Adventures in nursery painting...

A few weeks ago, J.R. and I decided it was time to take on a right of passage for most new parents-to-be. We moved furniture, taped off trim and windows, and ventured to Lowes to sift through a wall of paint chips. You cannot imagine how many different shades of gray they have. Overwhelmed after a long hour of deliberation, we finally headed home with a gallon of Valspar. 

The before picture...

We began Friday evening after J.R. came home from work. I (with window open, face mask on, and ceiling and floor fan blowing my way) painted around the taped areas, while J.R. attacked the walls with a roller brush. 

Although it is hard to tell in the pictures, our walls are textured and we noticed right away that they were soaking up the paint at a rate that told us we were going to need another gallon for the room. Around midnight we also realized our other major problem. The paint looked horrible with our carpet. I normally would never even attempt to find a gray/brown color combo that worked together. I was just so determined to have a gray, yellow and white room that I blindly hoped we wouldn't notice the offending carpet, once the furniture and the general theme of the room took over. Was I ever wrong! We tossed around the idea of changing the carpet in the room altogether,  and decided we were being ridiculous (maybe because of the late hour;)) and that we needed to sleep on it.

Saturday morning we picked ourselves up, dusted ourselves off, returned to Lowes, and picked out a lighter shade of gray. Thankfully, the lighter color was a major improvement (and seemed like much more of a "baby" gray to me).

Can you tell how excited J.R. is to be repainting all four walls??:)

As usual, Max was overwhelmed with excitement during the entire process!

He made a point to periodically let out long sighs reminding us he was overjoyed at having to sit inside all day during a weekend;).

Sunday we attempted what I had been nervous about for weeks. I had found a tutorial on how to paint a birch tree wall mural online, and thought it would be perfect to add a little bit of a woodsy theme to the nursery. I wanted the trees to be painted behind the crib, so we taped off the area and tried to freehand it.

 J.R. made some lovely, custom frog tape earrings for Maxwell while they waited on me...

I am no artist, and trying to draw semi-straight lines on textured walls is next to impossible! Unfortunately, the tape wouldn't stick to the texture in certain places, and I ended up having to fill in a lot of areas after it was ripped off.

Around 11pm that evening, I finished the trunks of the trees and decided to hold off on trying to draw branches. I have to admit that now, two weeks later, I still haven't attempted them! 

Can you say unmotivated?! 

Anyhow, the Tuesday after our weekend painting extravaganza, our furniture was delivered! We both love it!! A huge thank you to J.R.'s mom, aunt, grandmother, and my dad for helping us buy such incredible furniture to share with our son. Here's a sneak peak of the nursery progress 

(we are nowhere near done, but we are on our way at least!):

Still waiting on those branches...

I have this big frame reserved for a picture of our son and Max. I hope to make this a whole wall of pictures eventually.

 Our son's first wall art: some Utah and Tennessee love

I found these state prints on ETSY. There are hearts over the cities where J.R. and I grew up:).

And, just in case you happened to spy the name letters in one of the above pictures, we are about 98 percent sure that our little boy will be named Reid!

See the owls? I found out after my last blog post that J.R. wasn't a huge fan of giraffes, so in an effort to compromise (since after all, he did let me get the white furniture I had been dreaming of:)), we decided to focus more on owls and woodland creatures. That is not to say that I will not be sneaking some giraffes in there as well though, as I have my eye on a giraffe blanket on target's website;)!

 Owls and giraffes will have to coexist in this nursery.

And finally, get ready for a POP....as in my belly has popped out big time!

As J.R. says, "he's really filling out in there." I am, of course, happy to provide the extra room for him, but can't imagine what this picture will look like in July...yikes:)!

Happy Easter to all our loyal blog followers!