A snoop around the baby’s nursery

One of the most exciting things about preparing for this baby has, for me, been decorating the baby’s bedroom. When I was pregnant with Frog we lived in a rented cottage, so couldn’t splash paint on the walls or hang pictures. Although she had a lovely bedroom it wasn’t necessarily the bedroom she’d have had if we’d owned the house.

One of my freelance gigs is writing the interiors pages for a magazine. It means that I spend a lot of time oggling beautiful blogs, interiors magazines and nosing round various shops to look at the latest trends, be inspired by new colour pairings and generally make long lists of things I want to do in my own home (much to the dismay of my husband).

So you can understand why I was so excited about decorating the nursery.

Although the (self-proclaimed) Northern Love Machine got stuck in with all the painting and shelf hanging and DIY bits, the planning of the room was very much my “thing”. In his words, “I’ve got better things to do with my time than look at pretty pictures on Pinterest”. Well, luckily for him, I haven’t.

I knew early on that I wanted a gender neutral mint, yellow and grey colour scheme for the nursery. I love the bright zing of yellow mixed with the cool mint and soft grey. Even if we’d have chosen to find out the sex of our baby, this is still the palette I’d have chosen for the bedroom.

The decoration has been a gradual one. We chose the paint first (Dulux’s Lemon Tropics and Mint Macaroon) before starting to put together accessories. Buying things at different times has helped us avoid the “matchy matchy” look that I’m not a fan of.

This little guy is an elephant doorstop from Homebase. We haven’t named him yet – any suggestions?!

The cot is from Swedish company Mokee – it’s the Mokee mini transformable baby bed in stone teal. It’s sleek and has three adjustable heights, plus the side comes off to turn into a toddler’s bed further down the line. It cost £69.95 not including the mattress, which is pretty reasonable if you ask me.

I wanted the wall painted in Mint Macaroon to be a sort of feature wall. Initially we’d thought about wallpapering but as time went on that idea seemed too expensive (the only wallpaper I found that I liked cost £75 a roll) and too much of a faff. So we painted it mint and I jazzed it up with these pretty silver star decals from the Patternology range at Mamas and Papas.

Along with the stars, the grey and white chevron knitted baby blanket is another Patternology purchase, as is the cot bumper. I like the slight clash of prints, it makes things interesting.

The beautiful crochet mobile was a very special addition. I’d seen a similar one on Etsy and asked for advice on Facebook about how to make my own. An old uni friend (who now lives in Bangkok!) got in touch via Facebook to recommend a lovely woman she knew who might make it for me. A few months later this stunning mobile arrived in the post. I’m thrilled with the finished result as much as the proper “kindness of strangers” story behind it.

The wooden chest of drawers belonged to my late grandmother. Actually, it belonged to my aunt but never made it out of Nana’s house. I love the wood, the shape of the dresser and the fact it carries on a little bit of family history. I’m a sucker for furniture with a story or past, especially if it’s personal to us.

We created a changing station in this corner of the room, with a grey stars changing mat from Babies R Us and a floating shelf in lacquered grey from Homebase. The baskets are also from Homebase.

This print was the last thing to go up in the baby’s room. It’s by Stories for Autumn and was bought online from Deco Baby in the sale (£25 reduced to £14).

The curtains were an addition thanks to my mum. She made them a few years ago for her office in the house I grew up in, but after my parents moved they didn’t have a home. They do now.

I always wanted a proper chair for nursing when Frog was tiny. Now, thanks to my late Nana, I have one. I wrote before about how I upcycled this rocking chair and this post also explains what it means to me to have it in this room. Again, it’s a little piece of family history.

The side table used to be an old kitchen stool. We took off the seat, gave it a new MDF table top and then I upcycled it using Annie Sloan Paloma and decoupage. The decoupage paper is a wallpaper sample I bought from Spoonflower. We’d toyed with the idea of using it on the feature wall, but it was coming from America and I didn’t want to wait the four weeks it would take to be delivered. Still, it has a place here, in the room in the form of this table.

We bought the lamp for a steal (£4 I think) from Homebase. We don’t need a special night light because we’ve got a clever Gro-light from The Gro Company that I was sent to review. It simply clicks into the main light overhead or a lamp and you fix the bulb into it. It means you have a night light built into your standard light – one click and it’s a night light, turn it off and on again and it’s a normal light. Out of everything in the room this is probably the thing my gadget-obsessed husband is the most impressed by.

So there you have it. Our baby’s mint, yellow and grey bedroom. Ironically, the baby won’t actually be sleeping in here for a while – he or she has a moses basket beside our bed to start off with. Still, it’s kind of made me want to redecorate our own bedroom.