Baby nursery turned toddler's room

It's been quiet some time since I last posted here due to life being so crazy full with work, home, and a toddler to run after.

I've posted before about the design of my baby's , Farida, nursery which was featured on Apartment Therapy in multiple posts you can take a look at them here; Nursery, Take 2 Wall Decal, Nursery Tour, and Featured on Apartment Therapy

But what do you do when this teeny tiny little bundle of sweet joy

Turns into this cheeky run around 2 year old toddler

The transformation in just two years is crazy, right?! where did the years go!

So what happens when your child grow? optimally their nursery/room should be designed to grow with them, which is what I had in mind when I first designed Farida's nursery.

Her cot bed is from Mamas & Papas and it's designed to be used from birth until 3 years old. It has 3 different mattress levels for while your baby grow and then it completely transforms into a toddler's bed once your toddler can climb out of bed, which is why I had to transform it one day as I woke up to Farida walking into my room at 5am! I moved the foot stool poof and the sheepskin to her bed side so that I can read her a story while sitting on the poof and so that she has something soft to step on when she get out of bed.

The cotbed at the lowest mattress level

The cot bed once transformed into a toddler bed 

We made a big deal of how grown Farida is and that she got her own new big girl bed so that she wouldn't be scared of sleeping in it. Unfortunately the only problem now is that whenever Farida switches sleep cycles and finds herself awake she gets out of bed and wanders into my room...multiple times a night sometimes which is very exhausting...trying to find a solution for her waking up a lot and requesting milk to go back to bed. She has been a great sleeper since before she was 1 and even now when I put her down in bed at 8, I tuck her in with a bottle of milk and read her two sleep story books with the lights off and I simply kiss her goodnight and walk out of the room and she sleeps on her own- it sometimes takes her walking out of the room a few times requesting "more milk, potty, just walking out" and me getting her what she wants and then tucking her back in bed and then she is down for the night before she starts waking up.

I heard of a toddler's "ok to wake" clock but I don't know if it is worth a try, if you did try it I'd appreciate the insight.

The bookcase that I got for the room from IKEA is being put to great use, it stores her ever growing collection of books and toys.

The new purchases for the room are the following as shown below;

FLISAT kids table & Mammut children's stools where she can color (Farida loves coloring and crafting with all sorts of mediums, needless to say I keep all of her supplies and colors out of sight so that she doesn't color over all of the walls) or play with puzzles. The great thing about this table is that it has two tucked in baskets that you can use to store toys and colors.

Mala Easel which Farida loves to color all over with chalks and then enjoys wiping everything off just as much :) (yeay me!)

The DUKTIG kitchen set with all the trims which Farida absolutely LOVES and enjoys playing with (she loves it even more when I fill the little pots and pans with cocoa puffs and ask her to cook them and she starts transferring them from one pot to the other)

The beautiful thing about this kitchen that I need to add is the fact that it could be set to have 3 different heights depending on your child's height. If you do not add the plastic caps to the feet of the kitchen then it's at it's shortest. Then if you add the caps in a certain direction its a little higher, and if you flip the cap over and insert it the height is at it's highest. This is the middle height shown in the photo of  Farida's kitchen

Farida gets a lot of structured play at nursery so I wanted to make sure her room was setup to help her have free play and role play as much as she'd like.

Featured on Apartment Therapy and Project Nursery!

I'm so excited to the news I just got today about my daughter's nursery being featured on Apartment Therapy, one of the best websites that deal with apartment living, interiors, and life in general and one that I read on daily bases. You can check out the feature on this link

In July, Farida's nursery was also featured on Project Nursery, a website that specialises in babies and kids rooms and parties and the prep and design of both and it's definitely worth checking every now and then. The nursery was featured as being one of the top nurseries in their project gallery for July 2015! You can check that out on this link.

Farida's Nursery Tour

Today I finally bring you a full tour in Farida's nursery. Just a back story for whoever wasn't following me long before Farida is my 1st born child and my sweet little baby girl, not so much a baby now that she is 1 year old and acts like a toddler, there is really a great difference!

Enough of the sweet baby talk, pun intended, I will let you enjoy the photos of the tour, you can always post any questions you have.

We were on a budget when we started designing Farida's nursery and we figured we wanted a nice nursery that we can all enjoy and not just Farida, I know that to make a big impact you don't need expensive furniture, you need a wow factor.
I first saw those wall decals in a nursery tour and I fell in love and just had to get them so I looked them up and they are sold by http://www.wallsbymur.com/ and they deliver to Doha- yeeaay- they have the decals in different shapes and colours and sizes so that wall was my Wow factor right there, the rest of the walls are painted a very light grey.

