Kids' Bathroom

Wyatt's room is joined to Anna's room with a bathroom.  It's a Jack-and-Jill setup.  So when we started sprucing up their bedrooms, I decided it wouldn't hurt to update a few things in the bathroom too. Their bathroom was painted khaki when we moved in and we just hung up the same shower curtain that we had in the old house.  It came from Bed Bath and Beyond several years ago and we had a matching rug and hand towel to go with it.

It was fine in our other house (their bathroom was painted blue) but it was definitely time for it to go.  I wanted something a little bit more grown up and a little bit more neutral.  Nothing about their rooms coordinate with each other, so it was easiest to just pick something completely different and not try to match either of their rooms.

I spent a lot of time trying to find a cute patterned shower curtain to use, but eventually gave up and decided to go with something plain.  I found this khaki one at Target and bought colorful hooks to hang it with.  The colors of the hooks are what I used as the color scheme.  Oh, the walls got a fresh coat of paint when their rooms were painted, but we stuck with the same khaki color.

The rings are two shades of green, chocolate brown, orange, yellow, and aqua.

I bought them new towels and bathroom accessories in those same colors.  I bought four new towels - one each of green, aqua, orange, and yellow.

I bought hand towels in the same four colors, but monogrammed two of them in chocolate brown.  Their soap dispensers are in coordinating colors too.

There's nothing fancy about their bathroom, but I'm glad it has fresh new towels and shower curtain in it.  Sometimes it just takes a couple little things to make a big difference!

Anna's Room

Anna's started out as a little bit more of a challenge for me because there was no real theme.  I had no jumping off point.  When I tried to pick her brain about what she liked, I couldn't ever pull anything good out of her.  Finally, I discovered that on PB Teen's website, you can design your own bed.  I pulled it up, handed her the laptop, and let her go at it so I could see what kind of bedding she liked. What she came up with looked something like this:

Every single thing was a different color.  Hmmm.  That could get interesting.  (I recreated the image above so it's not exactly what she did, but it's pretty close.)  Finally, after watching her mismatch every single item, I asked her what her three favorite things/colors were.  She picked the blue comforter (not the turquoise, but blue!), the bubble gum pink sheets (not hot pink!), and the pale purple throw pillow.  Girl was specific about her colors!

Luckily, the blue (not turquoise!) comforter was on sale so I went ahead and ordered it plus two shams right away.  I didn't order anything else at the time because I figured I could find cheaper sheets and stuff somewhere else.  Did you know that turquoise is a really hot color right now?  That's what I found out while trying to find sheets to match the blue (not turquoise!) comforter.  I searched high and low but every striped or polka dotted sheet set I found had turquoise in it.  I eventually went back to the PB Teen website and ordered the bubble gum pink polka dotted sheets and the pale purple throw pillow.  My theme for the room was officially blue, pink, and purple.

I hate that the view from her door isn't a good angle of the bed, but the layout just didn't work as well that way.  You walk in towards the side of the bed.

You have to actually step into the room to see the bed setup.  It's still colorful, but hopefully not as bad as the bed pictured above!

The monogrammed art that I did for above her bed ended up matching perfectly.

One one side of her bed is this fun multi-globe floor lamp from Target.

On the other side is the Ikea Rast dresser that we spruced up.  On it is a lamp from Home Goods and a color-changing alarm clock from Target.

The fun colorful knobs came from Hobby Lobby.

Also at Target I was able to find the most perfect little bins for her revolving bookshelf.  They came in the perfect colors and the size was as if I built the shelves to fit them (I didn't!).  I love it when things work out well like that.  I also hung a couple of her scarves on the pegs and dressed up the bulletin board with a One Direction poster and some push pins.

