Somebody Restrain that Woman!!!!

So, in order to more clearly demonstrate the insanity in my head, I've decided to do my best to share with you my schizophrenic vision for the nursery. It is not a large room. It is basically the width of its bay window. Here is a photo taken before the previous owners moved out:


Ever since getting a dog, this room has served as the unofficial cat room. Location to between three and four litter boxes, cat food, water, and probably 2-3 piles of cat vomit at any one time.

Suffice to say, I haven't had a pretty, clean, happy feeling associated with this room at all. And it will take some appropriate renovation to make it habitable for an infant. The renovation is all in Greg's corner. He is handling ripping up the floor and laying laminate. He rewired the room and will install the ceiling fan. He has reinforced insulation and will be patching, spackling, and sanding the walls. Then he will paint it the base coat, which I am fairly certain is white.

It is my job to know the end-product. I am the keeper of color, the one responsible for a theme, the one responsible for being creative.

I feel proud of the rooms that we've completed so far in our house. There are very few things I'd change if I could have a painless do-over. My friends and family like our house and its many colors, and I've gotten plenty of compliments from the online photos. It's enough to make me feel proactively obstinate at the mere thought that a Realtor will probably suggest we paint everything white.

Perhaps I go through this stage with every room remodel. Perhaps I just push it away and forget about it as soon as we successful complete the space. But it is undeniable that there are hundreds of ways to decorate an adorable, stylish, modern/retro nursery. It is a room that actively INVITES whimsy. If you're dying to paint a mural or use some nifty vinyl decals, a nursery is a brilliant place to experiment.

The problem at this point is that I settled too quickly. Logically, it makes sense - the Owl mural:


The artist freely gave me permission to recreate it! The colors are bright and happy. The mural would probably fit PERFECTLY over a crib. I could do that blue scallop edged line all the way around the room. Spoonflower.com would allow me to design my own PERFECTLY matching fabric for curtains and a dust ruffle. This rug matches perfectly. This Mobile works spectacularly! There are so many cute owl-y things that you could include in a nursery. I believe I read that in Chinese Lore, Owls represent good luck! What more could you ask for?

The above photo is the only head-on photo I have of the mural, and it is not directly head on. I would have to play with it in photoshop to get the perspective just right - not to mention the time it would take to ACTUALLY paint that. The spoonflower.com fabric that I would design myself is just another way to vacuum up time and energy that I'm not sure I have. The owls and trees are adorable -- but is that really the way I want to decorate the baby's nursery? I have such a deep and abiding love of books and fairy tales. Is a realistic theme of "Forest" really the best I've got? And then, even if I went through with all those details... We'll probably be moving from this house in a year or two. What then? We leave it all behind.

I've been thinking that maybe I need a theme that is either an easy mural and intensive with other details or an intensive mural where all the details easily fall into place. And by mural, I want you to know that I truly am open to vinyl wall decals - It just makes me cringe a bit when looking at most price tags. But if the decal was perfect for my purposes, I would definitely use it.

So, after at least four months of thinking I had it all figured out, I'm less than a week away from knowing if it will be a boy or a girl I'll be decorating for and I'm completely clueless about where exactly to start narrowing down the possibilities.

Of course, I usually start by looking at what other creative people have put together. This is quite possibly my favorite:


I love the clean lines, I love the bright colors. I love the green stripe that goes all the way around the room, even through the curtains on the other side of this photo. I adore that tree. However, I don't want a jungle themed nursery - I don't want to do giraffes. And while this works for a boy, I'm not sure I'd be okay with just Green/Brown/Black being the only real accent colors for the nursery of a girl.


This one also tickles my fancy. In addition to a lovely green color, they use one bold accent color of bright turquoise with drips of color from other items - curtains, prints, storage, etc. But, I'm not sure I want to paint the ENTIRE ROOM a bright color like this as the room I'm going to decorate is small and I feel like a bold color that covers ALL of the walls might be oppressive.


This one utilizes about 9 million packages of vinyl dot decals. Don't let them fool you - you can't get all of the dots they show you in this photo in one order - SO it would probably be expensive. But I do like it. I don't like the baby pink walls - it takes away from the clean lines. I'm also not wild about the juxtaposition of the rectangles in the crib and the circles on the walls. A little too busy.


This one has that retro feel I love with a splash of color that goes all the way around the room. I would venture to guess it is a painted mural and not vinyl decals. AND I love the hot air balloon mobile. However, I don't like that the walls are beige and the carpet is beige... It's not bright and airy enough for me. And as much as I adore hot air balloons, when it actually comes down to it - they are very stiff whimsy symbols. There's not a whole lot you can do to make them really amazing in a nursery setting. They're breathtaking in person when there are a million dots of rainbow color floating peacefully in the sky - but I have no idea how to recreate that in a tiny little room.


This Nursery has a classic tree. It's a tree I like very much - and they did the painting over a chair rail very skillfully (as that can definitely be awkward). I love that the flowers and leaves seem to float and blow over the crib. I like the green and pink color scheme - though it is a bit muted for me - I would rather a hot pink and lime scheme. But trees, I find, are EXTREMELY common in nurseries. Trees are nurseries as Pimples are to teens. Everybody's got 'em. That drastically cuts down on the allure of taking the time to paint an attempt at a tree mural behind the crib. But there are so many options:


This one has the same gentle, blowing quality but it incorporates flowers and I could make the color scheme something more suitable to what I'd want.


