Our Baby Room || Gray and White Vintage Hot Air Balloons

This has been a long awaited blog, not just for me because I’ve been excited about it, but I’ve gotten so many requests from out-of-towners who wanted to see what I’ve been working on for the last 6 months (no, not nine months because remember we had our three adorable foster kiddos until middle of August). Well, it’s finally here, our baby room!

Here it is before when we had our girls… (note the yellow side table and teal wall bookshelves, you’ll see those again!)

And here it is now!

We themed it Vintage Hot Air Balloons, with gray and white being our primary colors, and just a hint of teal and yellow accents. I loooooove the way it turned out!

Nearly every piece in the room is handmade or completely made over. In fact I think only the rocking chair is as it was when we bought it from Varage Sale. That lamp back there was a $7 find from Varage Sale that was brown. I spray painted it and replaced the shade and it’s as good as new!

These pieces of art are almost all handmade, by my sister Elisabeth (the big one), my friend Felicia (the button one), all my friends (the thumbprint one was from my shower) and my friend Jennifer, who made the one on the bottom right. Holly, my sister, bought me the top left one.

Oh, and I know someone will ask about the book, that was made by my sister Elisabeth too!

This furniture was completely redone by my friend Lisa and her daughter (who do it for a living), and they also vintaged the crib for me (since I chalk painted it and couldn’t finish it while pregnant with the wax). This furniture piece didn’t originally have legs, it was actually in the girls room too, but I love how the legs classed it up a bit!

Here you can see the vintaged crib (it took me soooooo long to paint!)! The pillow is something Jason designed and created, and the incredible mobile was made by my incredibly crafty friend Katelyn. I think she’s going to start selling them!

This little table has been in our home since we got married, apparently it’s something of a family heirloom from Jason’s side! It’s been teal, yellow, and now white throughout the years! I decoupaged that dresser drawer to match the little table I’ll show you in a bit. 

This was the last thing I finished, the dresser! We originally got it from my parents for fostering, and it was a deep dark brown, and I wanted to freshen it up to match everything else. I’m very pleased with it! Back in the corner you’ll see my cloth diaper collection, the puzzle that lists the names of all the people who helped us raise money to adopt a child, and the hot air balloon banner was made by my friend Claire! I TOLD you a lot was homemade!

I wanted to leave the walls mostly bare, to give it a wide open look. It’s harder to tell in the photos, but the room looks pretty darn big because it’s not very crowded. 

Lastly, a closer look at the growth chart I made all by myself! I just bought a plank from Home Depot and went at it! I made the big hot air balloon too out of papier mache’, with help during the decorating phase from Katelyn (of the hot air balloon mobile fame). We used some of the same fabric on the big hot air balloon as the fabric on the mobile, and BURNED it to give it an old look. I tell ya, that was fun!

A closer look at some of the things that I put  lot of work into. This is the color the dresser was! I repainted, vintaged it up a bit with sandpaper, and added new knobs!

Really really proud of this table! I picked it up from Varage Sale for $10 and painted it white (which somehow was really hard. I don’t know why, but it didn’t like to accept the paint very well). Then I sanded it to give it more vintage flair, and decoupaged this beautiful photo on it! I found the photo on Google and Jason blew it up a but, lowered the saturation and white-washed it, and then fine tuned it so it wouldn’t look pixelated. I LOVE having a graphic designer for a husband, let me tell you! For the decoupage I simply used Modge Podge!

Lastly, my favorite project of all was this rocking horse. Do you even know how expensive rocking horses are?! They are outrageous! I looked and looked and finally found this one on Varage Sale (which looked shabbier in real life than it does in this picture– this was after I cleaned it). I could see it had good bones but it was all wrong for the room. So, I cut out the rope, wood-puttied the hole (because WHY would you put a rope through an eye hole????), cut off the tail and sanded it down. Then I painted and sanded until it looked the way I wanted, and used a staple gun, hot glue, and yarn to make a new tail and a mane. It took some time, but I love love love the result!

Oh, and I get a lot of questions about the rug. It’s by far the thing we spent the most money on, but I wanted one that was almost as big as the room! We picked it up on Amazon and it goes perfectly. When we began the room the gray walls were white with a yellow stripe, and the gray we chose looked a little blue. Once we added the rugs and curtains, it looks more gray now and I love it!

So, I think I said “I love it” 40 times in this blog… What do YOU think?!