I knew I wanted to stay away from yellow and green which seems to be the
go to for gender neutral. I started out by finding inspiration on
pinterest. Most of what I was pinning were neutral colored walls (think
grays and tans) with white trim and bright pops of color. Pinks,
corals, and orange for a girl and blues, greens and orange for a boy. We started with the easy stuff. Buying furniture. I knew I wanted furniture that could last and could eventually be used for a guest room when our future toddler wants to sleep in a race-car or princess bed. We ended up with a dark wood double dresser to use for our changing table and a convertible crib that can become a queen bed. We also ordered a Dutailer glider for a steal on costco's website. I loved the furniture when it finally arrived! Now we really needed to get started on the nursery. Alex started by painting the room a dove grey with white trim.
Then I picked out a white tree decal with bluebirds that I ordered from ETSY. I wanted my baby to have something to look at when we had story time and a sweet little tree seemed perfect without being too boyish/girlish. This is the decal Alex and my Dad we putting up when I started going into labor - procrastination at its finest!
Next we grabbed white floating shelves, white frames, and a white book shelf from IKEA to help set off the gray walls. All I needed now was to know which accent colors I would be adding to the room. This poised a serious problem as I wanted to have most of the nursery finished before the baby came. So I started by making tissue paper poms from a martha stewart tutorial in both our girl and boy colors to hang over the crib. Since these were so cheap and easy to make I didn't feel bad about doing both sets of colors. I wanted our baby to have different shapes to look at when laying in their crib so I ordered some white origami stars to hang with the poms. We went ahead and hung the blue and green poms, figuring we would be right 50% of the time (plus I felt so strongly we were having a boy). I also bought wooden letters in both our top girl name and boy name to paint and put above the crib. This was one of the projects I tackled on maternity leave. I started by painting the letters white. I then picked scrap book paper in our nursery colors and modge podged them to the letters. I think it turned out pretty great! 
Next I needed to figure out how to get the crib bedding we wanted for our little peanut. I had picked out several fabric choices to be handmade into bedding on ETSY. Both stores required 10-12 weeks for the bedding to arrive, which would mean we needed to order it way in advance. Here is where we strayed from the gender neutral plan. At one of our ultrasounds I had the tech look to see the gender, then they put the ultrasound picture in an envelope and sealed it. That sealed envelope was sooo tempting to look at! I needed to get it out of the house ASAP. That's when it hit me, I could have someone look at it and order our bedding for us. I just had to make sure that person wouldn't slip and accidentally tell us. The only person I trusted was my friend Leah. She also didn't find out the gender of her little guy until he was born, so I figured she would have the best chance of keeping it a secret. She was awesome; she didn't even tell her husband! She even gifted us our bedding and had them make a baby blanket and changing pad cover which I absolutely love! The final step to a completed nursery was the curtains. Again this was something I tackled during maternity leave. I knew which fabric I wanted for each gender and just waited to buy it after the baby arrived. Total cost for fabric was about $35 - waaaay cheaper than the cost to have them made which would have been about $100. So I busted out my trusted (read super old) sewing machine and got busy. They took about 2 hours from start to finish to make. With about 1 hour of that time trying to remember how to thread my machine :)
All in all I LOVE the finished result in our nursery and I know Ethan will love it too!
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