This one (by the same artist) is a bit more stark. I'd be tempted to center this over the crib which might be a little too reminiscent of Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card (anyone? anyone?).

This retro-style graphic I LOVE. It looks like I could pull something like this off much in the way the people in the very first green-giraffe nursery did with their graphic. If I did a continuation of the rolling hills (more simplified) all the way around the room as a green border line, and these trees were centered over the crib... Wouldn't that be sweet?

But then again, we're back to a woodland/forest theme! Curses!


This tree might introduce the proper amount of whimsy. It's adorable and it's growing stars! Its tufts are just begging to be pink and cute. I could simplify the roots and do a border around the room and a pink/green color scheme might be perfect. Also, this artist has also given me permission to use her drawing. However - the work it would take in photoshop to simplify the graphic, make it into something vector-style (as in the green-giraffe nursery) and then paint it... And then what would balance it out? The Green-giraffe nursery has a tree surrounded by giraffes. What animal goes with this tree? Greg's answer was squirrels. I think he's insane. My room as a child was decorated with unicorns and I loved it, so I could see that. But there's something about knowing the Virgin-myths/Phallus-shaped-horn stuff that goes along with the Unicorn that takes away some of the magic for me at this stage in my life. Why, suddenly, is there no animal cuter than a giraffe - and I DON'T WANT TO USE GIRAFFES!!??!!

Speaking of Giraffes:

How adorable is this print? And SIMPLE. And EASY. And... Stupid giraffes. Can't I do this with a different animal? WHY IS MY MIND BLANK!

This one's not a nursery, but I like the mural style. Actually I think it might be a vinyl decal. I like the idea of a sun with clouds and rainbows. That's pretty happy, right? But I don't want to then decorate the rest of the room in rainbows and suns and clouds. I think that would get... tired. Even though this:

Would be conducive to a cloud border all the way around the room. Humph.

As I've said before, I like the lime green/hot pink color scheme possibility. I can envision a room encircling border of pink, sandwiched by two lines of green. On either side of a white crib would hang tiny little chandeliers (on sale for $39.99 each). The rug would bring out the green, while other accents would highlight the pink.

And while that sounds like it could be successful, other than the chandeliers, it is NOT very whimsical. It's very... streamlined... and prissy. Even though this:

is adorable. I'm not sure even spicing up a whole wall with giant polka dots would work in this situation.

And for some reason, the pink and green is indelibly linked to the chandeliers (that are ON. SALE.) and for that reason I can't really envision many of the typical nursery murals/animals in the room. Something like this might work:

or


But again, that's still very ... hygienic and sophisticated. This is a drooling, pooping, developing baby I'm decorating for. We are not designer-label people. It feels like this might be too... straight jacket for my little one.

While I would consider decorating in a particular fairytale/story theme, I'm not crazy about the idea. My mom had originally wanted to decorate a nursery in the style of Wynken, Blynken and Nod... and for some reason, that makes me want to choose something just as cool but not copy that idea (even though she never got around to it).


There's the classic "Hey Diddle Diddle" rhyme, which I love for it's ridiculousness. But I like the idea of decorating with barnyard animals and flatware about as much as I like the idea of decorating in a jungle theme.


My favorite fairy tale is the 12 dancing princesses and there's a little golden book with illustrations that are to die for.


but painting something as complex as the twelve princesses rushing to their waiting princes through the silver, gold and diamond forests.... That seems a tad daunting.

I could do a simple floral thing... But boy that feels like a cop-out. More organic, less sterile... but not creative enough.


Even Dandelions blowing in the wind (which I SERIOUSLY considered for MY bedroom) doesn't quite make the cut. Although if I did do that, I'd definitely have to resort to vinyl decals which have varying degrees of quality and detail. So the search for the perfect dandelion would be sure to take up a slew of hours.


I could do the painted color border with some houses sitting on/in it.


And while I love the above graphic, I think that, too, might be sterile. Where's the imagination?


AND I LOVE the above... but If I painted it on the wall above the crib - stemming from the left hand wall.. Would it originate from ... Nowhere? Why is it there? What does it do? ... I'm not ruling this one out though...

I could do a flotilla of dirigibles.



But the detail involved and the time involved tracking down public domain images of all of those flying ships...

I could do a wall of frames and frame pictures of my little one and our family and her first pieces of artwork on the wall!


Buuuuut... Then I have to work on a layout of a million little frames to paint above the crib... and this does nothing to help me figure out a color scheme!

I could do something similar to UP with a house floating by with a million balloons or a stork carrying a little bundle in a sheet.... I could give up the idea of a mural entirely and do the over-done hanging of the name in big store-bought letters. OR I could use store bought letters to write something else out entirely... Like "Once upon a time..." Or ... Any other suggestions?

Anyway. That's just the tip of the iceberg. I would continue but I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed. I don't know where to start. I don't know how to reign in the constant chatter and debate in my head. I don't even know why this matters so much to me in this moment.

*Gulp*
Help?