Despite the fact that she won’t be sleeping in the nursery for a few months (and will be with us in our room), I still want to have things in place before our daughter arrives.

We bought furniture for our toddler, which (in theory) should last him through his teenage years. Then I decorated and organized his new room, which you can read about here. But he will still be sleeping in the nursery crib until the fall, when we feel he will be ready to sleep in a double bed in his new room. So in the interim, he is using his big boy room for everything else, like playing and getting dressed, which is helping with the transition before the new baby comes.

My attention then went to re-decorating the nursery for a little girl, but I had to work around the existing furniture we wanted to reuse, and a glider that is in a bright lime green. So I really wasn’t quite sure which direction I was going, and could go. One day, however, inspiration came from this find at HomeGoods: A lamp with flowers in lime green, bright orange, hot pink and a striking blue.

It matched the lime green in the existing nursery perfectly, but I still needed to find wall art. Since I moved most of the existing wall art to my toddler’s big boy bedroom, I needed to replace those items. Being on a budget, I wasn’t keen on shopping in any of the name brand stores, but even so, they didn’t have the colors I was looking for anyway.  I finally decided to use the same idea I had for my son’s nursery  – wooden letters, numbers and frames from Michaels, hand painted using craft paint in the same color scheme as the lamp, to paint the wood decorations. So I took the lampshade to better match the colors and went off to Michaels to get the items I needed.

However, when I got there, on my way to the craft paint, I walked by an aisle of summer items for outdoor entertaining – napkin holders, plastic tumblers and plates, bowls and placemats, and a variety of other outdoor decorations – for 40% off. Yet, it wasn’t the sale that caught my eye – it was the colors. The same as the ones in the lampshade.

Since I have watched more that my fair share of HGTV, I knew that some of these items, while not traditional wall decor, could be re-purposed as such. So I saw plastic bowls with the fluted edges that, when placed on a wall, had a similar design (and color) pattern as the lampshade.

Then I found three placemats and put those above the crib for a bold focal point.

I took two napkin holders that had a flower in the center to hold the napkins in place on a windy day outside, and hung them on the wall so the flowers dangled.

Finally, I picked out outdoor flower decorations and hung them over the dresser.

For about $40 of decorations, $40 for the lamps, and another $50 for a set of bright blue sheets and a changing pad cover from Land of Nod, I decorated the new nursery for around $130. Now it is a one-of-a-kind room ready for a little princess. And in a couple of years when she moves into a big girl room, we have a set of items for a fabulous outdoor party.