Baseball Nursery Reveal!

At last! The nursery is finished and I am ready to share it with you! And not a moment too soon, am I right? I mean, my due date is Tuesday. So, you know, procrastination and such. But, we did it!

I really debated what to do as the theme for Plus One's nursery, and ultimately decided on baseball. With his due date being so close to the Fourth of July and right in the midst of baseball season and summer, it just seemed fitting. We had a lot of fun with this theme and did quite a few DIY projects. Ultimately, I think it paid off - I love the finished product!

Of course, with this pregnancy we once again found ourselves in a position of having to carve out a corner of our own bedroom as the baby's "nursery." You may recall we did that for Ellie when we were living in a (rather compact) one-bedroom apartment in Hoboken, and this time around, we still have a few months left on our two-bedroom apartment lease. Luckily, in both instances, we have had room to spare in the master bedroom and were able to make it work.

To refresh your memory, this is what our bedroom looked like before:

Looking into the room from the door

Another angle

Lucky for us, we are still living it up college-style in our bedroom and do not actually have a bedroom set to call our own, which leaves plenty of room for baby furniture. So, with a little rearranging and the addition of much furniture, this is what our room currently looks like:

NOW looking in from the door - a bit more stuff, eh?

Another angle

Yeah, buddy! Baseball nursery!

Let's take a closer look, starting with the section of the room I love the most: the dresser/changing table and scoreboard:

My favorite part!

The dresser is the Ikea Hemnes dresser in blue (obviously) and we love it. It's such a great size - plenty of storage for all of Plus One's clothes and then some. Everything he has is in there (nothing even hanging in our closets), including clothes, diapers, spare wipes and diaper pail bags, and all his toiletries, accessories and bedding. This dresser was our first Ikea furniture purchase and Eric was quite pleased with how easy assembly was. To make it a little more baseball-y, I picked up some wood knobs from Home Depot and painted them to look like baseballs instead of using the knobs that came with the dresser.

My painted knobs

The knobs in action

The changing pad cover coordinates with the rest of the bedding, which is the Bacati Boys Stripes and Plaid set (available at Babies 'R Us).  I was surprised how difficult it was to find bedding I liked! Most everything that was sports-related had ALL sports, not just baseball, and anyway, I wanted something more subtle - just red, white and blue-ish colors, really. Finally, I found this set which fit the bill and wasn't a bajillion dollars. Yay! Also topping the dresser is a baseball lamp from Hobby Lobby.

A closer look at the dresser

The scoreboard, of course, is my favorite part of the whole nursery and is definitely the piece we worked the hardest on. I hope to put up a post about our DIY process a little later, but for now, suffice it to say it was a bit of work but so worth it.

Please, be impressed with our craftiness.

Of course, the "Baby" is there as a placeholder - the baby's actual name has been edited out because it is still a secret until he's born! But "Baby" will be replaced with his name, and all the other numbers have meaning:

• The Cleveland score is 0722, which is my birthday (I'm the Indians fan!).
• The Tampa Bay score is 1201, which is Eric's birthday (he's the Rays fan!).
• The "At Bat" and balls/strikes/outs make up Ellie's birthday: 29 is her birth date, and she was born in March (three balls) of '12 (one strike, two outs).
• The Pitcher numbers are 8/18, which is our wedding date.
• The Runs/Hits/Errors portion is the "iffiest" of the number play, because it was a late addition and by using our birthdays as the current scores, we were locked in to the first numbers. The CLE line is meant to represent 1-19, the date Eric and I got engaged. The TB line is just a scrambled 1-4-3, a/k/a old school pager-speak for "I love you!"

I had originally planned to leave the scores blank and fill it in with Plus One's birthday and stats, but the idea of leaving this thing unfinished made me twitchy. So, we found numbers that are meaningful to our family instead!

Let's continue on, shall we?

The crib is the Storkcraft Tuscany 3-in-1 Crib in white. We had a little problem with assembly on this crib, and the back board cracked a bit while we were putting it all together. Storkcraft sent out a replacement part...eventually. They were quick to respond to our email inquiry but it took some time to actually get the part here. In fact, that is why the nursery wasn't finished until this week. But, it's done, the crib is repaired, and we really like it. Again, the bedding is the Bacati Boys Stripes and Plaid set. The tin pictures over the crib are from Hobby Lobby, and you may recognize Mickey Mouse in the corner - the same Mickey from our gender announcement!

The crib!

As we continue around to the window, we come to the glider and well, basically, the nursing station:

I'm looking forward to rocking another baby in that glider!

We brought the glider in from Ellie's room (originally bought second-hand at a consignment store in Hoboken) and it is currently sporting the quilt from the bedding set. We put a little shelf next to it with various bins to hold nursing supplies, my pump, snacks, my Kindle, etc. The shelf is topped with a baseball frame (again, from Hobby Lobby) holding both an old Little League baseball card of Eric, and a childhood picture of me that Eric had made into a baseball card as my Mother's Day gift! (I've never been on a baseball card before!) There is also the autographed baseball "guest book" from the baby shower.

My supply shelf, if you will

Baseball guestbook and parent baseball cards

We also put up some black-out curtains, the baby's first year calendar and the painting Ellie made for him (once again, name has been censored!).

Fancy toddler artwork!

And, above that little shelf I mentioned is yet another DIY project: the baseball bat mobile. I was inspired by this one that I saw on Pinterest, and decided to make my own version. I found the little bats at Hobby Lobby, stained them and had my stepdad attach the hardware to hang all the pieces. The baseballs are little foam balls from Party City, and the baseball cards are ones from Eric's childhood collection: Manny Ramirez from the Indians (for me), Raymond (the Rays mascot) from their inaugural season, Don Mattingly (Eric's favorite player growing up) and Mickey Mantle (classic baseball). Personally, I think it turned out rather cute!

The mobile!

Another look

And there you have it, folks! Plus One's Baseball Nursery. Now all we're missing is the angelic baby who sleeps 12 hours straight in that crib every night! (Because as we all know, there's no crying in baseball! Ha!)

Ta-da!