explore. dream. discover.: {The Nursery}

I feel like we pulled this nursery together in record time. I had known for a long time certain elements I wanted for the nursery (like the Sharon Montrose animal prints), and we actually bought our crib really early on (like back in September), but getting past that was difficult. I waffled back and forth on the crib, we took forever to purchase the dresser, I could not for the life of me figure out what to do about a rocker/glider. We were just stumped. So we didn't do much of anything with the nursery until I got really sick with the norovirus at 32 weeks.

So what does the norovirus have to do with our nursery? Well, this virus was nasty. I ended up in the hospital severely dehydrated and with a high fever. These things kicked my body into preterm labor. Luckily, once they got my hydration and fever under control my body stopped trying to have this baby and all was well (as well as can be when in recover mode, right?!). But the whole preterm labor scare really kicked us into high gear. After I was healthy again I just started ordering things, making decisions and getting stuff done. The whole thing went from a room full of all our wonderful baby shower gifts to a real-life nursery in the matter of a week or so.

A little bit about the room... I knew I wanted the room to incorporate elements of travel (we hope to share our love and passion for travel with her from the very start) and animals (I am a HUGE animal lover and I hope I can teach her to love and care for animals, too!). I didn't want the room to feel overly girly/frilly/pink, but definitely wanted it to be bright and feminine. Of course, I wanted the room to be practical and we needed to do it all on a budget (we've pretty much had to furnish our entire house from the ground up since buying it in August!). And here's where we landed (sources for most everything listed after the photos):