Improving Home: The Girls' Room, Final Before and After

I forgot to show you one of my favorite things in the girls' room.  My seven-year-old daughter's best friend gave this to her for her birthday last year:

If you don't know what it is, it's a picture of a temple, where we as Latter-Day Saints aspire to be married.
 

And this is another piece of artwork that my daughter finger-painted in kindergarten.  I think the art teacher at my daughter's school is amazing.




If you've been around this blog long enough to see the "before" picture, you'll know that it was posted a very long time ago.  Here it is one last time:

Before

After

And now I say GOOD NIGHT to the girls' room!

Glow-in-the-dark stars

Improving Home: The Girls' Room, Corner Four

I thought this day would never come.

The girls' room is crossed off my list so I can begin the boys' room. Would you like to see what we put on the walls?

The cross-stitch was done by little young me when I was ten or eleven. I nailed it up there with straight pins. My seven-year-old daughter painted the rainbow (but I think she was six when she did it) with a little artistic advice from my sister and me. Originally I was going to paint a rainbow, but I have very little talent for painting. It was my best friend's idea to have my daughter do it.

Best. Idea. Ever.

I can't remember if I told you the story about finding flower posters that match the wallpaper trim on AllPosters.com. Oh yes...I did. Here. Anyway, the frame on the left carries a few more of the flowers painted by Anthony Morrow. The butterfly on the right was painted by my oldest daughter when she was in kindergarten.

My daughter would not let me get rid of the huge kitty poster, so I cut them out individually to make a collage above her bed, which I like much better.

Okay, now for what we put on the beds:

I'm sorry, but this is my favorite stuffed animal/bug. I don't know which makes me happier, his face or all those feet!

These bears look like a big sister and a little sister who love each other, don't they?









I bought two black travel pillows like this at a yard sale for a buck a piece.

Then I took the leftover material from the dress I stole the valance bow from and hand-sewed it onto the front of one.

For the other one, I sewed on a couple of old iron-on flowers I've had in my craft box for ten years and some rick-rack I've had for almost as long.




I have never claimed to be good with a camera.

And lastly, the under-the-bed part was bothering me because it looked like this:

So I did this:

I know it's wrinkled, but it still looks better than the pajama crates (that's what we call them). Hemming all of those strips of material (left over from the bed skirt material I used to make the valance) and then tacking them to the bottom of the bed was a lot more work than you might think, but I'm glad I did it.

And I'm glad it's done.



The tally? I don't remember the exact prices of everything, but I'll give you close estimates:

The blanket and stuffed animals were gifts.
$10 art posters
$2 for 2 foam poster boards from Dollar Tree (just so you know, this curled when we painted it)
$4 paints
$200 bunk beds
$100 mattress (the other one is the mattress my husband slept on when he was a kid!)
$1 frame from a yard sale (spray-painted black)
$2 travel pillows
$36 for two bedspreads on clearance at K-mart
$1 yellow afghan from D.I. (second-hand store)
$40 for ten plastic crates from Family Dollar
$500 to replace the stinky carpet with vinyl...but now I can't remember if that was for both rooms or just one. I'll get back to you.

Add that to the $187 from the rest of the room and you get $1,083. I don't think I added the cost of paint anywhere, so I'll say the room cost about eleven hundred dollars. I'm looking forward to seeing if I can spend much less in the boys' room!

Good Things Come To Those Who Wait

Not long ago, I gave up my search for affordable plant stands and improvised instead. I found it strange that in almost no time, this plant stand practically fell into my lap, and for only twelve dollars!

So before I put Jack O. Lantern away until next October, I thought I'd share a picture.

Happy November!

Improving Home: The Girls' Room, Corner Three

I am not completely done, but I do have another corner to show you.

This is the lamp I bought at a yard sale for $3. It had a funny square lampshade with ribbon roses glued to it that I replaced with a cream-colored lampshade from Kmart for $7. It was an improvement, but still so plain.


Although I was going for plain because there is so much going on in the wallpaper, there was still something not right for me about this lamp. I was deLIGHTed when the light bulb turned on in my brain and said, "Glue some of that lace from the valance on it." So I did, and I loved it.


But then the peachness of the main section was bothering me. I planned to paint it pink, but then I got another idea that I am so excited about...mostly because I'm lazy: I taped some scrapbook paper around it.


I like the lamp so much better now, and I'm happy with the price.

So, for the tally. We were at $134. Now we add $10 for the lamp, $25 for the CD player, $10 for the toy kitchen (another yard sale), $5 for the picture frame, and $3 for the trash can = $187. As I said before, the table and chairs were free. They are not fancy by any means, but this is a table in a kid room: it's perfect.










