Nursery Decorating Woes

Now that it's been a week and a half since we moved Katie into her big girl room, I finally felt like I could go into the nursery and work on switching out the bedding.  I felt ill removing the perfect flower bedding that I had used for both Ellie and Katie.  I love this set and I was desperately hoping that this baby would be a girl so I could look at it for another two or three years.  So right off the bat I was setting myself up for an underwhelming experience.

Once I had all the girly bedding stripped away, I started to open up the boy alphabet bedding.  I put the pillow sham on our small Pottery Barn Kids pillow and was upset to see that it was huge on the pillow. So I went and checked the girly sham from PBK and saw that the dimensions on the tag were exactly the same as the new sham.  Odd.  The old one is a snug fit and this one is way too big.  Not a good start, but I told myself I could try to shrink it.

Then I pulled out the crib skirt.  I wasn't sure if I'd have to wash it first or not, but I knew either way, I'd have to iron it.  But first, I wanted to see how it fit on the crib.  I thought it was odd that the skirt was pooling on the floor so I checked to make sure I had it on properly and took a step back.  On the crib's lowest setting about 3-4 inches of fabric were on the floor on all three sides.  Seriously, how can this be?!  At this point I was on the verge of tears.

I went searching for a navy blue crib skirt that I have for my nephew's crib set and pulled that out.  I noticed the package said it had a 12 inch drop for the skirt.  So then I checked out the PBK one and see that it has a 16 inch drop.  I suspect it's just the perfect length for a Pottery Barn crib on the lowest mattress setting.  Had I been able to buy the crib skirt for Ellie's set 9 years ago (I believe it was either sold out or backordered.) I might have already known from experience that the skirt was going to be too long.  But since my mom made the skirt for that set I was blissfully unaware.

I'm tired and exhausted.  Naps don't happen for me at all thanks to a dog who barks when I try to sleep and a few other factors like me having to pick Ellie up at school when I would like to be sleeping.  I don't have the desire or the energy to alter a crib skirt for this new bedding set.

I sat on the nursery floor and cried for a bit.  Bryan offered to buy a new crib if that would solve the problem but I told him I didn't want it.  Then I decided to try the crib skirt from the girly set with the boy sheeting to see if I could live with it.  I thought it was a possibility until I added the baby blue mesh bumper.  I really dislike baby blue for boys and this was just too much.  I sent Bryan another text with a picture of that combination.  He suggested finding somethign that works, as in another bedding set.  No, I already brought wall decor that worked with this and my chances of finding something I like that goes with the wall color are slim to none.  I'm picky, and when it comes to decorating a nursery I have to have everything just so or I'll fixate on everything that is wrong.

I started to wonder what I'd have to do to make the crib skirt work.  I can't hem it from the bottom since it has a design and applique work at the bottom.  My only choice would be to hem it from the top.  After I had my little pity party and cried again about the bedding situation I put the skirt back on the bed and tucked about three or four inches under the mattress on one side.  That gave me the look I wanted.  So now I know what has to be done.  I either need to alter the crib skirt myself, or take it to a seamstress.  I'm not sure which option I'm going to go with at the moment.  I really don't want to get into a sewing project.

I talked to my mom and she suggested running it through the washer and dryer to see if it shrinks up a bit so that if I take on the alterations myself I don't find myself having to alter the crib skirt twice.  The bedding is in the wash right now and will be going in the dryer soon.  Here's hoping that it shrinks a bit.    If not, I will probably cry a bit more.

On the bright side, I do like the way the bedding looks and I think it goes nicely with the color of the room and the wall art I picked for the nursery.