A little flair in the nursery

An update, as requested by you all who are following my nursery project...
The design goal? A soothing space in which I would enjoy spending countless hours- heck, the baby won't know the difference!

It's only because I know you all won't judge me too harshly that I share this disasterous mess I had to clean out prior to painting. Once my lovely office, then a dumping ground for everything without a home. Now, a blank slate ready to be transformed.

This past weekend, my mom, sister and I painted the nursery- what a relief to have that out of the way.  I added a little more "oomph" with a gradation of light to dark on the walls. Just for the heck of it. After all, who says walls have to be a solid color, top to bottom? Disclaimer: anyone who says they're just going to 'throw up a little decorative finish treatment'- beware. Sometimes the simplest treatments can be the most challenging. When my paint was wet, the difference between the dark, medium and light mixtures was barely discernible. So I was essentially blending blind. It's only after it dries that you start to see splotches, etc.

I used Benjamin Moore Natura, which is their no VOC paint. Great coverage, no smell, and dries lightening quick.

It turned out quite nicely! The light lilac ceiling is quite subtle, but that's the compromise I made with hubbie who was initially opposed to a contrasting ceiling color.

Here you can see the gradation a bit better. The contrast is not quite as dramatic as it appears in the photo. Crazy how hard it is to photograph this room, with all the strong light streaming through the windows.
We have 2 chairs, both very neutral. Takes up a bit of space, but we both wanted places to sit. With craigslist offerings, sometimes you can't be too picky.  But lucky for us, they work nicely. The warmth of the yellow chair plays off nicely against the cool walls. Plus, we can dress them up with toss pillows if we wanted to get really fancy.

So, that's where I'm at now, design-wise.

Next step, select a new rug. After painting the walls and ceiling these nice light pastels, I just can't imagine adding our vibrantly colored old living room rug. Too much stimulation.

So, back to my plethora of online sources to find just the right rug for our nursery.

Something that goes with Paprika, my lovely Balinese bird kite, hopefully.

I'd like to keep it gender neutral, so if our next wee one is a boy, we can still reuse it.

image source

Here's what I Don't want to do. Ack, pepto bismol overload. I believe this was one of Tori Spelling's kid's nurseries. Blech!

All you fantastic rug researchers out there- got any great ideas for me?