I knew I didn't want to do pinks but I still wanted something glamorous and girly so, whites, golds, peaches, and mint it was.
The walnut veneered false parquet was already installed in the rest of the apartment and when we found out we were expecting we decided to put the same parquet in there for continuity. It's scrubbable and cleans very easy. We had a soft sheep hide to soften up the room under the poof but no rug as of yet

The chair is called the SANDBY chair and it's from Ikea, It wasn't expensive and I thought I could always repurpose it.

The bookcase doubles as storage for toys at the bottom. It's also from IKEA and is called the HENSVIK Cabinet with shelf unit 

The cushions were bought from an Etsy shop which unfortunately isn't there anymore but you can always find similar ones on www.etsy.com

The light grey boxes and the blanket on the chair are from Zara Home

The sheep hide is from IKEA as well.

Gold metallic poof is from morocco and it was ordered from Etsy as well from this shophttps://www.etsy.com/shop/MaisonMarrakech

Goats dolls were purchased from IKEA, do you see a pattern here? we went with sheep, lambs, and goats as decorative accepts in the nursery.

This frame is from Mamas and Papas and was a gift to us from my cousin, It comes with plaster that you can use to do an imprint of your child's hand or foot, unfortunately every time we tried the plaster crumbled so I ended up using the imprint that Farida's daycare did of her hand, that still counts as me doing it right?

The books were almost all ordered from Amazon, not because they are not available here but because I was pregnant and working full time and didn't want to look around and I had already looked up the books I wanted to buy and found lists of must have baby books so it was easier to order them online.

the photos are of us with Farida on her Soboo' (an Egyptian celebration of the newborn baby once they are 1 week old- my baby is 1/2 Egyptian)

The little crown was made by me for her 1st tooth celebration party (a Palestinian tradition were the first tooth of the baby is celebrated, that's her other half!)

The owl candle and polar bear bank are both shopping finds by my husband in Bristol

the two ring jewelled boxes are our engagement party give/aways. The colours look great in her room and I figured she will end up using them one day!

A nice find by my parents in Turkey on one of their trips

Farida's bed was the most expensive item in the room, It was from Mamas and Papas and it has 3 level steps from birth to 3/4 years old, I figured I'd get a bed that would grow with her instead of getting a small bed at first (we co-slept for the first month only at my parents' house so they had a small cot)

The fitted bed sheets are from Etsy but the shop has closed.
The sleep sheep was a God Send! it serves as a white noise machine which worked wonders with Farida.

The cloud pillow was hand made and ordered from Kokoko shop on Etsy https://www.etsy.com/shop/kokokoshop

The baby mobile was hand made as well and ordered from Hingmade.by.hand

Blanket and Bunny from Mamas & Papas Middle East

The adjacent wall to the decal mural wall was kept simple. The frames are from IKEA, two of the frames have the baby nursery decor posters which I've designed and are available for sale on my Etsy shopNada's Printables 

The other two frames have a photo of Farida on her first tooth celebration party and a hand me down hand cross stitched image of a girl with lambs by my great aunt Mahdieh Bitar

The other side of the room had a full changing station as I'd like to call it.

The HENSVIK armoire from IKEA which holds Farida's dresses, shoes, and some other items that I want to keep out of sight. 

The BIRKELAND chest of drawers from IKEA as well has a changing mat and basket that collects wipes, creams, oil, and powder on top and a box shelf hung above that helps tremendously with changing because everything is at finger tips and I don't need to turn to leave Farida's side.

The box shelf isn't available at IKEA anymore and it wasn't actually white it was brown we just had our friend spray paint it to match the room's furniture

The handles on the chest of drawer were changed, those mint green handles are not the original handles I ordered them online on Etsy as well fromhttps://www.etsy.com/shop/ShopRethink

The two white big baskets are from Zara Home, the one on the right is a hamper where I throw dirty clothes while changing and the one on the left is lined with nylon bags and I use it as a trash basket.

The mirror is again a great find by my husband in Bristol

The custom cross stitched framed embroidery of Farida's name was a gift from my great aunt Mahdieh Bitar 

The changing mat was from mothercare MENA and I had 4 differently patterned covers custom made on Etsy by the same person who did her fitted sheets

The wall clock in the shape of a lamb was ordered via Etsy as well by https://www.etsy.com/shop/decoylab

This is all I have on Farida's Nursery. I hope you've enjoyed the tour, I will hopefully be sharing a home tour with you soon showing you my flat.

What did you like most about the nursery? Do you have any questions? Need help designing your own child's nursery? let me know!

XO

Tasmeem3ajeeb

So this is what we've been up to at the Pop-Up Market at #Tasmeem3ajeeb conference at VCUQatar university.

