My Favorite Room - the Nursery

Those of you who have visited my house know the truth - I am completely decorating challenged. We have lived in this house 5 years, and the living room, our room, and the two downstairs bedrooms (the office and the guest room) remain unfinished. Part of it is budget - we can't afford new carpet right now, so anything I do in the living room just seems like polishing a turd because the carpet in there will still be atrocious, no matter how much paint I slap on the walls. Part of it is that I just don't have a knack for it. Part of it is laziness.

But the kids' room is really cool. It's the one room of the house where I can be and not see a thousand things I need to do. I thought I'd show you...
This is what you see as you walk in the door. When I was pregnant with MG, we didn't know if she was a girl or a boy, so we went with a neutral color. It all kind of started with that rug. Mom found it online, and while this particular one is no longer available, American Blinds and Wallpaper has lots of cool, different rugs at really reasonable prices.

We knew we wanted to go with stars, and originally had planned on using primary colors, with blue walls, but the room is too small for that dark a wall, so we went with green, instead. Bonus - yellow and green bedding is really easy to find for kids. If we had known she was a girl, I might've gone with purple, but oh well. I love all the different textures in the rug.
This is MG's bed. Gramma Susan made the beautiful quilt with the original primary color motif. Gramma Denna made the "Memory Board" - you can't see it this far off but the fabric is yellow with tiny white stars, and the green tape is held on with star shaped buttons. That's Mickey and Penelope (pronounced Pen-uh-lope) on the bed. Penelope and the rug with the animals came from FAO Schwartz last Christmas.
The armoire, crib, and changing table came from Toys R Us. I'm pretty sure they're discontinued, now. Not sure where Grandpa Bob and Grandma Susan got the bookshelf and the dresser, but they match really well, don't they? That's the advantage of white - it's easy to match. Lots of storage, too, which is good in a small house.

Probably should have taken this one at night, but oh well. A photographer, I am not. You can barely see the fish tank in the corner over there. That was MG's first birthday gift. She loves fish. Not exactly space themed, but oh well. Not everything has to match, right? We keep jammies in the baskets, and the pile there on the upper right is diapers. Forgot to straighten that up before I took the picture. (Obviously the bedroom is ALWAYS this clean!) I hide their hamper behind the rocker.

Now we're getting to some of my favorite features. The rocket and the mobile came from Ikea (both discontinued). Aren't they perfect? There are lots of "guys" in the rocket, of course. There are "guys" everywhere. I wish it would hang straight, but we can't have everything.

Check this out:
The Moon in my Room and the Solar System in My Room are SO cool! The solar system rotates and the sun lights up. The moon goes through all the phases. The kids absolutely love them. They were Christmas gifts in 2007. We got a heck of a deal at Costco. I wish I'd bought a dozen for all our rocket scientist friends' kids.

Finally, in the corner, is the fish tank, the quilt that Aunt Carolyn made for MG, and a hidden laundry basket full of toys. Most of the toys live down in the toy room, but they tend to migrate, so we need places to put them upstairs, too.

We also have two sets of windchimes - one over the changing table that is made of rainbow colored stars, and one over MG's bed made of glow in the dark moons. And of course, of COURSE, there are a bunch of glow in the dark stars on the ceiling, but none of these things photograph well.

What's your favorite room? Post about it on your blog, or send me pictures and I'll post about it here, if you don't blog.