Nursery for two

Ever since I received the shocking news that I was not expecting one baby in February, as I had suspected, but two babies in January, I did what any normal person would do in this situation: freak out.

But now that reality has sunk in and I've been assured the babies are healthy and growing (thank goodness), I'm starting to get more excited. Yes, having two newborns and one preschooler will be an incredible challenge, but I'm up for it. You know how I know this? It's not because I actually believe it myself, or that I have any clue how I'm going to make it work. It's because Heavenly Father does not give us more than we are capable of handling. Period. (And really, there's just no way this could possibly be as difficult as what I went through in my untreated bipolar days, and I not only lived to tell the tale, I became an infinitely better person because of them.)

So you know what?

BRING IT ON, BABIES! LET'S DO THIS!

OK, now that I've gotten that out, let's get into to some warm-and-fuzzy baby stuff, shall we? Today's item of business: the twin nursery.

Back when I thought there was just one little tot in there, I had already planned the perfect boy nursery: a space-themed room that wasn't a space-themed room, ya know what I mean? Definitely spacey, but sophisticated. I actually started working on this idea when I was pregnant with Evan, before we knew he was a he. When I was 16 weeks pregnant we were at Disneyland and discovered you can buy prints of vintage ride posters, like so:

The problem was, we didn't know if we were having a boy or a girl, so we didn't end up buying any. We came up with a gorgeous nursery inspired by these posters instead:

Funny enough, I never actually took pictures of the nursery itself (probably because it wasn't finished until after Evan was born), and now that he has a Big Boy Bed it's all been changed. Just take my word, it was lovely — craftsman style, classic, yet soft — and my favorite room in the house.

So anyway: I went back to my first idea and drew inspiration from Disneyland's Tomorrowland posters and came up with this little boy nursery:

View the mood board online here!

I already have key pieces, like the crib, rocket night light, toy robot, and a similar floor lamp and clock, so the rest would be easy enough to put together.

The girl's nursery has been harder for me to dream up, perhaps because I've never actually created a truly feminine space in my life. Seriously, while there are plenty of feminine touches in my house, it's all pretty heavy and masculine. I must have quite a bit of a manly side.

At any rate, I have this amazing vintage dresser I adopted from my aunt and uncle, which I painted like so:

Dreamy, isn't it?

To go with it, I pictured lots of soft pastels, like salmon and pale yellow; a fluffy white sheepskin rug; and of course a chandelier. Perhaps something like this gem from Project Nursery:

I even fancied an "Alice in Wonderland" nursery, but it's SO theme-y it seems a little hard to pull off with any practicality:

So I let the girl nursery ideas simmer for a bit and thought, "I'll cross that bridge when I get there." But then with the twin news I had a new scenario to content with: a shared, gender-neutral nursery.

Oy.

This was a tough one for me, but I did find some lovely inspiration online:

(Again, a bit on the masculine side, but I could soften it up)

And this from High Cotton Style:

But what really caught my interest was this "Fantastic Mr. Fox" nursery mood board from 100layercakelet:

I think it's the colors that I really love, so I kept the mint dresser in mind, went with the color palette, and came up with something I love for a boy/girl shared nursery:

View the mood board online here!

I am smitten. Sadly, though, I don't have as many pieces (and I could never afford that $1,170 orb chandelier!!), but I do have key ones: the crib, both dressers and that chair — yes, the actual chair, that I picked up from the thrift store today. It is dreamy, in excellent condition, and with enough color in it that I could push it silver for my space-boy nursery or pale blue for the girlie pastel nursery. The best part of it is, the guy gave me a discount. I walked away with my dream chair for $15! 

So, perhaps it's fate. Perhaps there really is a boy and a girl in there (although can I pause and freak out again for one little moment that there are TWO FREAKING BABIES IN THERE!!?!?!!!), and now that I have the perfect gender-neutral nursery, I can REALLY start getting excited about my little twinners.

In the meantime, here's to hoping that it's not too early to tell: I have my first appointment with the fetal-medicine specialist and we're going to try to find out the gender TOMORROW MORNING!! HOORAY!