A flamingo-themed nursery

This post was due ages ago. I never shared Y's. nursery, but we put so much effort in it that I thought it was as good a time as any to show it to you!  

When we started putting our baby’s room together, we didn’t really have a colour scheme, except maybe: "mix all the colors". Little by little, though we found the bits and pieces that “glue” it all. We first chose the fabric for the curtains. These were actually a project for January Joy,  but we ended up asking our local Turkish tailor to make them because it turns out we are both completely clueless with the sewing machine .

We also had a pair of flamingo wall-stickers that we got in Barcelona just before I moved to The Netherlands. At the moment we did not know where they would end up, but we knew they would be a part of our home together. When we were dating (and still now, when we travel) we visit zoos whenever we can and we always end up taking a photo with the flamingos, so they are a bit special to us.

For the furniture, we knew we wanted colourful items, which are often difficult to find, or else, they are called "designer items" and are priced accordingly. At the baby shops everything was in the boring tones of white, grey, wood or black and the ready-made rooms were extremely expensive anyway. We chose a simple drawer chest (a Hemnes, from Ikea) to be used as a changing table, that we found in red, score! We have added some porcelain knobs in different patterns to give it a quirky touch (found here). We liked the ones from Anthropologie, but after a bit of searching we were happy to find a great selection of porcelain knobs at a local source and at accessible prices (€2.95 per  piece).

As for the walls... we wanted to continue with the flamingo theme.  I had a postcard from the famous ‘American flamingo’ painting by John James Audubon, and a Mexican flamingo-maraca that we put by her small bookshelf. My mom quilted her a lovely Flamingo-and-chick blanket, to go with her light blue crib that we first saw during a day excursion to Ghent. 

After searching quite a bit  (read going crazy) on Pinterest  I found some quite unique vintage Alice in Wonderland prints  on Etsy, from a 1950’s edition illustrated by Marjorie Torrey  that we hung on one of the bare walls.

Choosing the frames was kind of hard, but in the end we settled for good old  Ribba’s from Ikea that  the husband managed to convert into transparent "floating" frames by using glass in the front and in the back of the frame, so that the original pages of the book are still readable from the back. 

When she was born she received a WWF flamingo plush from a dear dear uncle and now she has a yodeling dancing one that she loves to play with.  Oh, and let's not talk about the flamingo-obsession that started with her birth. We have quite the collection of flamingo paraphernalia: onesies, leggings, shorts, a sweater, toddler-sandals, postcards (that I am hiding from the husband, using them as bookmarks), a lovely winter-hat, a couple of dresses, a t-shirt....