Llambok's Nursery - A girly touch of Africa

I am so excited to share the (almost) finished nursery.

This room is by far my favourite in our total apartment makeover. (see also our bedroom, living room, kitchen and hallway)

Besides the crib bedding and hanging up the letters that spell out her name (still TOP secret) our baby girl's bedroom is all ready for her big debut into this world in just a few weeks.

As I mentioned before, due to a nasty computer virus I lost ALL my before, during and DIY pictures but I did come across this one picture of the room from when we had just moved into the apartment.

Brace yourself!

What a mess! Its a small room with only 1 tiny closet (which is the only closet in the whole house) and the previous tenant had been using the space as a big walk in closet and office so there were ugly, industrial-looking shelving units on the wall and a desk that had to be removed.

After we waded through the mess, slapped some paint on the walls (BEHR Premium Plus Ultra in "Sparrow" to be precise), added furniture, did a lot of DIY and spent countless hours adding some TLC to the place; I am very happy to share with you the finished nursery:

When I was coming up with the design for this room I knew I wanted to do something a little different from all the cookie cutter nurseries you see in the "babies r us" catalogue. I also wanted to give the room a little touch of Africa and some hints of Peru (my husband is Peruvian) but wanted to stick to a very girly and modern pink and grey colour scheme.

Lets take a tour. Shall we?

As you enter the room, you are greeted by this adorable little elephant chalkboard which I picked up at Target a couple of weeks ago for only $2.50! Then, next to the closet (which we painted white since it was just raw wood) is a Zebra African mask which we found at a seaside market on our Florida trip last year.

Remember when we built the crib last month? It turned out really great and love how it looks.

I think my favourite part of the room is the giraffe decal which I found on Ebay. It took a long time to decide on a design for the wall. At first I was thinking about painting the entire wall with a birch tree forest, but unfortunately it didn't really tie in with the "African theme" so I finally decided on this giraffe head which seems to be peering around the corner to sneak a peek into the crib.

I have ordered custom crib bedding from an etsy shop and am very anxious for its arrival in a few weeks.

This is the fabric I chose for the crib skirt and bumper:

Instead of a standard crib mobile, I DIY'ed my own. I made the yarn balls by wrapping modge podge soaked twine around balloons, I picked up the pink and white paper lanterns at a party store and the pom-poms are made from tissue paper. I strung them all together with thin wire and tied it to a hook in the ceiling.

Because of the lack of space, I turned the dresser that I had already given a makeover to into a changing table by simply adding a changing pad. For additional storage, we mounted a couple of floating shelves and I added a rail to the lower one so that I can hang up her clothes that she fits into at the time which saves some space in the dresser and also looks adorable!

The shelves are also home to baby girl's already large collection of stuffed toys, a couple of African dolls,  baby pictures of Mike and myself, a woven box filled with diapers and wipes and a clock radio/mp3 player to play lullabies.

Another DIY of mine were these hanging baskets. I found the wooden hooks at a thrift store and painted it white while the buckets were only $1 each at Target. I'll probably use them to hold all her cute hair bows and clips.

The sleeper couch that used to be our bed in our old studio apartment has found a new home! With the addition of some cushions and a plush Llama we found in South Africa it works well in the room and is perfect for when my mom comes to stay. 

Above the sofa I have started a gallery wall. The frame (with the love decal) is obviously missing a photo, but I intend to put our very first family photograph in there.
White wooden letters that spell out her name are still to be hung above all the art too.

All of the artwork is my own DIY. I made the deer head out of cardboard (after a few failed paper mache versions), the daddy and mommy llamas are cut out of felt, i glued a wooden bird (from Michaels); which I painted bright pink; to a frame for a very simple picture and then the hand prints belong to Mike and I and when baby girl arrives we'll add her tiny hand print inside ours.

The last touch to the room was this white rug I got from Target which just helps tie the whole room together (and covers the ugly blue carpet). These are probably the last few days that it will stay white (we have already had a cat/hairball incident) but we are enjoying it while it lasts.