Q&A: Decorating for a new baby

Hi there Dollymama! I have a question for you. I am having little girl in April. This is the first girl in 28 years on my husband's side...so everyone is VERY excited. I am trying to put a nursery together, but I am becoming oh so frustrated! I know that I need to go with a girly theme in some way (because I know that lots of pink is coming my way), but I'm trying to go a bit unisex as well. I don't want to have to buy everything over again if the next little one is a boy (decorating and bedding wise). Do you have any suggestions?

See now? Here's a smart reader. If you want to get me talking, ask me something. :)

My first thought about this is, are your relatives the type that are going to want to buy lots and lots of baby goods next time around? If so, I would just go all-out on the girl stuff now, and let potential future sons wait until you're crossing that bridge. :) Plus, nice quality secondhand baby stuff will sell great on ebay or whatever, so if you really want to part with the stuff to finance boy things later on, go for it!

That being said, if you do want to try to get the girl thing going on while keeping some versatility for adding a boy into the mix later, my suggestions are these:

-go for yellow walls. Yellow is a great color for walls because it doesn't jump out at you screaming "I'm a YELLOW WALL!" like some colors do (well, unless you get "sunshine" yellow like I once did--it just about matched the school bus...). To the right yellow you can add white lace, reds, pastels or brights, pink and lavender, whatever. I love yellow because there's almost no color you can't make work with it.

-On furniture such as dressers or armoires in the baby's room you can get a classic color or wood, but get fun or beautiful drawer pulls or hardware to work with your current theme. Those are easy to change in the future and not too expensive.

-If you are getting a rocking chair for the nursery you could go with leather (easy to clean spit up off of!!) or denim, and then add girlie throw pillows.

-Artwork for the walls can be moved to other rooms of the house later, so you can get totally girlie prints now, and them move them on to her big girl room later if you need to put up some "little slugger" stuff later. :) Or, you can get some great, fun children's art that is for everybody, such as what I sell here.

-Mobiles and other decorative things that hang from the ceiling add personality but are easily switched out.

-You can get a classic crib in white or wood, and then get bedding that you like. Most people get attached to the comforter stylein a set, so you can always cut corners by getting basic crib sheets that will work for anybody, and get the adorable bedding that you love to go with it.

-Basically, on big ticket stuff like furniture, go classic, and on the accessories, go specific. Put up shelving that is classic, but add girlie picture frames, stuffed animals, whatever. Later the same shelf will work just as well for a boy.

-The other thing to consider is just planning on using the room you start with for the kid that starts in it. Go all-out for your little girl, and later do a new room for a boy if you have one and have another room. :)

-In a lot of cases it seems that grandparents love to have new things to buy for new babies, so I would not worry too much about future purchases. It's a sad Grandma that has nothing to buy for their new grandbaby! :) What grandparents don't buy can usually be gotten through gift registries, or second hand if need be.