A nursery fit for a Soren.....

Up until a week or so before he was born, Soren's room was our junk room....... full of many things we hadn't used in quite awhile.  A couple of years back it was our gym room, with lots of exercise equipment. It was also the general dumping ground for all things we didn't want to deal with, including boxes we hadn't unpacked since moving in 8 years ago and many, many, bags of alpaca fleece.

Since Astrid came along, it hadn't had a great deal of use for exercise and was gradually accumulating more and more junk.  Over Winter last year, we began cleaning out the room to the point where we could actually get into it (this seemed to involve a lot of decluttering in every other room to make space to store all the items previously stashed in this room).  Then the gym equipment was largely shipped off to Mikl's house Who has time to exercise with 2 small kids to look after?......

When I was pregnant with Astrid her nursery was pretty much done a couple of months before she arrived. It was well and truly planned from the moment we knew she was (most probably) a girl.  Second child syndrome hit though and I had no real plans for Soren's room, despite knowing he was a 'he' from 20 weeks.  I had a few vague ideas, but nothing definite until I went shopping at around 7 months pregnant and found a heap of material I liked., and a plan formed.

The only spanner in the works was the ongoing water leaking problems we had in that room over the past few years.  About 18 months earlier Anto had ripped the plasterboard off a section of the room to dry out the walls and try and find where the leaks had been coming from. We had been a bit busy with overseas travels and life in general and had totally neglected fixing it. We finally had some tradies come and look at it a couple of weeks before Soren was due and they started working on fixing the leaks the day before I was due.  Cutting it a bit fine, but we knew we weren't using the room straight away. So here is how it looked the week before  my due date:

It got a whole lot worse after these shots were taken, with most of the plasterboard on 2 walls gone and a whole heap more mess.  The day I was due it was an utter bomb site!

We won't talk about the shoddy job our original builders did necessitating the many thousands of dollars of fixing but the waterproofers finished the day I was due.......... nothing like the pressure of a pregnant woman about to pop overseeing your every move, and Anto started re-plasterboarding the day I went into labour (and while I was in labour I got to help, just for fun/distraction).  Over the next couple of weeks the room was plasterboarded and re-painted and the decorations were put into place with the help of Anto's parents and brother, while I juggled a newborn.  My Mum had made the curtains and cot bedding and decorative pillows while she was visiting in the late stages of my pregnancy. Anto also made some pelmets for the windows and few finishing touches were added and the room was done! So, a few weeks after Soren was born his room was finally ready to roll. He is of course still in our room, and up until now it has been a pretty place to store his clothes and toys, but he is now starting some sleeps in his cot (much to his utter disgust!).

This is the finished product

I decided to go with a red, grey and white theme.  The curtains are a stripe incorporating those colours and a beige to match our existing wall colour and charcoal carpet.  We then painted a feature wall in a matching grey and added the circle wall decals to complement the curtain stripes.  The cot quilt is the same colour palette with different animals and letters on it and my mum made lots of cushions for the room in matching fabrics. Soren inherited Astrid's cot and change table but we bought a new IKEA Poang chair for his room (the same as in Astrid's room) and made new change mat covers in the red and bought a matching red valance. He was also gifted some cute grey toys to match in with the room (and snuggle up to when he gets older)

 Going with the red and white theme, we bought IKEA units with red (and some white) drawer inserts for one wall of the room. The room has a ton of cupboard space but more drawers and book shelves are always welcome. Yes, that is an alpaca outside his room.  No baby or toddler should sleep without a camelid staring in from time to time!

 We have started filling the units and drawers up with Soren's books and toys. Like Astrid, he got his own bean bag, which came in handy as a newborn to lay around snoozing on. He also has his special grey 'Ethan' bear he got from his Aunt Sue, who  gave Astrid her 'Ruby' bear. The grey cat was a present from Granny and the name puzzle from Uncle Mikl, and some special money boxes that he got when he was born. I'm sure even more special things will be added soon.

So that is Soren's room. He is not a huge fan of his cot, don't let the smile fool you...... he might be cute but he is resisting his move to his cot like a champion! Someone should explain to him that his room is very nice, and he might like to spend more time there!