This was Big R's idea, and it was a brilliant one

...although, I'm not convinced these pictures are all that straight!

Everything is neatly in its place, the pictures are hung on the walls, the clothes are tucked neatly away, and the room is feeling cozy as ever. Here are some pictures of the baby room. What do you think?

I love how warm the color on the walls feels

And here are a few pictures of the room lit up at night - cozy, cozy :)

We love this blue dresser from Ikea - fits perfectly!

These toys have already seen so much love - donated from both me and little r

The soft light will hopefully be a comforting touch for a sleepy baby

Nina's pictures give the room a special touch - we love them

A cozy spot for snuggling :)

Now we are just waiting for your arrival, sweet boy. We still have about a month before you are supposed to be here, but I know it'll go by fast. We love you so much, and we can't wait to hold you, and kiss you, and love you to pieces.

xoxoxoxo

 

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