Updating the Jungle Room

Yes, I know – TWO decorating posts in a week. WHAT?! I told you I was a busy little chickadee over the long weekend. This time I attacked Jack’s nursery.

I wrote the original post about the nursery shortly after Jack came home from the hospital in March. Our theme was giraffes and monkeys and I just kind of threw the room together without putting in too much thought. Basically just moving into our house + popping out a preemie = not in the mood to bring it (or “consider it brought-en” as you will).

Each evening while hanging out in the rocking chair and feeding Jack his last bottle of the day, I’d look around the room and think about what I wanted to change. My mental list got longer and longer, until I finally had a chance to make some changes over Labor Day weekend. Nothing super huge, just a few tweaks here and there.

So, what did I do?

Pennant Update
I had made a fun little fabric pennant to go over Jack’s bed. However, I totally ran out of the ribbon when I was making it, so it ended up being kind of cheesy. Not having the time (or energy) to deal with it meant I tried to make the best of the situation by just hanging it over the crib. Now that I had some time to devote to the room, I made a super easy replacement pennant (my guest post with instructions is coming soon to Scribbletown.com) and ripped the old one down. The new pennant reaches all the way around the room and looks so much better. Also, since I literally stapled the fabric to the yarn it was incredibly quick to make!

The first version of the jungle themed baby pennant
Ooh, ahh check out that new pennant. The baby is pretty cute too.

Baby Bookshelves
I hated the way this wall looked with the stupid prints on it. They were just too small and dinky to be of any interest in the room. I added  bookshelves to the wall so that we’d have plenty of space to store all Jack’s baby books and love the way it turns into a pretty and colorful focal point. I blogged about the shelves in the Pinterest challenge post, but never shared the ones I did for Jack’s room. It makes such a world of difference!

Old wall with dumb pictures
The pretty new bookshelves (which are actually $3.99 spice racks from Ikea). Still debating whether to add a third row of shelves, as I have two more leftover from the project.

Curtains
I don’t have a “before” picture of the window — probably because it was so uninteresting that I didn’t bother to photograph it. I made a super quick cafe curtain from some leftover fabric. Honestly, it was the easiest curtain ever; I just measured and cut out a big rectangle a couple inches wider than the window, hemmed it and used curtain clips to hang it from a cheapo curtain rod. I love the way the curtain finishes the room and it is totally child-safe since Jack can’t even get near to reaching it.

Easiest curtains EVER and the room looks so much more complete now!

Picture Update
In the first room design, I had framed scraps of fabric and hung them over the dresser/changing table. When I took down the jungle canvases to make way for the bookshelf project, I really liked the drawings but I just wasn’t a fan of the cheap way they were mounted onto the frames. They were only $2.50 each at Target, so I really can’t complain much. All I did was rip the canvas off of each frame (they were held tight by glue and came apart pretty easy) and then put them in my existing photo frames. So much better and Jack LOVES staring at the lion during changing time!

The old pictures — I framed three different kinds of fabric (the same fabric used for the original pennant).
The updated dresser view — these prints look so much better in frames.

So there you go, it just took a couple hours total to make some small changes, but now I feel like I can live with Jack’s room for a little longer. You know, until I get bored again and trash the whole place to redo it with a different theme!

How about you, is there a room in your house that just needs a few little changes to be liveable again?

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3 thoughts on “Updating the Jungle Room”

  1. OhMYword. Your gorgeous clean home is making tears come out of my face. Gorgeous. I am going to visit more later.if i fon’t get a shower, DYFUS may get the kids.

    1. I’m totally stalking your blog RIGHT THIS MINUTE while eating lunch. And my house is only clean because I have 4 less kids than you. =)

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