I've had a collection of ready to purchase Keep Calm nursery posters, hand detailed prints available upon order, and a selection of wood plaques for kids rooms and nurseries hand painted and adorned by Taffeta tailored bows, also available upon requests. The plaques could be monogramed or completely covered in a design like stripes or stars or whatever you choose, the paint and bows colours to choose from are endless!

Those items will be available to purchase or order today at the last day of the Pop-Up market at Tasmeem conference at VCUQatar and afterwards they will be available for you to order or purchase through my Instagram account NadasInteriors follow me there for all of my new products updates!

Wall Decal Finally Completed!

so after another Friday completely spent by, mainly my sister, and myself; measuring, sticking, cutting decals. The feature wall in baby Farida's nursery is finally done! Woohoo.

What do you think? We are loving it.

Baby Girl Nursery- Take 2, a project by me

So finally the furniture arrived, 10 days ago!, the crib is the Yale white crib from Mamas and Papas and the rest of the furniture is all IKEA. I was supposed to finish the wall behind the crib before the furniture arrived but things have been crazy around here, can you notice from how many times I said I will post pictures about the nursery and never got to it?

the pillows on the nursing couch and the cloud pillow in the crib are all purchases that I made on ETSY

the nursery walls are painted a light shade of grey except for the wall behind the crib which is supposed to be a feature patterned wall with peach and golden wall decals from Walls By MUR

I'm personally not into changing tables and baby bath stands, I'd rather get a dresser with a changing pad to go on top and a bath sponge.

A great way to upgrade any furniture like IKEA's is to replace it's hardware with nicer hardware. I replaced the white knobs with these mother of pearl brass knobs from Anthropologie which I had purchased originally for my bedside tables with a couple of extra ones which came in handy!

Finally last Friday I managed to in list the help of my sister and her friend to start on the feature wall behind my baby's crib. It took a very long time to stick these decals in place all perfectly aligned. We used a ladder, pencil, X-acto, masking tape, a straight edge, and a level and it's really an exhausting job. They did the majority of it really.

Here you can see the room starting to take shape

The golden triangles are actually metallic which add glamor to the nursery in a subdued way. I LOVE it and love the colour of the triangles and that they are not baby pink but a peachy pink colour.

so I will hopefully post again soon on finishing the feature wall with decals from Walls by Mur and some other updates in the nursery. Once the nursery is completed and I have my baby I will be sharing the rest of the apartment's design space by space and how we turned it around from absolute nothing-ness (I love inventing words) to the beautiful 3 bedroom small apartment that we absolutely love.

Baby Girl Nursery, a project by me

This is an ongoing project that I posted a teaser about earlier. It's my baby's nursery. My husband and I are currently expecting our first child- due early July- and we couldn't be happier. As you can tell from the title we found out that we are having a girl! and being the "design project manager" that I am I started designing the nursery right away. Take a look at the concept, colors, inspirations that influence my design and check out the album every now and then for pictures of the nursery before, during, and after the design works take place.

I knew I wanted my baby's nursery to be a place my husband and I would love and enjoy being in as much as our baby would once she got slightly older. I however wasn't keen on frills and bespoke royal baby sort of nurseries. I wanted something that was pretty and practical that had clean modern lines and that would grow with my baby.

I consider myself to be a girly girl but there is one thing that I hate so much that is associated with girls which is the color Baby Pink. I honestly absolutely hate those two baby associated shades; baby pink and baby blue. I however love other blues and pinks left within the spectrum. I wanted a peachy sort of pink, never mind the tone in this board it's a tad too peachy here.

I wanted to complement the peachy pink with a mint green and metallic gold for accents. All furniture was going to be white- personal preference- and I knew light grey was going to be used around the room as a neutral backdrop color.

I took my personal preferences, budget, size limitations, and needs to the Doha market and online market for that matter and came up with a mood board for my baby's nursery of things I'd like to use, or find things that are similar to. Beside having a color theme for the nursery my husband and I wanted to use the motif of a lamb in the nursery but not too much that it gets redundant, we hate things too matchy matchy

Then came time to create the layout and make sure everything would work in the room.

These are a few teaser partial elevations to give you an idea of what will be going on in the nursery

Comes the time for photos of the actual space now. This is the nursery, 1 of the 3 bedrooms in our apartment. The photo is taken at the time that we first went to check the apartment out for rental. You guessed right, this is the door that leads to the teeny balcony which I've posted about before.

As you can see the room is currently being used as a drying/ironing room and a place to store "stuff" we are planning on moving the laundry related activities to the 3rd bedroom, remains a store room today, once the baby comes and to get all of the extra stuff that we don't need sorted out before the baby comes!

and Here are other photos showing all the other sides in the nursery.

Stay tuned for more posts to follow on the progress in the nursery

So what do you think? have you done a nursery in your room before, would you like to share it with us? PM me!