    

Speaking of One Direction, they made a couple of other appearances in her room.  I knew she was a big fan of them and needed something to hang on her walls...so 1D posters it was.  These were the last addition to the room.  I had ordered them earlier but then stupidly didn't notice that they were coming from the UK and wouldn't arrive until January.  In a frantic, I sent Doc out shopping with strict instructions not to come home unless he had posters.  He was able to find them at FYE, thank goodness.  I gotta admit, I hadn't really envisioned the two us using push pins to hang boy band posters on freshly painted walls in our new house, but I guess you do what you have to to please kids, right?

This one hangs in her dormer.

This one hangs by her door.

Anna also got a fun switch plate for the light in her room.  Hers came from Hobby Lobby.

The last piece of furniture in her room is the little vanity/desk that I made over.  It looks cute sitting in the corner (that door goes to a tiny attic space and stays closed all the time).  She already had the white jewelry box and the pink lamp came from Home Goods.

I added a couple bins to the shelves that match the ones in the revolving bookcase.

That concludes the tour of Anna's new bedroom.  Good news is she loves it!  So glad to have all three kids' rooms done...now maybe we can finish our own!

Wyatt's Room

Before getting started on the kids' rooms, I sat down with each of them to talk about ideas they had and what they wanted their rooms to look like.  Every time I talked to Wyatt about his, all I got out of him was Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Notre Dame.  Sport?  Football.  Color scheme?  Navy and gold, of course. I suppose I could've purchased this bedroom set from Amazon and called it a day.

Yea.  No way.  I have no problems with a Notre Dame themed room, but it had to look better than that!

I wanted these rooms to be styled in a way that they would last for several years.  Wyatt is a teenager now (!) so I didn't want it kid-ish.  Plus, we unfortunately don't have a guest room, so when we have visitors they have to stay in their rooms.  I wanted them to look good enough that our guests could enjoy them too.

With all that in mind, I set out to design a navy and gold room that had touches of Notre Dame in it (as opposed to Notre Dame everything like the room pictured above).  I had a red desk that used to live in my apartment years ago that I thought would be perfect in his room too, if I could figure out how to tie in the red.  Luckily, I found the perfect duvet cover at the Pottery Barn outlet that had navy, gold, green, and red in it.  Yay!

Are you ready?  Here's how his room turned out.

View from the door:

His bedding is mismatched from all different places.  The duvet cover is from Pottery Barn outlet - I think it's actually PB Kids.  I stuffed a down alternative comforter in it that I got at Target.  The yellow blanket is also from Target.

The sheets are Nautica.  I originally found them at TJ Maxx but they only had them in King size.  Luckily I was able to find them online on Nautica's website.  Since the duvet cover didn't have shams with it, my mom made shams out of solid navy fabric - they match the solid navy bedskirt that she also made.

I was able to find some Notre Dame applique logos online that we purchased to use with my mom's embroidery machine.  She used them to make the Notre Dame throw pillow.

Above the bed is this really cool sign that Doc's parents found.  It spells out Notre Dame using architecture pieces found on ND's campus.

The bedside table is one we already had.  We added a new lamp to it (from Hobby Lobby) and a color-changing alarm clock (Target) and called it done.

On one wall is the dresser that we already had.  I love that it matches the bed so well - that was a happy accident!  On it is the lamp that used to be in the living room but got a mini update with a new lampshade.

The two stadium posters he already had, but I made some wooden frames for them out of 1x3 pine boards and painted them ND Navy Blue.

  

In one corner is the bookshelf we built.  It's also painted ND Navy Blue and has ND Gold trim on each of the shelves.  He already had the  gold ND football helmet, and I think it looks perfect on the shelf.

The red desk that I already had found a home down in the dormer.

On it sits the little desk lamp that I painted.  I found it at Home Goods and the inside of the globe was already navy blue.  The rest of the lamp was white but I gave it a quick coat of gold spray paint to make it more "Notre Dame."

Above the desk I hung a bulletin board.  I painted the frame of it ND Navy Blue to match the poster frames and the bookshelf.  My mom did a couple more of the logo appliques on scrap fabric so we could have something to pin up on the board.