So there you have it. Corner three. Unless I'm doing something crazy like giving birth, I hope to have the final corner ready by tomorrow night.

Improving Home: The Girls' Room, Corner Two

Did I mention the deadline was midnight?

Did I mention the deadline was just for the next corner?

The valance is finally done! I'll show it to you and then give you the long explanation of how it came to be:

First I looked and looked and looked for a plain yellow valance. Finally, I gave up and bought a yellow bedskirt from D.I. (a thrift store) for $1 and sewed a valance out of it. The only problem was, it looked like this:


I hated it. I was thinking it was going to be so easy to just use the bedskirt as it was...but then I realized the lining wasn't gathered like the front. Also I didn't like the white top. That was when I decided to crochet a top from some baby yarn I had that was the exact same color. I was happy that it also added some texture. Then I stole a cute pink bow off a hand-me-down dress that had an ink stain on it. Years ago, I salvaged this lace from some old sheets (I just couldn't throw it away). It was a little too white, so awhile back I used some Rit dye to make it cream-colored.


Then, I sewed that entire crocheted piece on by hand, both top and bottom.

Basically, what I'm saying is I spent WAY too much time making this valance. Hopefully it will seem worth it after my poked fingers heal. And at least I only spent one dollar.

Oh, and guess what I found in the window track when we were hanging the roller shade? The foot to my sewing machine! And did you spy that I painted the hands on the clock? Now I can see what time it is from across the room.

So, the price of corner number two: I don't know what I paid for the laundry hamper: maybe $15? The bedskirt-turned-valance was $1, the roller shade was $6, and so was the flower pot that came from Big Lots. This adds up to $28. Everything else was either gift or hand-me-down (the figurines, table, chairs). Tally: $106 + 28 = $134 so far.

There are only a few things left to do in this room, but my dishes are piling up.

So, I'll see you Sunday maybe?

Improving Home: The Girls' Room, Corner One

So Monday's here, but I'm not. Not really.

I've been sewing until my fingers bleed (from getting poked), but I'm still not ready to show you the after shots.

The good news is, I'm getting so much more done than I would have if I hadn't told you I'd be done days ago. So thanks for that!

I do have one corner that is ready for you:


This is the reading spot I told you about. It is also the dressing area, as you can see. I cannot take credit for the idea of putting books in baskets, but I loved it from the moment I heard it (because sloppy bookshelves hurt my brain). With this set-up, even my baby can put the books away nicely!

I bought the baskets on sale at K-mart, but I don't remember what I paid for them. I think around five for the small one and ten for the big one. The frames are 12 x 12s from Michael's and I believe I paid around five each (I have three) after using a coupon. The paper-towel-holder-pretending-to-be-a-shelf/blanket-holder was in the kitchen when we moved in. I almost got rid of it until I realized how well it matched the shelf on the other side of the window. I purchased the Precious Moments clock for $6 on clearance at K-mart, but I can't read the stupid thing unless I get close. I think I'm going to try to paint its hands black. The dresser was a steal for $75 new from a furniture store. I'll have to tell you the bartering story another day, but there is a scratch on top of this dresser that I covered with this beautiful runner that a friend from Finland made for us when we got married:

The blanket and chair were gifts, so the total amount of money spent on this corner was $106. This sounds like a lot to me, but considering that I was using boxes for my girls' clothes before we got the dresser, the dresser alone has been worth that much to me.

I am giving myself a new deadline (so cool that I can do that): Wednesday, the day after tomorrow.

Fingers crossed.

Improving Home: The Girls' Room After

Is today tomorrow or was that yesterday?

I've had a few snags. My sewing machine is suddenly missing all of its good feet, and you and I both know it's hard to do things when you don't have feet.

I plan to go pressure foot shopping online soon, but because I'm tired of waiting to finish the valance for the window, I started sewing the finishing touches BY HAND last night.

LIKE A PIONEER.

At this rate, it will probably be Monday before I have any pictures for you. Sorry! I do have a sort of chart. Does that excite you at all?

What We Did----------Why

Replaced carpet with vinyl
-----I already told you!
Got bunk beds
-----Because we have two daughters and this room is small
Put shelves in the closet
-----All I can say is: life was messy until we got that done!
Painted a pink room pink
-----Because we had to move the baseboards down
Turned outlets around
-----Because upside-down outlets are annoying
Framed posters
-----Because the swamp cooler made all of them ripple
Included daughter's artwork
-----Because her artwork is awesome
Put in roller shades
-----Because I hate mini blinds and 2-inch blinds are expensive
Made a valance
-----Because I couldn't find a plain yellow one at K-or-Walmart
Shopped at K-or-Walmart
-----Because I have no where else to shop *sniff*
Gave up on yellow bedspreads
-----The only ones I could find online were too expensive or cheap
Bought cream bedspreads
-----BECAUSE THEY WERE ONLY $18 EACH!
Removed kids' bookshelf
-----Because kids' bookshelves always look sloppy to me
Designed throw pillows
-----Because it saved me a lot of money
Glued lace on the lampshade
-----How could I not?

