the kids' room

finally the day has come to post the before and after photos of the kids' room! christie, my decorator, posted the pictures on her blog and she did a great job writing about it, so i decided to just cut and paste onto my blog. i will interject my comments in RED, but first here are the BEFORE pics:
awful brown walls!and, the AFTER with christie's writing:
I recently helped my client Hilary decorate her kid's room. The room is shared by sister/brother duo Reese and Matson, and Hilary wanted to give it some personality, color and a pulled together look that worked for both kids. She already had all of the furniture in the room (reese's bed, mattress and box spring were given to us by our dear 85 year old neighbor whose wife passed away in may), the chocolate brown drapes, the crib bedding (made by my sister-in-law and previously used by my nephew), and an idea that she wanted a bold green for the walls. We chose Hep Green by Sherwin Williams for the bottom of the wall, and Limelight for the top. The furniture arrangement stayed close to how she originally had it, except we swapped the bed and the crib to create more room in the play corner, and to fit the kitchen. We added Ikea Lack wall shelves above the existing Ikea Expedit to display frames, and treasured items, like the adorable ceramic lion sun clock that their grandmother painted for them (and the car, plane and helicopter handmade in hungary and the clown doll that's been around since before i was born and the girl vase named hilary :). Below are a few of the hand-made items in the room (including stripey the snake hand knit by reese's gram). You can see more room photos right here on my flickr photostream.

Including the beach ball pillow (which my kids play with ALL the time!) from my last post, I created a number of personalized, easy to make decorative items for the room that I think really add to the room's cute factor. I created monogram wall art to hang above their beds. For Matson's, I used wood letters that Hilary already had. They were white, so I spray painted them orange, and glued the "D" to a 12x12 inch gallery canvas that I wrapped in an Amy Butler fabric that we used in the room.

For Reese's initials, I blew up a Microsoft Word font to 450% and cut the letters out of coordinating blue card stock, and mounted them on fabrics used in her beach ball pillow. They are framed in square frames from Ikea that Hilary already owned.

Reese's quilt and brightly colored sheet set are from HomeGoods and her bed skirt I made using striped pink/white fabric that is simply hot glued to the underside of the metal bed rails. When they want a change, it will be easy to pull off with no damage to the rails. (admittedly i was quite skeptical of the fabric choices christie was showing me together, but i followed her advice, stepped out of my box, and now i love it! and, i can't see anything else on reese's bed. she really wanted pink in her room and when i vetoed pink walls (which she still talks about) i told christie we HAD to have pink on her side of the room. she pulled it together so nicely!)


They already had this Ikea kmart lamp (which i really like), which simply got a face lift with the orange fabric trim.


In lieu of closet doors (we didn't have them to begin with) we went with some white shower curtains that I embellished with fabric (inspired by fabric from one of matson's baby burp cloths made by my sister-in-law) to create a one-of-a kind closet closure.

This charming lion is the elementary school (i think 5th grade art class.) artwork of Reese and Matson's Dad Matt. It was previously framed, but it did not quite match the new room colors, so I gave the frame a face lift with orange paint and added fabric to the mat to make the lion really shine. In the playroom corner of the room, there is a water color flower also done by Matt that received a similar framing face lift, which you can see here.


it's me again... so that's the first completed room of our house and i love it! it's so bright and cheery and fun - perfect for my little kids! here are just a couple more pics i wanted to put up...


happy decorating! :)

pansies

i planted pansies today.



i don't know what our yard will look like this winter, but i think i'll appreciate a little color. i'm hoping their cheery yellow and purple blooms make me smile each time i pass by.
i did a tiny bit of research on pansies and this is what i found. did you know the name pansy is derived from the french word pensée meaning "thought"? one website said it is a fashionable Victorian flower and is supposed to be the flowers of lovers. Legend has it that pansies could transfer the thoughts of sweethearts without spoken words. When near pansies, it was believed that one could hear their lover's thoughts. They were a popular ingredient in "love potions", and have been written about by Shakespeare, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and many others.



really? all i had to do was plant some pansies to understand my husband??? wow. i think i might have a money making machine! come to our house to understand your spouse. just walk around the pansy triangle three times and your lover's thoughts will be revealed. ha!

the whole family went to pick out the pansies. of course the kids thought the cart was the funnest part.

rad + mdd

one of my favorite times of the day is when matson and i go in to wake reese up in the mornings. we get on her bed, matson gives her hugs and then plays around and i get lots of wonderful reesey snuggles. it just doesn't get better than that. more silly faces...



since i have a picture of the two of them here and i haven't posted their recent stats i'll do so now.



reese is tall for a three year old. she's 38.5" (80%!) and she weighs 32.5 lbs (50%). she's at the top of the 3T clothing measurements, so probably 4T for her now {and she JUST turned 3!} at least in the shirts anyway. she has the tiniest waist and hips, so not sure about 4T shorts/pants. anyway...she didn't so much like her shot - i felt terrible. i didn't want to "prep" her before hand just in case she didn't have to get one {i might not have gotten her IN the doctor's office!}, so when we got there and found out she DID have to get one i started talking to her about it. she didn't want one just as much as i didn't want her to get one. so basically the nurse and i laid her down on the table and without much warning held her down and the nurse stuck her right leg. :( it was terrible terrible terrible!!! i don't think it hurt her too much, but it just shocked the heck out of her.



matson did a little better at the doctor's office, but was so restless. he was ALL OVER the room while we were waiting and waiting and waiting. {i'm not a fan of doctor's offices for this reason! i think i got spoiled to the promptness of the private clinic we went to in budapest.} he reports in at 21 lbs 14 oz (30%), 30 1/8" long (55%) and for records sake his head is 18 1/4" round. i'm convinced after this stomach bug though that he's lost a pound or two and has grown in length. he just seems lighter and longer after all the sleep he's had! he didn't take the shots much better than reese although he didn't know it was coming. he unfortunately had THREE and to me it seemed like the nurse took for.e.ver! the poor guy screamed his head off! and it took him a while to calm down. reese liked talking about matson's three shots. i think she was proud of him because she told everybody about it, but nobody about hers.



on another note:


i, or really i should say christie has been redecorating the kids room. i've just more or less been approving the changes. we have a little more to go before i can post before and after pics, but i think it will be worth the wait. it looks great so far! you can get a tiny sneak peek at the crazy wall color in the above picture. they used to be brown. i can't wait to show you the rest in a few weeks!