Our Holley House: Our Ninja Nursery

Early in our pregnancy, James and I went out to dinner, and the wait time was 40 minutes or more, so we wandered down to Babies R Us to idle away the time. It was amusing; we scoped out cribs and rocking chairs and enjoyed the giddiness of prospective parenthood. At one point, we walked along looking at the bedding sets for cribs. James commented that all the little boy stuff seemed to either be cutesy animals or sports, neither of which he particularly cared for.

Some time later, when we began discussing what we wanted to do with Baby J's room, we talked about some different color schemes we could go with, but we kept feeling dissatisfied with our options. Footballs and whatnot were definitely out. I was thinking that I could resign myself to puppy dogs, but James was not satisfied with this, and I definitely was craving something a little more...unique. And through the course of our brainstorming, we found it.

Ninjas.

We began in January with painting the room. We had settled on red and black, but I feared that if the entire room was painted these colors, it would be overwhelming. So we decided to paint the top half of the room red, leave the bottom half the tan it was already, with a thick black stripe through the middle.

Getting started (the view from the door)

Getting started (the view of the door)

First coat of red

Now for the black stripe

We were anxious pulling the tape off, but it looked great! This picture doesn't do it justice.

It was amazing to me how much the color added warmth to the room. However, even though I wanted to hang out in the room all the time, it wasn't very comfortable with the uncovered window. (I don't like feeling like I'm in a fishbowl!) So next I approached my mother about making some curtains. (My mother is a curtain-making wizard.)

Turns out, Mom had already found some ninja-themed fabric online. She'd been hoping to find something less expensive, but nothing had turned up, and this particular fabric was just too perfect to pass up. In short order, the window was measured, the fabric purchased, the design decided, and Mom set to work. A few days later, this joyousness joined us:

Isn't this fabric perfect?

One of the most important parts of the nursery for me was a chair. Seeing as how I'm going to spend a lot of my time nursing, I wanted to create a comfortable space in the baby's room. I think I tried out every chair at RC Willey looking for "the one." You have to understand, because I'm short, a lot of chairs aren't that well suited for me--you know, I wanted to be able to have my feet touch the ground, which is sometimes a challenge! But I did find a chair that I loved (and it was on clearance, even better!) and though I was worried (rightfully) about the color clashing, I could not deny that this was the right chair for me. So we brought it home.

Fortunately, some of the color issue was mediated by the arrival of our next addition:

There is just something about having a crib in the room that really makes it start to feel like a nursery. Our beautiful crib came as a gift from James's mother, for which we are incredibly grateful!

Next came a purchase of our own, to match the crib:

The dresser, having been shipped from Amazon, was somewhat of an adventure to put together. LOTS of pieces. But it came together perfectly, and we love it!

The next addition (one of my top favorites!) came from Patrick & Shaylee, our brother- and sister-in-law, as a baby shower gift. Could not be more perfect for our ninja nursery!

But the best part of all came this week. A few months ago, I asked my dear friend Ashley Stubbs, an incredible artist, if she would be willing to create ninja "chibis" on the walls of our nursery. To my delight, she took on the project with great enthusiasm! On Wednesday she came over and drew the ninjas on the walls, and today we undertook the painting of them.