Update: Jude's Room

I have been slowly attempting to update Jude's room for awhile now.  I have wanted to make a gallery wall and have slowly been buying and collecting prints off of Etsy or at Casey Jones Train Museum or who knows for seriously like the last 2 years.  

For my birthday this year, Joel gave me a picture of a British phone booth from his visit to London.  I was pondering what to do with it when I realized it would be the perfect addition to the wall I had been storing up and planning in my head.  

I was determined to get that done as part of my summer projects this year.  It took me until August to buy and return and buy the right frames for this.  But thankfully, it's done.  

The most exciting part of this is that Jude was so excited about it, which I didn't expect.  I sort of kept him out of the room while I was working.  As I've said before, my child is wild, so him in the room I'm working in is chaos- at least volume wise.  He loves to make noise.  I can't think in those conditions, much less work.  Suffice it to say, he stayed out of the room.  When I did let him in, he was so excited. I'm so glad I decided to capture his face with my camera.  He was just so excited.  1000 gifts!

He LOVED it!!!!  He told me over and over again how much he loved me and how thankful he was for his new pictures.  Along with some of the biggest hugs ever.  Talk about melting my heart.  He makes it so fun to give him things because he really gets so excited.  Sweet boy!

Here's the gallery wall I made.  It's a combo of the vintage train pictures from his nursery room, a few more modern looking train pictures, some Beatles references since he's named after them after all, and lastly the phone booth.  One day, I want that area to be a reading nook, but we aren't there yet :)

The license plate and Pullman car picture were originally going to be part of the gallery wall.  The Baltimore & Ohio and New York Central pictures had already been in different places in his room.  I decided to pull those and make a mini gallery wall over here, which I am glad I did.  And of course, Jude loves the concentration of trains.

I had also thought about adding this 1 year old photo set to the gallery wall, but decided to put it under his shelf when I moved the New York Central pic from under it.  I ended up liking having it separated out and divided into categories.  I have also added the midshipman hat that my brother passed down to Jude after graduating this year.  I updated the letters of his name awhile back, but am not sure if I ever posted about that.  The baseball is from when the Navy made the regional NCAA baseball playoffs a couple years ago.

The view when you look into the room.

And this night light.  I got it on zulily (actually the Beatles prints are off zulily too...).  I love this night light.  So much!

Anyway, I really like how it turned out.  As with all rooms in my house, they are constantly being updated or changed, but this is a good start I think to transforming it for a preschooler :)

Nursery Ideas

So now that we have finally closed on our house, I am seriously piecing together Jude's nursery. Michael and my dad have been busy painting the house, and Jude's room is painted 'Devonshire' by Ralph Lauren. It's a basic taupe/yellow color. We went back and forth between that and a green. I don't want to feel confined to using the same theme as he grows older, and taupe's are so easy to play around with.

The general 'theme' for his nursery is vintage with a touch of classic trains. My inspiration came from two places: 1) Michael was obsessed with trains as a boy and cannot wait to get out his Lionel train set to play with Jude and 2) last Christmas Michael's mom gave him an old stream train luggage shelf that she found in some antique store. I've decided this shelf would be perfect in his nursery. It's an actual vintage train item, so it looks more classy than just plastering train pics all over.

I've been spending his nap times looking on the internet for pics to inspire me. Most of these are off of baby blogs I found on topbabyblogs.com

We are going with the classic Jenny Lind crib because it has the most vintage look about it. It's a classic...

This picture I love because of the lighting. In general, lighting might be one of my favorite things about decorating. It can completely change a room. I like the idea of the lighting not being centralized, but rather spaced about.

Ok, I have been saying I wanted to buy a cheap mobile to cut the pieces off and hang little toy trains from it. This person obviously read my mind, but is even better. I love the simplicity of the wire. Bonus: I can definitely do this myself! Also, all these different objects made me think of being more creative than just trains. For example, perhaps a swatch of engineer patterned cloth or an old train ticket...

This is the Kasey bedding from Pottery Barn Kids that we have already bought. Classic without having pictures of trains all over the place.

Yes, I know this is a girl's nursery, but I love the lighting. It's similar to the other picture in that the lighting is not centralized. However, I love how soft and soothing the lighting is. It makes the room seem so calm and tranquil. Now I just need to find fixtures that would shine in this way, but more masculine.

So that's where I am with this. Michael's parents will be here from Jan 15th - 25th and I know they will enjoy helping us. Michael and his dad have plans to build a train track to go around the top of the wall which will be awesome.

I'm just excited to finally start my 'nesting' however late...