David's Room To Date

When I started planning David's room, I really didn't have a specific direction. Just a color scheme that would work within the colors already in our home, more or less. Since my last post about his room, we've filled in a lot of gaps, but have a ways more to go. I figured it would be November before you saw any pics if I waited until it was relatively 'finished' and the carpet was cleaned!

Nathan and I are kinda proud of our curtains. It was my idea, Nathan's execution. We bought some simple white panels from JCPenneys and picked up some grosgrain ribbon at Michaels. We found iron on tape (since it was faster than reorganizing our storage room to get to the sewing machine) and Nathan scientifically calculated the distance between the stripes by using the spacing of the stripes on our ironing board cover. Pretty smart, eh?

Adopting a child that's near toddlerhood (or in it, as was the case with Ellie), we've not invested in the whole crib bedding collection thing since we wouldn't use it very long. However, I have discovered that it's incredibly difficult to buy pieces of crib bedding individually. My mother-in-law made a beautiful crib skirt for Ellie's crib that matched her window treatment and lasted through the entire conversion to a toddler bed. She offered to do the same for David, but I just couldn't find fabric that I loved. I would have gone 'skirtless' except for the need to hide a set of kids tables and chairs underneath the bed. One day while finally visiting Babies R Us, I found a bedding collection that I liked that had a matching window valance (sold separately! yay!) that would work in David's room.... but what if we didn't use it as a window valance but a crib skirt instead? Voila! Problem solved!

Okay, now for the 'theme'. That's the number one question when folks ask about his room. I really didn't know what direction I wanted to go here either. I was open to a lot of ideas, but this one has sort of emerged, though not perhaps so obviously, which is what makes it fun.

In my previous post I shared about the word art over David's bed. I've always wanted scripture verses painted on the walls of my home, but never had the skill to do it myself. I was super excited to find the phrase from Psalm 23 from Uppercase Living with the whole David-connection thing going on.

Then we rediscovered the puzzle (scroll a few pics down) of Jesus as the Shepherd with the children of the world stored under our bed when we were rearranging our bedroom (one of three that were thus rearranged last month). It was too perfect not to hang in the new nursery.

Shortly after that I rediscovered another piece of art in storage. I thought it would also be nice if we could incorporate the Kenyan print below brought back by Nathan's parents nearly 30 years ago. Then Nathan pointed out the artist's name signed in the corner: David Shepherd.

The 'mobile' was a gift from my Aunt Marcia. It features dozens of strung stars and moons which she thought was appropriate for a "shepherd's" night sky. It's perfect!

Finally, not theme-related, but the rocking chair is from my great-grandma vanOrman (whom I never knew) purchased with her 'egg money.'

The dresser above and bookcase below we purchased on our shopping trip to IKEA. I need to go back to buy more storage bins! I also want to fill in some of the empty gaps with framed photos and whatnot. Since Ellie's room is so small, I want to start migrating the bulk of the toys into this storage piece.

The carving on the wall between the closet and the door is from the Albanian city of Berat, a city with some pretty neat architecture built into the side of a small mountain. The west-ward facing homes sparkle at sunset giving the city the nickname, "the city of windows."