Play All Day - Kohl's + Carter's

“This post is sponsored by Kohl’s. I was paid for this post and received the included Carter’s clothing as compensation.”

Ella is almost 19 months old and she is as active as ever! Her communication skills are increasing by the day with new words, expressions, and her imagination and play has really gone to the next level. She is pretty non stop on the go but there is still ONE activity I can get her to sit down with me and do, read. She loves pulling books off her shelf and bringing them to me to read to her. I will often find her sitting under her bookshelf going through the pages and reading to herself, and pointing to the pictures.

Ella's Nursery

The day we found out we were having a girl my mind raced with ideas for her nursery. If only that could have happened with baby names! haha I have always had a love for interior design, but have never had the means to really do something with that passion while being young poor students renting apartments. Then you buy a home and you get all excited just to realize you have even less money to fix it up, because, well, you just bought a home! haha I guess that is how life goes right? All in due time! With that said I am so happy we have a special place for this baby girl to call her own in our first home together. It really was a labor of love!

We bought a fixer upper, and the walls in this room were in pretty bad shape and pretty filthy. Besides being a really gross dingy peachy yellow color, we had to spend a good amount of time scrubbing it all down before we could paint. The previous owners had super glued these glow in the dark space stars to the roof that required us prying them off with a paint scrapper that caused some of the drywall to tear off with them. It was a total pain and we had to spackle the holes after. We had to spackle a lot of holes in the walls actually. I keep saying "we" but really I did all of this because Trevor couldn't walk or bear weight on his foot at the time. So when I use the words labor of love, that is literally what it was for me! haha After the cleaning and filling in holes we were ready to paint and the new color transformed the room. It was bright, clean, and just happier looking!

When it came to the vision for this nursery I had a lot of ideas, there are so many adorable nurseries out there and the possibilities are endless. I did know one thing for sure though, I wanted something that was appropriate for a little girl, but that didn't look too saccharine. I wanted something she could really grow into. I also knew I wanted to use fun colors! We knew we were going to paint the nursery bright white and so I wanted to bring in color through the rest of the details. I decided early on that I wanted a statement rug that would add a lot of color to the room and serve as inspiration for the direction of the nursery. Finding a great rug without breaking the bank is always a challenge, and while I had to sacrifice on size for the sake of price, I ended up settling on this one which sparked my creative juices and got me excited to work from it. I feel like it is so much easier to create a look when you have something guiding the inspiration.