apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

We bought a shelf from Ikea to seperate the room and used the Marimekko Shower Curtain to divide the rest of his work space off. There is also a large closet behind the book shelf where we store art supplies, flat files for Thor's work and stock for Lost Bird Found.

We originally were going to have a Marimekko shade made until I came across this shower curtain. Its a lot of durable because well, kids can get a little messy. We also hung a print that we got from CB2 of the Marimekko Pear. We wanted Henry's room to be fun but not too baby like, because they arent babies for very long. The crib we got from Ikea for super cheap, because again, while it would be nice to get a 1500 dollar crib....we werent really sure we could justify spending that much. The bedskirt is from Dwellbaby, we kept the rest of his bedding simple and white. Ive never been much into crazy baby bedding. Though I am a surface designer and patterns are all over the house we didnt want to overstimulate him. Most of the books we have for him were gifts or favorites of ours growing up. Thor wants to read books like the Phantom Tollbooth to him from day one. We are pretty nerdy ourselves and have hundereds of books in our place. I found the owl "bookend" piggy bank on etsy.com.

My mother passed away two years ago and she super loved owls. I wanted to have something in Henrys room that represented his grandmother.

And the rocking chair, we added a sheepskin to to make it more comfortable and tactile. There is a buddha in the window that was a gift from my dad.

I've always loved tin toys and chose to decorate one of the walls with those toys. Even though he cant really take them down and play with them until he understands what goes in the mouth and what does not..we are treating them like paintings sort of. He can look at them and they make pretty cool shadows. The Pachinko machine came from an office move. We intend to hang it or display it somehow...we are still figuring that out. The changing table is in our bedroom for the meantime because we are going to give cosleeping a shot and it might make it easier to change him in our room in the middle of the night....and for the record we are primarily using gdiapers.

I think that its important to try and keep the nursery pretty simple. We arent into plastic toys because often then are pretty junky and honestly not very easy to recycle. We understand that Henry will want something ridiculous and made out of plastic but we hope that by starting him out with things like Brio trains, handmade stuffed animals (made by friends) and unlimited art supplies we will be starting him out right. I also realized that already had a lof of things like the table his books are on, the blue lamp and Pachinko machine that we could incorporate into his room. Obviously we like bright....you can see the rest of our apartment on Design Sponge.

Advice:
My advice is look at what you already have...we did some trade for pieces in our nursery. Youd be surprised at how many things you dont actually need or really really need for the room. Make sure that there are parts of the nursery that represent your favorite art work, people, places etc. Make sure that there is enough room in the nursery for your child to make the room his or her own when they are ready.

Make your nursery a place that will inspire your kid and you.

(Thanks, Sara!)