Baby Ben's Nursery: The Concept

Central Theme: M&Ms

Reason: Bright, bold colors, good for baby boy or girl (I've had the concept since before the pregnancy even began). Also, I collected M&Ms memorabilia in college and used it to decorate my dorm room...so I already had a ton of stuff we could use for decor. Though I knew it would be a bit difficult to find officially licensed M&Ms stuff for certain items (crib sheets, hamper, etc.), the good news is, most anything in a solid primary color will work.

What we have so far: A white crib (DaVinci Emily 4-in-1 from Target)A white glider/ottoman combo with blue fabric - got it second-hand off of Craigslist.

Two white bookshelves for storage.

We decided to go with white furniture because the room is on the small side, and closed-in as well (no windows) - so we didn't want to put a bunch of black furniture in there along with all the bright colors, feeling like that might overwhelm the small (10' x 12') space.

Floor covering: The flooring in the room is hardwood (original hardwood flooring from 1929, when the building was opened as a department store). My mom wanted something a little softer for the baby's room. We searched high and low for affordable carpet tile that would fit the room, but never could find anything we were both happy with. A couple of weeks ago, I started looking at rugs, and I found a set of oh-so-adorable M&Ms/sport-themed rugs. They had one each for baseball, football, soccer, and basketball.

Since the rugs are already a mosaic, I thought it might be cute to get one of each and make a giant mosaic rug out of them. They're slightly larger than 3' x 4' each, so altogether the big rug should be about 6 1/2' x 9 2/3 ' - not too bad, and should cover most of the open space in the center of the room.

Paint: As I previously mentioned, the nursery is an interior room, with no windows of its own. This isn't too bad, because the door is a huge loft-style door, and it opens out to our living room, which is very narrow, and lined with windows. So there's plenty of natural light only a few feet away from the nursery. But I still wanted to take this into account when choosing how to paint the room. Add to that the fact that we're renting, and I really didn't want to paint a whole bunch just to have to leave it behind some day.


I decided on a color-block pattern...sort of similar to what you see above...but not nearly as extensive. We're only doing one row of 9-inch blocks around the top of the walls - and only three walls at that, because the fourth wall, the one that leads from the nursery to the bathroom/closet area, is taken up by another of those huge loft doors that I mentioned earlier.

Our color blocks will alternate: red - blue - yellow - green. I left out orange, even though there is, technically, an orange M&M character. Why? Because I just don't like the color orange. That's why!

Misc.: As I mentioned, I have plenty of M&Ms stuff for decor. I also bought the traditional wooden letters to spell out "Benjamin" over the crib. Those will be painted in the same color pattern as the blocks.

I have two wonderful girlfriends coming over on Sunday to help me paint. I'm so lucky to have such good friends! Mr. Citysaur could do the painting, but he's plenty busy with classwork for his graduate school classes, so I'm trying to keep his load as light as possible. He will be helping me prepare the area by moving furniture and taping off our design on Saturday, though!

Unfortunately, the room won't be finished for a while, because our dresser/changing table combo is currently being handcrafted by my father-in-law, who lives 300 miles away. Likely, we won't get it until they come up for the family shower next month.

But I promise to get some results pictures up as soon as it starts looking like something!