THE NURSERY

With a little over 8 weeks to go until baby's due date, we are so pleased that the nursery is finished and ready for one very lucky boy. I have joked that Ricky and I are a great team, with Ricky seeing to the decorating and DIY bits and me being a bit like Linda Barker (if you know, you know) and doing the decision making.

Our second bedroom in the house is such a lovely size and has allowed us the freedom to choose pretty much anything that we wanted for our baby boy's nursery. It's the brightest room in the house too; overlooking the back of the house. I can already see our grown up boy having a lovely room when he's older; with the space to have a double bed and a huge wardrobe on the other side of the room.

Like the rest of the house, we chose to stick to our scandinavian and ethical style that is featured in pretty much every room. We started by choosing Valspar Paint wall colours that went nicely together to create a bold and striking abstract feature wall. We collaborated with them for most of the rooms in the house (which I am still yet to share some other rooms!), so chose a gorgeous grey shade called Rocky Mountain Mist for one abstract triangle. For the other, we did pick out a few different blue/green shades, but felt something wasn't quite right. In the end, we used the in-store at B&Q colour scanner to scan the colour on a cushion I bought for the nursery, which was the perfect slate grey meets teal blue.

We was lucky to be able to get away with buying tester paint pots. So in actual fact, the paint on the walls only cost us £6, because the white was already freshly painted when we moved in! We only had to go over the odd mark here and there.

Shall we take a look around at the room? Yessssssssssss.

Starting with the prints on the wall, I have teamed up to collaborate with Desenio again and am super happy with the four A4 size prints we chose. This time, we went for the oak wooden frames which are an amazing quality and match the furniture in the room.

From left to right: Exploring Poster | Footprints Poster

 Jungle Friends Poster | Alphabet Poster

As always, the quality of Desenio prints is amazing and they always have so many on offer. It is handy signing up to their emails too, as they often send out inspiration for different rooms, which can really get the creative juices in your brain flowing. Being able to buy the frames (with many different options to also choose from) that fit the prints perfectly, makes it much more easier to shop in one place. And did I mention how affordable Desenio is?! You can easily shop around on a tight budget!

My code “ASHLEIGH25” gives 25% off prints* on all of our websites between 2 and 4 April. Follow @desenio for more inspiration!

*Except for frames and handpicked-/collaboration/personalised prints.

If you think I have the time or patience to stencil individual triangles across a large wall, you're quite wrong. The super cool triangles on the wall are insane wall stickers are from a brand I discovered on Instagram called Happy Decs. They have so many lovely designs and a pack of 220 stickers is just £19.99 - which even allows you to choose up to 4 different colours at the checkout!

I chose this beautiful crochet ceiling light from Ikea, which is part of the IKEA INDUSTRIELL collection and priced at just £25. It takes away the bright white light and keeps the room warm and cosy; perfect for a baby's room.

I headed straight to Wayfair for the cot, which has so many Scandinavian style cots for a fraction of the price. We went for the Wayfair Zaire cot bed, made from a solid wood with white furnishings and suitable from birth up to 5 years as it turns into a cot bed.

It is such a lovely quality and goes perfectly with the Wayfair Hartley clothes rail that I also bought. I figured it will be so much easier with a clothes rail than a wardrobe for the first few years and this nordic style one has a cool teepee style to it; matching the room lovely! We will be using it to show his very best clothes as we have another storage system for other clothes. To finish, I picked up some super cute bear themed clothes dividers from Belo and Me; making it much more organised.

The Tutti Bambini Nursing Chair is something I think finishes the room off nicely. It is super comfortable and actually, I was using it as a computer desk chair before we put the nursery together! It reclines quite far back, has plenty of pockets on the side to keep things (I imagine I will be storing biscuits in these, ha!) and comes with a matching foot stool. I already can't wait to feed baby at 4am, rocking away in this.

The animal wall heads are my favourite bargain this year. I had been searching high and low for handmade animal wall heads, but they can put you out of pocket by a fair bit! However, a quick look in H&M, I saw this giraffe and rhino sitting in the H&M home kids section on the top shelf. Looking rather lonely, I pulled them down and could not believe it when I saw they had a flat back and a hoop for hanging on the walls.... and only £12.99 each! Sold!

I had been looking around for a large enough chest of drawers that matched the Scandi style of the rest of the nursery furniture. However, they are either really expensive or affordable but not big enough. I didn't see the point in buying a separate changing table and so looked for a chest of drawers that was big enough to have a large changing area on top.

I figured I wouldn't get much better than the IKEA HEMNES chest of drawers, which have 8 drawers and is 160cm wide. Now we have separate drawers for different things, different sizes; and a more than generous sized area for all baby's changing needs. To personalise it to the room a little, I bought some grey porcelain bear head drawer knobs online - and so really, you would never know the unit was from IKEA! I am chuffed with it!

We have quite a large space on the wall on this side of the room, so I will probably fill it with more prints or maybe some shelves in the future.

I have dressed it with an abstract printed changing mat, a wicker skincare basket packed full of nappy creams and baby massage oils, a nappy waste bin from Angel Care and of course, a baby scan photo which makes me smile every time I look at it.

We also picked up the RASKOG trolley from IKEA, which makes for the perfect nappy and wipes station! We chose it in blue which matches the room amazingly. We already have all our newborn size nappies in it, ready and waiting for poop explosions!

We are so pleased with the outcome of the nursery. I honestly cannot stop chilling out in here and just taking everything in. I cannot believe how fast pregnancy is going and that a little baby will be in here soon (well after 6 months of co-sleeping in his Tutti Bambini Cozee!), so just a nappy changing and dressing room for now.

I have well and truly had to give up the second bedroom which was previously used as an extra clothes storage and dressing room. However, I couldn't think of a better reason to give it up!

Disclaimer: In collaboration with Desenio. Any other brand collaborations are always disclaimed, otherwise products are purchased with our own money. All words, opinions and photographs are my own.