Many of you know my friend Emily, and that she just recently welcomed a precious set of twins to her family. They joined their two and half year old sister, Alice, and all three of them are just the cutest things ever!
Well, back in December before those twins made their debut, my mom and I spent a little bit of time helping Emily get rooms ready for her growing family. At the time, Alice was still sleeping in her crib, but that crib was needed in the nursery so it was time to make the switch to a big girl bed. Emily thought it would be a good time to give Alice's room a mini makeover and you know I jumped at the opportunity to help! Em had already scheduled for the two rooms to be painted, and then she asked if me and/or my mom would be willing to sew some curtains to hang in them. I'm pretty sure she was just going to leave it at that (she was busy chasing after a toddler while being very pregnant with twins, afterall) but Mom and I decided to do just a little bit more. Not a whole lot, just a few extra touches here and there.
Emily and her husband, Andrew, were leaving to go out of town for a few days, so I told her to leave me a key so we could come in and do some work. We brought Dad with us the first night we went over so he could hang the curtain rods. We rounded the corner to Alice's room and were met with something like this:
Woah, boy. We had some work to do.
I gave Dad a chair to stand on and told him to get to work on the curtain rods while Mom and I got busy organizing. See that blue table and lamp with the yellow shade in the picture above? Those were supposed to be Alice's bedside table and lamp. Except that Emily had chosen a pale pink and orange color scheme, so I just couldn't in my right mind leave those the way they were. I threw the table in the back of the car and thought at the very least that a coat of white spray paint would help.
I'll spare you the play-by-play details, but here's the gist of what we did in Alice's room: added the curtains (Emily had already purchased the fabric), made a matching bed skirt, corralled all her toys onto a book shelf, painted the bedside table and added a new lamp. Alice also inherited a new dresser (painted by her grandmother) since the changing table was also moving to the nursery. Her headboard was painted to match the dresser.
Now, normally I am 100% opposed to furniture blocking a window, but in Alice's room it just made the most sense. Actually, there was a much cuter arrangement, but it left no floor space for playing. And every toddler needs some floor space to play on, right? So the dresser was pushed in front of the window. Luckily, Emily said the blinds were always kept closed anyway.
Since Alice had just transitioned from the crib, the bed rails were a necessity. I'm sure the bed will look better once she doesn't need them anymore! And you can see the table that got spray painted white and a new lamp I added.
Like I said, Mom made a bed skirt to match the curtains. We just couldn't let Alice have a bed frame with no skirt to hide it!
Here is where all the toys landed - on a shelf in the corner. It'd probably look better painted white or pink like the dresser. Maybe if I'm feeling it up for it I'll steal it from Emily one day and give it a makeover.
That was it for Alice's room. We really didn't do much and I hate that we couldn't do more. I know Emily has since added some cute art to the walls along with adding a cute bean bag that Santa brought Alice. I'm always on the lookout for the perfect rug (at the perfect price!) to add; I think it could make a huge difference in the feel of the room!
Across the hall is the new nursery. Boy/Girl twins obviously make decorating the room a little trickier, but Emily picked the perfect neutral color scheme: grey and yellow. Like Alice, they have an oddly shaped room so furniture placement is tough. The best layout, we decided, was to have both cribs coming out from the wall with the changing table in between them. Hopefully this is a practical set up too!
Emily already had the cute alphabet that's hanging on the wall above the cribs. In fact, it was hanging up at the baby shower she hosted for me. I love the way it looks above the cribs!
Emily never decided on bedding (I probably drove her crazy bugging her about it!) so Mom and I finally just took action and bought fabric for the crib skirts. (It's grey with white dandelions.) Thank goodness Mom knows her way around the sewing machine! Since the sheets were just white, we jazzed them up a little by adding the twins' monograms to them.
We were at Target one day and saw a pack of receiving blankets that were grey and yellow, and being suckers for all things that match, you know we had to buy them.
If you're wondering where the yellow in this grey-and-yellow room is, trust me...it's there. I LOVE the chevron curtains that Emily chose. I think they look great against the grey walls!
There was also a wooden bookshelf in this room that I stole and painted yellow. Of course, then I couldn't find anything to actually sit on it when I brought it back over, but I'm sure Emily has since found plenty of things to put on it. The frame above the bookshelf is one we made out of a piece of coordinating scrap fabric. I know for sure that a picture of the twins has already been added to it.
The last thing we added to the nursery were these two white shelves. I knew Emily had received these cute little shoes as a shower gift, and since I love Katie's shelf full of shoes so much, I thought the twins needed the same thing for their nursery.
Again, we didn't do much, but I think it at least helped take some of the stress off Emily when it came to getting everything ready for the babies. I know several of you had asked about these pictures waaay back when we did it, so I apologize for taking so long to get them posted!!