Baby room basics

In a blogger’s ideal world, by this time I would be posting pictures of my beautifully styled, meticulously arranged nursery. It would have everything my baby could possibly need, plus a few (dozen) things that she actually doesn’t. It would be perfectly color-coordinated with a carefully curated selection of quirky little touches and charming little toys.

Well, this is reality. And in reality, there is no nursery… yet. That’s because Little Mango isn’t the first occupant of this space… Grandma is! My mom arrived this week and will stay until Easter, so our second bedroom first needs to be a guest room before it can become a nursery.

That hasn’t stopped us from laying the basic foundations for our future nursery. The first step: tearing down the huge built-in closets that took up nearly half the room.

Marlon and I agonized for weeks over whether or not to keep these closets. It just seems funny to me now! And when I remember how these closets became the subject of a hormonal meltdown (“That room is practically a closet! I don’t want our baby to grow up in a closet! Sob sob sob”), it’s even funnier.

In the end, we chose space for our daughter over storage for our things. Because our daughter is our daughter, and things are just, well, things. So out went half these closets, as well as the recycled train tracks that the previous owners used as shelves.

Left with a nice blank expanse of wall, it was time to paint. I put together a mini color palette with Flexa paint chips, and had gray chalkboard paint mixed at our neighborhood Praxis.

Marlon and I wanted a chalkboard wall right off the bat. We both love to draw, and we love the idea of our daughter drawing too. (We just have to teach her that not all walls are for drawing.) It will be a while until Little Mango can draw on this wall herself; until then, Mommy and Daddy get to have all the fun.

The pink shades in my paint chip palette went on the shelves that hold Little Mango’s starter library. These are actually inexpensive cork ceiling moldings that we cut into pieces and painted in three different shades plus white.

Then, there’s the crib.

I fell in love with the Stokke Sleepi crib early on. Not only is it pretty, it’s also designed to go from bassinet to toddler bed to child bed with additional parts. Good looks and smart design come with a price tag, so I thought the Stokke was beyond me. But the bargain gods smiled, and I found a woman selling her Stokke Sleepi second-hand on Marktplaats, the Dutch eBay.

I was thrilled to learn that her daughter used this bed from birth until age seven. I was even more thrilled to add up the cost of the expansion kits, bedding and mattresses that came with this purchase and realized I had saved over €800 by buying secondhand. I even got an adorable polka-dot canopy for free. All those years of ukay-ukay shopping have served me well!

Confession: I have yet to amass the collection of quirky little objects that make Pinterest-worthy nursery pictures. Modern/design-loving/blogger mommy FAIL! However, I do have Olivia, a sweet sleepy owl from Ferm Living, who hovers over the crib with a ready lullaby. Olivia—and the rest of my baby room basics—will just have to hold the fort until lola flies back to Manila and we can go full tilt on the nursery.