Rearranging The Nursery: a house log

Last weekend I rearranged Clara’s nursery. Again. And I owe you folks the details (a few of you even noticed things had moved around here and requested an update), so whoop, here it is. Let us dive right into the moving madness. Heck, free use-what-you-have rearranging is not that bad, is it? No heavy breathing required. From you, at least (I did my fair share of creepy mouth breathing while pushing things around). It in fact was only a few plain switches, but the room still looked tore up from the floor up for a little while:

As usual, Clara was in there “helping Mommy dec-rate.” Decorate only has two syllables according to the bean. I enjoy that you cannot see her at all here because she’s not tall sufficient to poke up from behind the changing pad where she was “juggling” cloth diapers while singing Firework by Katy Perry. No joke.

Simply for lively, here is Clara helping me the last time I went crazy and moved everything around:

Kinda looks the same except she’s wearing summer stuff.

And now here is the new layout description to assist make sense of the madness (see the sketches of makeover 1 and 2 here). Well, it will not truly make sense of my furniture-shuffling-neurosis, but it might explain what is where and what used to be where:

• The crib which used to be on the wall in front of the door got moved to the wall across from that on the far side of the room
• The dresser that used to be on that wall moved to where the crib once lived
• The chair and side table fairly much stayed where they were
• The floor lamp that used to be behind the chair got moved into the kitchen (where it is used in our sitting nook by the fireplace)
• Clara’s hamper got “hidden” back where the lamp once was (more on that in a bit)

And here are a ton of pics of her room after my recent switches. First off, it is pleasant not to walk right into the side of the crib now that it is back on the wall I originally hoped to put it (somehow I consistently planned to put it there but when we moved we stuck it in a corner, and then pulled it near the door, and only now is it back where it “belongs”). It did not jut out all that much, but the dresser is about half as deep, so it feels more open when you walk in again.

That little C on the door is from Anthropologie on clearance about a month or two ago. It was $6. Whenever we walk by it Clara says “C for Clara.”

Behind our little reading chair is Clara’s hamper, which is pleasant because she likes to take everything out of it and throw it around, so putting it a bit out of the way deters her. Sometimes. Other times it is simply a lively obstacle-course-like challenge.

Ah, the crib is at last on that back wall. Mom bliss. All is right with the world. And since I am Señorita Safety all the frames over the crib are well out of Clara’s reach (the crib is pulled about 18″ away from the wall, although that is hard to see in these pics). They are also not only hung with screws & anchors or nails (depending on if I hit a stud) but also reinforced with heavy-duty 3M adhesive strips (which are 100% removable so they will not kill the wall, but are not baby-removable, so nothing will come a-crashing down – even in another unlikely east coast earthquake). Is that crazy first-time-mom sufficient for ya? I thought so.

Here is the corner that is opposite the green mirror and chair:

The shot below is meant to show three things:

• the crib is pulled around 18″ from the wall (although there is a weird double shadow so it truly does not demonstrate that quite well – in fact it only looks about 3″ away)
• there are still many blank walls in our house (we still need to add some art to that corner)
• Clara’s closet is still my go-to place in the whole house (as in, I hang out in there and stroke the potato stamped walls)

One of our go-to furniture makeovers ever is still Clara’s $20 craigslist dresser:

It takes a licking (wooden fruit, cars, and blocks get whipped at it frequently), but keeps on ticking…

Every post deserves a detail shot of a stuffed alligator:

More details. They are my go-to things in here. The handmade stuff, like these bookshelves John made…

… and the mobile I made.

Another go-to thing in here is the art wall. So many personal things that make me misty eyed. More on everything that hangs up there here.

Monkey detail shot!!!

Hah. That might be the best use of three exclamation points ever. Simply kidding. This is:

You get a car!!! You get a car!!! You get a car!!!

Oh to be Oprah for a day. What is wrong with me? Perhaps do not answer that. Anyway, when it comes to Clara’s third layout since we have moved in, I have learned not to make any declarative statements (ex: “I enjoy it so much I will never move stuff around in there again!”) but I certainly enjoy it the more than the past two setups. So it is a keeper. At least until I go crazy again…

What rooms have you folks been shifting around? Do you have some that never get changed (our bedroom and living room are fairly much the same as about a month after we moved in) while others seem to move around all the time (Clara’s room and our kitchen seem to have enjoyed the most change so far).