Our plan for baby girl’s nursery

File this under classic third child situation: baby girl will not have a dedicated nursery.

BUT – we still have some special plans up our sleeves, and since where our newest addition will sleep has been one of our most commonly asked questions, I thought we could chat about our plans today!

In our home, the master bedroom is downstairs, and we are grateful to have three bedrooms upstairs. June is in one, Shep is in another, and the third is our guest room. The guest room was the very first room we painted in this house (Benjamin Moore Healing Aloe – the prettiest soft green, which I still love!), and after we hung a pair of magnolia art prints on the wall, we dubbed it the Magnolia Room. It’s perfect for welcoming our mostly northern guests to our Southern home! Here is what it looks like today:

Since we live far from loved ones and my sister and her family visit for weekend trips often, it’s important to us to keep a queen bed upstairs. Because of this, this room will largely stay intact, but we will be making a few adjustments to accommodate baby girl! (On that note, I am very glad that baby is, indeed, a girl and not a boy, because the existing decor definitely skews feminine! We could have made it work if we were welcoming a boy, but it’s a much lighter lift this way, ha!)

Here’s a look at the plan, and then a few more details:

Yellow painting, floral fabric, yellow quilt, crib, bee knob pull, magnolia crib sheet, dresser, stuffed bunny (we will buy from our favorite local store that carries Jellycats!), gray lamp. The artwork is from Etsy but super old and sadly I can’t find the seller anymore!

First, of course, we’ll add a crib. We’ll use Shep’s same white Jenny Lind crib, even though he’s currently occupying it. We figure we have at least until the end of the year without overlap (if we need it!), since our babies usually sleep in the bassinet in our room for the first few months. Once we move the crib into her room, we’ll add this beautiful magnolia crib sheet (with this floral design as a back-up) and eventually this muslin quilt.

We’ll also switch out the curtains. While I love the current curtains, they’re not black-out and don’t even exactly cover the entire window when closed. (Oops – one of my earliest commissioned projects :)) I’m planning to find a seamstress to make black-out roman shades with the gorgeous Poppy fabric by Lulie Wallace, which I think will tie together lots of the colors in the room and be a fun, feminine touch for baby girl.

Finally, we’ll hopefully switch out the dresser. There is currently a dresser in the room, which was a free hand-me-down from one of our cottages in Maine. It is lovely, but smells AGGRESSIVELY like mothballs. We have tried various things to air it out over the years, but none have made much difference and we don’t have much hope of further progress. We’re currently storing a few things in there that don’t really absorb smells or we don’t care if they do, but ideally we would like some storage for baby girl things. So, we may opt to replace this dresser with another one – maybe this one. If I could get an exact dupe of the dresser in June’s room, I would in a second – I still think it is the most gorgeous honey wood color!! Alas, it was a one-of-a-kind flea market find.

We’ll also likely take the opportunity to switch out the lamps for a matching pair, add some happy yellow artwork over the bed, and frame a few family photos for the dresser!

For those who are curious, we figure the room in this configuration should be just fine for at least the first 2-3 years of baby girl’s life. Our kids don’t keep too many toys in their room until they start quiet time, so it shouldn’t be an issue to preserve the guest room feel. After that, we might consider having two of the kids share a room, or shifting the guest room to be more custom for baby girl (but still keep a queen bed). Or, we might be in a new house entirely! We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it :)

Sharing these posts is always good motivation to nail down the details – now I just need to execute! T-10 weeks to go…

P.S. June’s buffalo check nursery and Shep’s New England nursery.

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