M’s parents wanted to get something to go along with the little one’s big girl bed, and a bedside table was the perfect thing. We spent a long time looking for one we liked, and I was sort of surprised that it was kind of tricky. I think it might have been because I had a fairly specific criteria list (big surprise there). It needed to be a small round or square table because there isn’t a ton of space between her bed and the nearby bookcases / window seat, and I didn’t want it to be stained wood or white. There’s so much white woodwork in the room, and I was afraid that a white table would just be white overload. I also love the dark cherry floors up here – they were a good match in color and width to the old pine floors we salvaged on the bottom two floors – but I don’t really have any wood tones outside of those floors and wanted to keep it that way. We just kept coming back to the Jenny Lind nightstand from Land of Nod (in Azure). I had a sample of Azure from last year when I ordered that and the Raspberry sample for E’s bed.
Side note: We briefly considered this aqua color for E’s bed, but I just couldn’t get the idea of a red bed out of my mind. And I also did not want to purchase said bed until I looked at the color sample in person. Raspberry (in my humble opinion) is a misleading name for it. It’s red. I wanted red, but wanted to make sure it didn’t show up a nice berry pink color.
I was a little concerned about the cost of the table, and suggested we hold off until Christmas, but if there’s anything that all of F’s grandparents like more than finding the perfect gift, I’m not sure what it is. And it is perfect, in every way. Eventually I want to find a cool lamp for the top, but I think that will be a holiday gift this year. For now we have a few favorite friends like the Hilary Lang doll (also from Nod) that I picked up in New York last year. There’s a nifty little drawer at the bottom that currently houses her hand band collection, but I’m sure there will be circulating treasures in there through the years. It has two surfaces for bedside books, and the always essential bedside tissues. Grandma remembered those should be Dora tissues, because she’s good like that.
I rearranged the Charley Harper bid prints above her bed – there were six over the crib and toddler bed, but I’m not sure I love the four here. The headboard is really tall already – this just adds to the height – and I have a cool paper project I’m about to do that I might add over the bed. I’m thinking I might relocate the six bird prints to the side of the window seat, opposite the bookshelves, and hang them in a vertical line which will free up the space over her bed for something a little less weighty, visually. I still love her sheep mobile, but might relocate that off center, over the couch in the box bay area.
The table is tall enough to add some fun color, and although it’s certainly not neutral, I happen to think aqua goes with just about anything – red, pink, plum, navy, green, orange, gray, brown, gold… so I think it can hang with whatever direction this room might take in the next fourteen years, and beyond.
I’d personally like to freeze her at four (minus the annoying whining parts), but I don’t think that magic button exists. I kind of squint at the photo below and picture a long limbed fourteen year old sitting in that window seat reading a book or talking on the phone, or stretched across that bed, knees bent, legs swinging up in the air above her.
And then I stop squinting and watch her play with Madeleine, grateful for the moments that I do have.
Thanks for this post. I have been on the fence about purchasing this night table and your post helps. On their website it looks like a nice light blue, but in your photos it looks more green and very bright. I still can’t decide!
Contact them – they will send you a free sample of the wood with the finishes. That’s what I did. My other daughter has the red bed, and I ordered that sample as well.
It is a bright aqua, I definitely wouldn’t call it light blue.