Welcome to the virtual nursery tour.

Let me begin by saying that I don't have many natural talents when it comes to decorating. I tend to impulse buy and get stuck in a rut or pattern and have a hard time thinking outside the box. I get the idea in my mind that everything needs to match, and then I have a hard time putting anything in the room that doesn't. I'm pretty good at copying, but coming up with original ideas is hard for me. Anyway, all that to say that I am super super super pleased with how Calvin's nursery turned out. I wanted to create a room that was sweet and innocent enough to be a nursery, but had the ability for him to grow into as a toddler. So, that being said, the nursery tour begins below. I hope that you take a few minutes to look at all of my pictures and leave me a comment.

One thing that I love most about Calvin's room is all the different people who helped make it so beautiful. Both sets of grandparents contributed time and money to making it a success, close friends gave us some of the special touches, and there are bits of Dave and I in the room also. So...let's begin.

Here's the view standing in the doorway, so you get an idea of what I see when I will open the door each morning to get our little one out of his crib.

And a different perspective from the corner next to the crib.

 To the right of the door is our changing table and first wall decoration.

Right above the changing table we hung six different vintage Calvin and Hobbes comics. We have an old comic book that was my brothers as a teenager that we looked through together and picked out a few of our favorites. It was easy to take the book to Kinkos, color copy the comics and then frame them all alike. I attempted to paint the frames the primary colors in the room, but it didn't work out so well. There were these great raw wood frames at JoAnn's that I could have painted easily, but I needed 6 and they were 10 bucks each. Alas, I went with the economy pack of 4 frames on clearance for 10 bucks. Still looks cute though.

Just to the left of the changing table is our crib and Calvin's name. I've shown this off before, but couldn't resist throwing it in again. I just love our bedding, his name, the colors...everything.

On either side of the window on the next wall are two shelves. I wanted to have a place where I could just simply display some cute decorative items. I found this great tin sign at Hobby Lobby...there's a coordinating one on the other set of shelves you will see below. The wooden train is just a cute toy that matched all the colors, and of course we have a waiting empty frame for me to display a snapshot of our little Prince.

In the middle of the bottom shelf is this little guy....Yoda. Dave made this ceramic jar shaped like Yoda when he was in 5th grade..so about 10 years old. He's held on to it all these years, and now it gets to sit proudly in his sons room.

This is the second set of shelves....my two favorites here are the HPU bear that my mom gave me when I went away to college. A nice reminder of where Calvin's parents fell in love. And our piggy bank, a gift from  one of my besites who is due to deliver a little boy that is destined to be Calvin's best friend at the end of July.

 Next to the closet is dresser and bulletin board.

 Oh the saga of our blue dresser. Let's just say that, because of one of my decorating ideas gone wrong, Dave had to sand and paint the dresser twice. And it wasn't an easy job. Thanks hunny. I love how it turned out. Good ol Craigs list.

Above the dresser I put a bulletin board that I covered to correspond with some of the colors in the room. I realize this isn't a very traditional thing to put in a nursery, but I really enjoy having a place to put cards, notes, pictures and other reminders of all the people that already love and support Calvin and his parents. I decorated it with some little boyish wooden decals, and I'm looking forward to covering it with even more special mementos.

The chair and ottoman were given to my by one of my sweetest friends at work.It's super comfy and adds a great touch of color to the room. She also gave us the side table, and I had some expert help making the table cloth to go on top. It's fun to think about rocking and snuggling with Calvin in this chair.

While not the most exciting piece in the room, this little cubby organizer is probably one of the most useful pieces in the room. As we started to have baby showers and collect all the things we "need" for our little guy, I realized that I didn't have near enough storage space. I took some of our gift cards and picked out this piece and quickly began to fill it up. I'm sure I'll need buy more canvas baskets to go along with it, but for now we've got all of Calvin's board books, baby rattles and toys and linens under control.

On top of the cubby organizer is this wonderful basked of personalized burp cloths. Another good friend of mine, who is the craftiest of all crafters, made these for me at my family shower. While I look at them and think they are too cute to use for spit up, I love the idea of even Calvin's regurgitated food having a cute place to be wiped!

So that's the nursery! A combination of a couple of months of work, patience in between paychecks, and lots of helping hands. I hope that each of you will get a chance to see it in person.