Dr. Seuss Nursery in 2 Parts

Part 2

So I left off with the nursery when we had finally gotten the wallpaper off the walls and began painting our base colors. Nobody really understood what we were going for when we decided to base the nursery off of Dr. Seuss' book the Lorax.

How did we come to this decision?

We wanted a nursery that was gender neutral. Our plan is to move baby #1 out into the next bedroom when she gets older, giving her the luxury of choosing how to decorate her room while baby #2 gets moved right into the pre-designed gender neutral nursery. Makes sense, no?

So we went through our pool of ideas and settled on Dr. Seuss. Whimsical, not too feminine (Pooh Bear) or masculine (Mario Bros.) and fun. But what Dr. Seuss story? I originally thought Horton Hears a Who was the best choice, but Sir Sunderland disagreed due to (what he thinks) are the horrors of Jim Carey ruining the movie....

He then proposed the Lorax, a story of capitalism and environmentalism  with an adorable little character, the Lorax, who protects the trees. After reading the story, I was all but inspired but loved the trees and the little character. A compromise was made. We'll go with the awesome Dr. Seuss trees and add a cute little Lorax character in there somewhere.

It sounded simple enough. We'd get a projector, get a copy of the book, project the pictures up on the wall, trace and paint.

That was until we realized that neither of us has any artistic capabilities to speak of. I immediately tried to find an Etsy vendor to produce vinyl trees. In the end our original idea was the way to go as the vinyl wouldn't be up to par and twice the cost. Enter my 18 year old brother in law's girlfriend who piped up one evening during dinner that she had some sort of artistic talent. Boy did she regret that!

 

Wall #1 took  two  grueling days where we traced, painted and she outlined/shadowed. She was able to freehand the tree trunks and the grass on the bottom of the trees and boy did it make a difference.

It worked out well.  As the girls did the painting the boys got to work on building the furniture and finsihing things around the house. They built her crib, her changing table/dresser, both of her play yards (which aren't called play pens anymore), her swing and took care of some home maintenance that needed to get done.

Fastforward a month, four long days and more cost than I would like to mention.....our little Gwyneth has her nursery set and ready to go!

 

Doesn't the crib go great? My grandmother nearly had a heart attack when I said we were getting black furniture for the nursery.

 It came out even better than I could've ever imagined and is exactly what we wanted. And look at how cute the Lorax came out! I would've never imagine it would be so exact and detailed.

 Check out our new rocking chair we got, courtesy of Jake's Grandma's Grandma. This thing is an antique handed down through the generations, a lovely addition to Gwynn's nursery.

Sure it was stressful, a whole lot of work, and I may have shed a few tears filled with anxiety if we'd ever get it done, but wow, it really is just what we wanted. 

And you know the best part?  

It took help from the whole family from my Dad, to our siblings, to the generosity of family members who gifted us her gorgeous furniture and everyone really stepped up to make it happen which fills my heart with joy. 

 

This is one lucky little girl who gets one cool/practical nursery!