Our Nursery

 Hey!

So I don't think I've actually mentioned my son's name yet, have I?

Given the scary universe that the internet has become, I will only be sharing his first name; and only because it goes with a part of this post.

Alexander.

Or as I call him and my husband does not (😂), Alex.

Why did we pick that name?

Well, first off, my husband and I have had our baby names picked out for years.  I've actually known my names for a boy and girl longer, but unfortunately, my husband did not like the name I had picked out for a boy.  

In case your wondering what name that was, it was Oliver.  My husband thinks it sounds like a dogs name.  I love the name Ollie and Oliver though!  However, I was not going to win that battle.

I did win him over with the name Charlotte, which is what we would have named our child if we had had a girl. "Charlie" for short (at least for me, to my husband she would have been Charlotte).  

But we did agree on our boy name still way before our son was conceived.

We each had our things that were important to us, when it came to a name...my husband wanted a powerful name, and I wanted a longer name with nickname options.

You see, my name is Mandy.  Not Amanda. Not Mandilyn (even though, I wish it was!). 

Just Mandy.

My parents picked it out when they were 21 years old.  They also forgot to give me a middle name.  

There isn't much you can shorten Mandy to.

I swear if someone says "Man", I will punch them in the face...

 

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So growing up, I was always very jealous of people who had longer names, that could be shortened to something cute.  

I like options when it comes to names.

So somehow the name Alexander came up.

My husband liked it because its a nice strong, powerful name. (i.e. Alexander the Great)

I know, no pressure or anything. 😂

And I liked that it had options. (i.e. Alex)

Now my husband doesn't like nicknames, because he has a name that gets shortened all the time.  And he HATES it.  His dad has the same name too, so the worst thing to call him ever is, Junior.  Oh my goodness, my husband's Sicilian side will come out.  But he will correct people if they don't call him by his proper name.  

Anyway, my husband will use his full name, Alexander, and only accidentally use, Alex, once in a while 😉 (because his wife is winning.)

So now on to the real reason for this post...

Our son's nursery.

I wanted to share it on here, because CoVid has made it very difficult to share this with family and friends.

My husband and I had so much fun decorating our son's nursery.  

In fact, my husband went even more out than I did!  

My husband has always been fascinated with Space; so pretty early on in my pregnancy as we were searching themes, we decided on a Space theme for Alex's room.  

The possibilities are endless!   

You have something as simple, yet wonderful, as glow-in-the-dark stars.  You can hang planets from the ceiling.  Canvases of space. Posters.  Moon lights. Space sheets. Seriously so many options!

I, of course, went through Pinterest like a mad woman, to get ideas.  

First, I wanted to paint his room.  

Why?  

Because of movies of course!

I wanted the whole pregnancy experience.  The ultrasounds, pictures of our baby inside my womb, and you know, painting in my overalls his nursery.

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No seriously.

I know, I know.  Silly right?  But it just seemed like it would be so much fun!

What I didn't think about was how terrible overalls look on me 😂 (lets just say not sexy at all!) and then also how freaking tired I would be.

OMG so tired!

Like all the time.

The entire time!

I had the room all pictured in my head, on how I wanted it to look.  I was telling my husband about it excitedly. "I'm going to paint it ombre!"

"What the heck is ombre?"

"You know...Ombre."

Blank stare.

"Ooommmbbbreee."

"I still have no idea what you're talking about.  It sounds racist."

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One of the funniest conversations I've had with my husband...and we've had many.

Anyway, Ombre.

It's when you have multiple shades of the same color, and you go from light to dark, or dark to light (depending on what you want), and have the colors lightly fade into each other.

Like this...

Image from San Diego Home/Garden Lifestyles

Once I showed my husband how I was picturing it, he understood.

So we went to Lowes, picked out our three shades of blue, and went to painting.

At least my husband did.  I sat on the floor like a lump, handing him the rollers, tape, and whatever else he needed.

Here's how it looked while "we" were painting...

A lot of blue right?

And you know what?

It turned out AMAZING!

At least, we think it did!

My husband did a seriously awesome job!

He did it all in ONE DAY too!

Here's what it looks like now, with the room set up...

Seriously?  

Isn't it awesome??

Obviously, our little guy won't be able to enjoy a lot of these things until he gets a bit older.  But he does get very fascinated with the colors.  

He looks around, especially at the ceiling (he is super interested in ceilings!).

I like to think he likes his ceiling because it has his name on it...

Can you see it?

Hint...check out the planets...

So there are nine planets that we talk about.

Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and of course Pluto. Even though Pluto, is disregarded by some people, to my husband and me it is still very much a planet.

So here's what I did...

It's a bit difficult to see, so let me enlarge...

I hand-painted each of the nine planets on these 12" wooden circles, and then stenciled each letter on each planet in order, in glow-in-the-dark paint; that way when it is dark at night, his name will be illuminated in the "night sky". 

I know, cheesy.

But we thought it was cute!

We also got some Glow-in-the-Dark Sticker Stars for the ceiling.

For furnishings we used a dresser we got a couple of years ago, that was able to be converted into a changing table...

Please excuse the mess!

And then picked up his crib at Burlington, for a good price.

I love the drawer underneath the crib, especially; that way I can store his crib linens conveniently!

His hamper was a gift from his Oma, my mom.  She embroidered his name into the fabric.

And then I picked out some finishing touches...

Lambs & Ivy

The mobile is from Lambs & Ivy, who makes some super adorable, high quality mobiles!  Also just baby products in general!  I also got a Lamb & Ivy baby blanket as a gift, and it is so soft! 

The toy hanging storage net is from Amazon.  The Child (Baby Yoda) is from Scentsy.  

From Amazon

Octopus stuffy (my husband also loves ocean documentaries, because sea life really fascinates him.  Especially octopuses!).  I got this guy off of Amazon, he is nice and big, so we've been taking size comparison pictures as Alex gets bigger. 

Milestone Blanket

We got this milestone blanket to see how he grows.

And then of course I had to do some art projects, to add some unique touches to his room...

Hobby Lobby $3.99

Hobby Lobby has some amazing wooden projects to pick from!  More so than Michaels and Joanns (which I also love going to!), so for my birthday in July, my husband took me to pick out some things.

Ruler $16.99

ABC Blocks $32.99

The ABC Blocks are kind of neat, because they're boxes that open up and can hold things.

I had a lot of fun painting each of these projects, because like I mentioned before, I was extremely low energy my entire pregnancy, so to have calming projects where I could sit down at a table and just paint and relax, was very nice.  Plus it was super fun!

My favorite project, hands down, would have to have been the book shelves I made.  No one really understood what I was trying to make, because they had never heard of it.  But thanks to Pinterest I got the idea!

We had some unused gutters laying around that we weren't going to use in the future, so my husband helped me cut them into three different size pieces (small, medium, and large).  I spray painted them each a different color.  Bought some gutter caps for the ends (spray painted those to match each gutter piece), glued them on to the ends.  And then stenciled the Dr. Suess quote, "You can find magic, wherever you look.  All you need is a book."

I had so much fun with this one!  It was challenging in a few places (like spacing the letters out just right!), and finding the proper gutter caps (they come in different shapes and sizes).  

In the end, I got gutter clamps, spray painted those match each gutter piece as well, and screwed them in the wall, and clicked the gutters into place!  This was the final product...

Can you spot Meg Cabot's new book No Offense? (Not sure why that's on his shelf...)

Of course, my son already has his own little library going!  

So that's our Alexander's nursery.  Just wanted to share it.  :)

The Romance Bookie :)