ideas for a shared room

Part of my need to nest and feel like I did something to prepare for this kid I've been gathering ideas and moving furniture and putting things back and taking things off the wall and browsing on Pinterest for shared ideas for a boy and girl and can't say I've been WILDLY inspired although these two big sister/baby brother shared room boards were very me. 

The absolutely have to change items are: 1) curtains 2) crib sheet for boy 3) changing pad. The have to add items are a bed for Alice and some artwork and accessories that's about him and not just her.

An aside about the bed for Alice. Originally I mentioned we'll just go right for buying a bunk bed and then only set one up but we don't have the space to have some spare bed hanging out so until the kids are ready for bunks which could be 2-4 years down the line, I think a toddler bed would be a nice in-between since they take up less space. To make myself feel better, there's a pretty economical version from, of course, Ikea that extends into a twin. Plus the style of it I felt really goes with the crib we have now but of course, the Ikea less than a mile from my house doesn't have it in stock. Bleep.

We are not fully ready to put her into a toddler bed for the simple fact that it's a containment system and one less thing we have to battle with while dealing with a newborn. Everyone and their mom has said "keep her in the crib" so that's our plan. BUT, that doesn't mean I don't want to get her used to the idea so before the baby's born, I want to introduce the bed into the room so she gets used to it the way I saw some bloggers introduce the bed to their daughter. Plus visually having both the crib and the bed would signify that this room is intended for two kids.

So anyway you put that together and roughly this is all the elements we have together. We wanted to introduce a sort of space theme for the boy. I kept trying to put the two elements together somehow in an easy to explain way and it finally came to me: Wonderland meets Tomorrowland.

Matt and I played around with the furniture arrangement and a measuring tape and I knew I wanted to have the crib and the bed on opposite sides with something in the middle to make them feel like that was their "side". Then you just put their artwork on their wall and boom.

Currently there's two versions. One with the dresser in between:

And one with the bookcase in between:

So that's where we're at with ideas and layout and execution plan. When we'll get to doing stuff? Maybe next month. I want to at the same time move forward with combining them to get Alice used to the new changes and at the same time keep things the same just for a little while longer...