Charly’s Nursery & Preparing For Goodbyes

**The photos of the room do it no justice at all! There is a lot more light & brightness than caught by these cameras. Our newborn shoot will happen here, so there will be some great shots compliments of Portraiture by Heidi the week after Charly is born.**

We have been working on our baby’s nursery since we were 8 weeks pregnant. The first part was easy & nicely gender neutral; it needed to be repainted and recarpeted; the cupboards were previously hanging room only which seemed impractical to me, so I had them rebuilt with shelving & we had to choose and order baby furniture.

I chose dove gray walls with pale yellow skirtings, white ceilings & cupboards and a soft gray carpet. I have always loved baby blue and baby pink nurseries, and I figured with my neutral backdrop, as soon as we found out if we were having a boy or a girl, I could choose decor, curtains and bedding to bring through the colour of choice.

I also decided against advice from everyone that I really wanted to have the crib & compactum in mahogany to match all the furniture throughout the house, and I am happy I stuck to my guns because I adore the way it all turned out. As I am sure you all know by now, baby furniture is crazy expensive and even second hand sleigh style furniture costs a small fortune. Early on in our pregnancy we found a company called Bedfords (better known as www.babycotsforsale.co.za) that seemed to sell decent quality furniture at roughly half the price you could get it anywhere else.

 

First off, I am happy with my furniture, it looks amazing and I have no doubt nobody could tell it from the high end double the price version in the shops. On the other hand, the “3-5 week” lead period was a definite joke, we ordered & paid deposits in August & received our furniture after a lot of temper tantrums from me late in November. I wouldn’t have minded the wait too much, I ordered it well in advance just in case, but I did mind the contact at the place telling me quite rudely “I wouldn’t find anywhere cheaper” when I called to follow up on why I hadn’t heard anything after 10 weeks of waiting.

Two other minor complaints were they delivered the cot in pieces & had not packed all the correct screws so they had to come back again to bring them which meant a further delay in putting it all together. There were also damaged parts on the cot (bumps etc) that had been painted over (eliminating the possibility that they had not noticed them), but once it was all together there was nothing noticeable. I never bothered complaining again, but I did say that although I would recommend them on price, I would be very clear that you should only order from them if time is of no consequence, if you are okay with paying less meaning terrible service and you should check every part of the furniture for damage and ensure all the correct parts are there before letting them leave.

In terms of decor, one of the first things I did when we found out the bump was a little girl was go in search of the perfect decal for her wall. I had a fairly good idea of what I was looking for & so when I found the most beautiful, giant blowing cherry blossom tree on www.stickythings.co.za I knew I had to have it! I knew when I chose it that it would be a project, not a quick and simple thing to put together, the website was quite clear that the tree came in just short of 300 individual pieces that would need to be applied and that the end result was a 3.2m X 2.2m decal.

            

What I didn’t take into account was the delay in receiving the furniture for the bedroom, which meant I could not put the tree up as because of the size of the tree, the furniture needed to be placed before the decal could be put up. And by late November I was almost 7 months pregnant and far too big to get close enough to the wall to apply the stickers myself, meaning I had to find volunteers or pay someone to help me get it up. In the end, I left it so long that I went with paying someone to help me (this was a major job & I couldn’t take the guilt of asking anyone to put it up for free)!

       

I am so very glad I got this particular friend to help me as she has always had an artistic eye and the end result was even better than expected! With Brett & I both cutting out individual flowers, birds and butterflies & Amanda doing all the positioning & sticking, the whole project took a total of just short of 7 hours! I think if you have little girls, this would be the most amazing project to undertake with them if you have no time limit, basically the whole room becomes a giant sticker book and the end result just takes your breath away. My only concern as it stands is that a few of the stickers seem to be bubbling already, no doubt due to the crazy heat, but still a concern as they are meant to last for 3 years; thus far smoothing them back down by hand seems to be working fine, so I am hoping they just need a chance to settle.

The other items in the room are the chair for breastfeeding and the giant leather “toy box”, both of which we found at Decofurn in Kenilworth. I searched everywhere for the perfect chair, and although they only had brown or black & white, this one was by far the most comfortable thing I sat in in all the months of searching. It is the perfect height, the perfect support & the armrests are at the perfect level, I was very happy when I found it! Amanda & family also gave me the beautiful soft gray throw that covers it, so it fits with the decor and the stunning butterfly pillow was our babyshower gift made just for us by Annabell to match the bunting & bedroom theme. The toy box was a bit of an afterthought when I realised I had roughly 100 fluffy toys that had nowhere to live til Charly was big enough to enjoy them. I also wanted something that had soft corners so she will be able to run around in her room safely when the time comes.

One of my other favourite things in the room is the Tatty Teddy bedding. As most of you will no doubt remember, when I found the pink Tatty Teddy items on Soft Spot’s Facebook page I fell totally in love & I was not disappointed in the final product. Beautifully finished & high quality materials, both the covers and the inner duvet & pillows are top class.

The room is not quite finished as yet, and won’t be before Charly gets home sadly. This has more to do with Charly coming sooner than expected than a lack of planning. We are having baby pink & white fine pinstripe, fully block out lined curtains made for her room by Curtain Corner in Lansdowne Road which should be finished sometime next week (which was fine when she was only expected the following Friday).

The hanging of these curtains has also delayed the putting up of her beautiful bunting made by the amazingly talented Annabell of www.bellapoppelina.co.za which will be hanging on the large wall opposite the tree decal above her compactum. And the little butterfly heart artwork I made which is meant to hang next to the curtains. The last missing piece is my dream butterfly chandelier. Sadly I have not made any further progress on it, first due to distraction, then later massive amounts of client work and finally the uselessness of my hands for doing any fine detailed work. I really really hope I find the time at some point to finish it as it was really my pride & joy for a while it is meant to hang above the feeding chair.

This is probably going to be my second-to-last post til Charly arrives, with the final post going up late on Wednesday or Thursday. I’m going to write a little about the move from natural birth to c-section, the reasons that has come about, my feelings on the whole thing and I’ll announce the final date and time Charly will be joining us which we will be getting at our appointment with Dr Cloete on Wednesday. I fully intend to continue blogging once I recover a little from everything, including covering the birth itself, the days & weeks that follow and a few of the physical aftereffects as requested by a few of my regular readers. Until Thursday, have a good week xx