Creating the Perfect DIY Baby Girl Nursery for our Victoria #PassionProject

For the last 9 years of my life, decorating nurseries and bedrooms has always been about my sons. Everything is totally BOY. The rooms are painted “boy blue.” There are sports posters everywhere. There are trucks and LEGOS and cars and trains on the ground. The furniture is dark wood with blue comforters. Their bedrooms just scream, “BOY!” I will tell you, I loved every single second of decorating the rooms for my 4 sons, it was blast. Not many moms have 4 sons, so for me… it was always just that much more fun each time we created a brand new room for one of our son’s. Our William, Alexander, Benjamin and Henry have been very lucky in having “cool” rooms, and I’ve always loved walking into their rooms and just feeling how each of their rooms truly “defines” them and their personality.

All that being said… you can imagine my surprise when I found out that our 5th baby was a GIRL! A GIRL! I couldn’t believe it. I remember on our way home from the sonogram appointment that day, my husband turned to me and said… “Wow… dresses and hair bows and a pink nursery! What do you think mama!?”

I was speechless. For the very first time, I was going to be able to experience creating a pink nursery. It was always a dream of mine to create something with my husband that was beautiful and perfect and feminine and totally-pink, but I just never thought it would actually be a.. well, a reality!

It seemed to perfect because at the exact time Matt and I were able to create Victoria’s nursey and thinking of what we wanted it to look like and how we wanted it to be, American Express kicked off a new program designed to enable, inspire and encourage people to pursue their passion projects. The #PassionProject brings together leading experts, how-to advice, personal profiles and a monthly contest to inspire consumers to pursue the projects that are important and meaningful to their lives.

Our #PassionProject was creating a nursery for our daughter. I have tears in my eyes as I type this because this project was a huge passion for us, it was a project that brought love and joy and happiness and a whole lotta passion our girl. This was something we’ve waited a LONG time to be able to do… and it was emotional for us to be able to do this together. Basically what we needed to do was transform one of the boy’s rooms into a gorgeous girl room. My husband and I knew we wanted the room to be pink, but we didn’t want it to be too pink. We sat down and literally outlined what it was that we wanted to create… and my husband wanted to do it on his own, with his own hands, creating something totally special for his daughter.

We created a masterpiece for our girl…

So how did we accomplish this #PassionProject of ours?

We wanted our color scheme to be pink and gray. We’ve always LOVED that combination, so we thought it would be perfect for her room. We hired someone to help us with the pink stripes, we knew we would have trouble doing that on our own, but we dove into everything else – just the two of us… with a little help from the boys.

We went to Home Depot and bought Cape Cod Wainscoting, Crown Molding and paint! My husband had NEVER done wainscoting or crown molding before in his life, but we were up for the challenge! It was a little difficult to do the wainscoting since we were doing it all DIY, and it look a little longer than we thought, but after we got all the pieces up… we then painted it a pale gray. I’m telling you, it was such an accomplishment for my husband when it was up and done. He felt so happy with it and I know we was so pleased as to how it looked. The crown molding was a little difficult for us, too. The corners gave us trouble, but we worked through it and were just inspired to get it done and completed for our little girl!

I (personally) had a BLAST shopping for the decor in her room. The furniture is Bonavita, the Sawyer Collection… and the color is Linen Grey, which I love because it matches the gray paint perfectly. I wanted to make sure the added pieces… lamps, wall hangings, bedding and curtains were ALL pink and had different shades of pinks. I felt it would really add to the girl factor and make it pop and just standout beautifully.

And then we painted the closet a “hotter” pink to make it totally stand out from the rest of the room. We even got the older brothers involved!!

I couldn’t have been more happy with how our nursery turned out for our baby girl Victoria. She arrived on July 9th, 2013 and the moment I walked into her nursery with her, I cried tears of joy. She was HOME.

Thank you American Express for encouraging people to follow their #PassionProject ideas. It is such a beautiful thing to see and to do and to watch blossom!

Win Fuel for Your #PassionProject
Continuing monthly through the end of the year, individuals who have a specific project in mind can share their passion project and vie for one of ten $2,000 awards. The ten monthly winners will be chosen based on the creativity, originality and quality of the passion projects submitted. Projects can be submitted and shared at youtube.com/americanexpress.

Disclosure: This is a sponsored posting with American Express.