*Acknowledgments: 1. My friend's husband Steve helped with the shelving while they were here ON VACATION. Isn't that nice? 2. My best friend helped me paint the pink room pink. 3. My husband helped me turned the outlets around because I'm way too chicken to try to do something like that myself. I'm also afraid of lightening.

Improving Home: The Girls' Room Before

Now that I have only about a month left before the baby comes, I'm starting to panic about all of my unfinished projects.

REMEMBER THE NURSERY?

Before we get to that, I'd like to show you what we did with the girls' room.

It started out like this:













I wrote about my joy at removing the carpet here (and let's just pretend that it hasn't been a whole YEAR since I started working on the nursery because that's just sad).

The wallpaper was still in good enough condition that with some creative arranging of posters and pictures, we could keep it until we are ready to redecorate the room (which may be never at my speed).

This was how my girls began their new lives in a pink room three years ago. The posters were a miracle. I looked for posters on allposters.com: something to hide all the nail holes. I never would have believed that among the thousands of flower posters I would find an exact match to the wallpaper trim, but I did! The picture of Jesus with the children is an old favorite that I have had since before I married.

So we could have been happy to let this room be, but as the girls have grown (my three-year-old has long since outgrown the crib), this room has become more complicated. Tomorrow I will show you how it went from a room with one bed, one crib, and one changing table, to a room with bunk beds, a table and lamp, a dresser, a reading spot, and a corner kitchen.

The word "tomorrow" may be relative, but I will try!

Randomness

Yesterday I fell in love with this room on this blog. I am completely jealous of Melissa's ability to find such great deals and then put them together so beautifully.

Last Night I was awakened at 1 a.m.-ish by child #2 for a drink of water, 3 a.m.-ish: by same child to go potty (she didn't need to at 1), 5 a.m.-ish by child #1 because of a nightmare, and 6 a.m.-ish by child #3 because he thought it was time to get up. It's a good thing I fell asleep around 1o p.m. during the movie with my husband instead of the common midnight bedtime!

Today I had my 20 week ultrasound and it's a...

cute and healthy baby!

See?

Redo of the Do

You know how sometimes you see something or someone in a photograph and you notice things you didn't see before? Like the pictures that showed me, to my horror, that when my hair was pulled straight back into a ponytail, I looked like I had bald spots on the sides...For a long time after that, I wore my hair down only, but eventually I learned how to part my hair just right to cover my sparse spots, even with a ponytail.

So after I posted this picture here, I noticed that it was all looking a little tacky.

After thinking about it for awhile, I remembered I had another pot that would look better. It wasn't even in use because I could never find a plant small enough to go in it. I also had to re-cover the phone book because I got a new one and it was smaller.

Now I can't decide if it's better or too matchy...

A Few of My Favorite Things

My husband's grandmother made this quilt for us when we got married. It was begging for a matching pillow. Thanks to some math help from my foster dad, I was able to figure out a crochet pattern. And before you go thinking that I am one of those people who can sew or crochet without a pattern, I'm not. I just got really lucky this time!

This item may seem silly, but every time I see this basket, it makes me smile inside. I got the idea from a catalog, which had this saying displayed right on the material in the basket. I thought it would be even better if it looked like it was circled and ripped out of a want ad.

I love to hide unsightly useful objects whenever I can. This pot of flowers (which is a bouquet of pens) and paper-covered phone book makes me feel like my counter top is uncluttered. (When it actually IS uncluttered, which is hardly ever, but I'm working on that!)

Improvising Improvements

There is a room in my house that the plants and I like to pretend is a sunroom. For awhile, I've been looking around for some plant stands, but everything is either too busy or too expensive. Yesterday, I took matters into my own hands after window shopping online for more than an hour.

I dream of this room becoming a game room/study/library, hence the game theme in the arrangement. Both the trunk boxes come from my childhood: the puppy box was a place to keep my treasures when I was little, and I used the green trunk when I lived with my second family. The puppy box is topped with my husband's childhood checker board. I thought of covering the sides of it too, but I just couldn't do it!

The hat box used to look like this:

It was pretty, but it never really fit anywhere in my house, so I covered it with some of my husband's old playing cards, and put the Chinese Checkers game on top. I'll keep my eyes open for something a little taller to replace the polka dotted tin, but for now, I'm happy with it and I think the plants are too.

