Our Green Nursery Makeover: Final Touches

My nursery makeover for the Blueprint Baby Challenge is progressing nicely, now that the furniture has been put together and is in place, the walls are painted, and the wallpaper is up.

My husband and I had an amusing time hanging up the paper, especially that it was our first time wallpapering and we were learning as we went. By the last sheet of paper, we really felt like semi-professionals; though don’t ask us if we’ll be wallpapering again anytime soon. We did well on keeping the mess to a minimum, and the results of our efforts look great and add distinction to the room.

At this point, most of my purchases for the nursery have been made, including the bedding, changing pad cover, a rocking chair, artwork and lighting. It’s been easy using my Chase Slate card with Blueprint to buy what I need. Blueprint has continued to help me manage my purchases, and has made it simple to track my spending. It’s great that Blueprint handles all the calculations of my purchases, especially with keeping track of all the little finishing touches and items for the room. I can log onto Chase.com and go to Blueprint and review my spending while making sure that I’m on target with meeting my spending. Now that I’m just a few weeks away from the birth of my baby, it’s reassuring knowing that at least the financial part of my life is under control.

My artistic touches on the room are also nearly complete. I finished sewing a quilted wall-hanging and covered a roller shade with fabric to dress up a boring window covering. Since I’m a proficient sewer, I used some of my fabric stash to add some other handmade touches to the room, like a round pillow for the chair and a liner for the laundry basket. The felted mobile I started still needs some attention, and I have plans to make an artwork with the baby’s initial to hang above the crib. I’m keeping the details of the artwork secret until the nursery is finished, but I will say I’m using an unexpected material to create the letter.

I’m keeping the baby bedding to a minimum and had purchased just a few crib sheets with interesting patterns to add some attention to the crib. When my son was a baby, I went all out and got a nice bedding set, complete with bumpers, a skirt, and a quilt, but looking back, I really didn’t need all of that. Many infant safety experts suggest that bumpers can cause suffocation in infants, and of course soft bedding like quilts and blankets is a no-no in the crib until the child is older. Despite the appealing designs and patterns of a coordinated bedding set (which can also be expensive), I’ll rely on crib sheets both the baby’s safety and the nursery’s simple design.

I’m excited to see nearly everything in place now in the room. It’s amazing and rewarding to watch the results of my vision and work come to fruition. It’s hard to imagine that in just a few short days, I’ll be enjoying the room along with the newest addition to my family.

In case you may have missed it from my previous posts, I wanted to remind you that the Blueprint Baby Challenge is also a contest, where I’m competing with two other bloggers, for additional prizes of at least $500. As part of the Blueprint Baby Challenge, Chase gave each of us $2000 to create an amazing nursery for our upcoming arrivals.

You’ll get to vote for your favorite room starting July 15th by visiting the Blueprint Baby Challenge website; hopefully your vote will be for mine! Stay tuned for more updates on the voting, as well as my final post, where you’ll get to see the completed room. I’m really eager to reveal photos of the finished nursery and share my final thoughts on the project.
Disclosure: This post is sponsored by Chase. All opinions are my own.