a nursery for a girl

Okay. So anyone who knows me knows that as soon as Jonathan and I began talking about adoption I began decorating a nursery. In my mind, at least. And I am so excited about it because all of the nursery option are so much better now than they were six years ago! It was very hard to find anything back when I was pregnant with Blue. We needed something gender-neutral and I liked the idea of yellow and red. And all of the nursery bedding in the stores was so cutesy and traditional... We managed to find a set we both liked that had a barnyard theme and went with the yellow and red we liked.

But now there are so many nursery bedding lines that are very modern or retro or graphic, as well as the usual bedding with ladybugs or trucks or barnyard animals. So I am excitedly poring over baby and nursery websites!

The first scheme I have come up with is for a baby girl. Because that is where our thoughts were lying originally. But now we are thinking about adopting a boy! Because it really doesn't matter to us which gender our next child is. I mean, if I got pregnant again, we would not be able to choose the sex of the baby. So maybe our next child will be a baby boy!

But here is the little girl nursery I came up with. And now I get to design a boy nursery, too! In case that is the direction we wind up going. Can you tell how much fun I am having with this?!

So the jumping off point for the nursery is these bookends from CB2:


Now before you start thinking I am going to go all-out and hang lanterns everywhere and fill the room with fans and panda bears and bamboo and other sterotypical Asian decor, let me explain. We are looking into adopting a baby from Korea. So I am trying to read up on Korean culture since I am woefully ignorant of almost all world geography and culture. I want to make sure he or she knows all about Korean culture and history and food and that it is an integral part of our lives. But I also refuse to foist any and all Asian culture on my child! I will not automatically buy her Mulan dolls (which is a Chinese legend, anyway!) or enroll him in Taekwondo. Maybe he'd rather play soccer. Maybe she won't like Korean food. Am I making sense? I feel like I am not explaining this very well...

Anyway, having said that, I do love the idea of having these fu lions in the baby's room. Because they are guardians. Maybe the baby's birth mother would like to think that there would be these Korean guardians in her child's room in America. If something had happened to me and my Blue wound up being raised in Korea, I would like to think the mother there tried, in her own way, to salute Blue's American heritage. Like maybe sticking a little American flag in Blue's room, or something...

So I like these fu lions. I like the idea of them up on a shelf, watching over the baby.

I would do the walls a soft, creamy yellow (again with the yellow and red nurseries!) and I fell in love with this bedding from Land of Nod:



You can't see it in this picture, but the set has a white eyelet cribskirt.


I would also hang white eyelet curtains in the window. I love quilts and I love white eyelet. So old fashioned and feminine in an Anne of Green Gables kind of way.

Anyway, then one day on Art.com I stumbled across this little print by Ezra Jack Keats, called Feeding the Birds from Jennie's Hat
which I love and which has both the soft yellow wall color in it as well as the orangey red of the fu lions. Perfect.


To continue the bird theme, I found these lovely bird decals from blik. I am really digging the combination of yellow and grey lately, so these would look so pretty on a yellow wall.

Anyway, that is all I have found so far for a baby girl's nursery. And now we are thinking about adopting a son, so I am starting to plan a baby boy's room, too. Stay tuned for those plans!