CHAOS: x 3

First of all, I wish to thank each visitor. Motivation is powerful fuel.

I had hoped to have the wallpaper down from the nursery by Monday (the Monday that happened three days ago). I can already tell that when we get to the next Monday in four days, it still won't be done--but I am making progress.

First, I climbed Stuff Mountain. Realizing it was mostly made of unfinished projects and hand-me-down clothes for my children, I tried to think of another place for the unfinished projects to live and came up with this:

Genius!

Actually, this bathroom is broken so we haven't used this shower since we moved in. Stuff has been stashed there before, but now it is the designated place for all my procrastinated projects that I am going to finish tomorrow. My house lacks when it comes to storage areas...to state the obvious.

With that out of the way, we were ready to remove wallpaper. I hired some help:

(I see now how much better this picture would have been if I had thought to put my oldest in stripes as well!) We also removed the upside-down chair rail that was pretending to be baseboards. When the three of us finished peeling, pulling, and prying, I paid my girls by telling them they could color on the walls.

(Love those lashes!)




























Let me share what I learned: If you are going to be replacing carpet with vinyl, remove the baseboards before the installers come. You are going to have to move them anyway because they'll sit too high off the floor, so you might as well take them off so the vinyl will be installed all the way to the wall, with a straight edge. I wish the carpet/vinyl store had told me!

My new goal is to have the wallpaper removed and the walls primed by Wednesday. We could call it Washed Wallpaperless White Walls Wednesday." See you then!

CHAOS To the Power of Two

Being the type that wants to have everything planned out (oh, the disappointments!), I took my nursery design questions to Facebook. I asked every question on my mind, from frame colors to accessory placement. I invited all of my friends to vote. It was FUN. Free personalized ideas came to me in comment boxes. I can't wait to use them!

But first, there's that wallpaper (my cousin made me smile when she referred to it as jailhouse stripes):

I'm still working on removing it. Look at the interesting purple and green I found underneath. Combined with the black, we've got some nice bruise colors going on.


Now, this is where the true chaos comes in. This room has been the catch-all since we moved in two years ago. For the past several months, I couldn't even get in this room to use the changing table or rocker.

And remember what CHAOS stands for? Well, when my close friend said she was coming for a visit from Colorado, I was delighted. I thought I'd just shut the door on this room and no one would know the disaster that lived in there.

I couldn't hide it, though. I couldn't even get the door shut! She must have felt sorry for me because while I fed lunch to my kids, she dug out half the room and stacked it on the other side. I was embarrassed, but more shocked than anything. Talk about super powers.

So, I've removed half the wallpaper and hope to get the rest off by Monday. It is fairly easy to do. I tear off the outer layer and then use the handy wallpaper scorer another handy friend gave me. I spray the whole area with a solution of one part fabric softener and four parts water and let it sit for awhile. Before it starts to dry, I scrape it off. Then I wash the wall with warm water while it is still damp.

You might be wondering where I'm going to put all that stuff so I can get this done? The truth? I have no idea!

I'll keep you posted.

CHAOS

If you are a Fly Lady, you know what CHAOS stands for: Can't Have Anyone Over Syndrome. And I've got it bad. I've seen blogs where people post their projects and remodels and I love to see how much they accomplish as much as I hate to see how much they accomplish (because it makes me feel like a loser).

So, I thought I'd give it a try. If I believe even one person might be "coming over," maybe it will motivate me to get off my duff and get some things done around here!

Below you will see the before picture of my baby boy's room that he still doesn't get to live in.


This is the way we found the room when we moved into the house. See that carpet? I'm pretty sure it would have turned thirty this year with the house if we had not murdered it last year and dropped it in a dumpster. Hey, we had motive! Imagine digging around in a well-used litterbox with your nose; that's what it smelled like. Even after several scented candlelight vigils, it smelled no better. I told my husband we needed to clean it and he said we might as well rip it out and start over. So we went to the local carpet stores and began to premeditate its removal. It was a double homicide too. The mauve carpet in the girls' room was just as nasty (only it smelled like an old nursing home instead), so it had to go as well.

I don't really gross out easily, but when I saw the bottom side of those carpets on installation day I was GROSSED OUT. The only way I can think to describe how it looked is hundreds of overlapping Venn diagram pee spots. I'm sure they weren't all pee spots, but they all looked the same to me.

This leads me to share my joy in choosing vinyl. Because even though I don't have indoor pets and my children don't pee on the floor very often, if they did, no one thirty years from now would ever know about it by looking at the bottom of the vinyl!

And now, for that wallpaper...