For whatever reason, the previous owners of our house had never installed shelving in the closet in Wyatt's room.  Anna's room has it, but not his.  Doc made a trip to Home Depot to buy wire shelving and hooked him up with some new shelves!

The main light switch to the room got a football switch plate.

One day, while flipping through a Restoration Hardware Kids catalog, I found these cool wire sports racks to hold balls on the wall.  They have them for baseballs, footballs, basketballs, and soccer balls.  We ordered a football one and Doc's parents found this really cool Notre Dame football to set in it.  It's two-sided so Wyatt can switch it up whenever he wants.

And that's it!  Definitely a Notre Dame room, but a little bit on the more grown up side.  Not too boy-ish.  The best part is that Wyatt really seemed to like it.  Check this room re-do off the list!

Kids' Rooms Before

As I've already mentioned, we just finished wrapping up making over both of the big kids' rooms.  I have tons of photos to show you of each of them, but first I thought I'd show you what we started with so you can see how far we've come! Our old house was three bedroom so technically, there were enough bedrooms for us to all have our own (us in the master and one each for both kids).  But we made the decision early on to have them share one bedroom (they already had bunk beds anyway) so that the third bedroom could be used as a playroom.  Even though they are a boy and girl, it worked out well for them to share since all they did in the room was sleep, and they were only there every other weekend.

The bunk beds were great since they shared a room, but they were really pretty big and awkward in their room.  Ideally we would've put them in a corner, but there wasn't a corner in the room we could use, so they floated on a wall.  The view from the door of their room was of the end of the bunk beds.

From the bathroom door, you can see how we couldn't push the bunk beds all the way into the corner because of the window.  Also?  Decorating a room for a boy and a girl is really hard.  This bedding was purchased when they were, oh, maybe 6 and 7?

Also in their room was a dresser that matched the bunk beds.

And this little turquoise table.  The frames on the wall were hung several years ago, so the pictures are really outdated.  I tried to paint the frames to tie the colors in their PB Kids comforters together (his was navy and blue, hers was purple and aqua and green).

So that's what we had to move with us to our new house.  In this house, they each have their own room and they're joined by a bathroom.  Luckily, the bunk beds were separable, so we just pulled them apart and plopped them in their individual rooms when we moved in.

I forgot to take pictures of their rooms at the time, but here are some I took when we toured the house.  (This is the previous owner's stuff, not ours!)  I wanted to show you these so you can see how dark the rooms were.  The walls in both rooms were painted chocolate brown, and each room only has one little window that's down in a dormer so there's not much natural light at all.

The room that became Anna's:

And this is the room that became Wyatt's:

The carpet in these rooms wasn't awful, but it wasn't great either.  We promised them that they'd get new carpet when we got around to doing their rooms.

Obviously it would've been awesome if we could've done EVERYTHING between their visits so they saw it all at one time, but since we were hiring out the painting and the carpet, it just didn't all work out that way.  Here are their beds in their rooms after the walls had been painted, but before the carpet had been changed out.  I was actually taking these pictures so I could sell their bedding, but I think my mom has convinced me to keep it for future sleepovers.

The top bunk - Wyatt's - was a twin.  You can see his walls had been painted a khaki color.

The bottom bunk - Anna's - was a full.  Her walls were now turquoise instead of chocolate brown.

The new carpet and their new beds arrived in the same week.  We bought their beds from Ashley Furniture.  His is a brown slatted bed that actually goes well with the dresser we already had.

She requested white furniture which was harder to find than I thought it would be.  We lucked into finding this bed, though, and I really like it.  It's perfect for a girl's room.

So that's where their rooms were the last time they were at our house before the big reveal.  They got to see the wall colors, the new carpet, and the beds.  I did not put their new bedding on, though.  We made do with random blankets that weekend so that the bedding could stay a surprise.

Now, I'm ready to show you the rooms!  Be back soon with pics of Wyatt's first!

Twelve Feet of Christmas

I'm sure you're familiar with the Twelve Days of Christmas, but this year at our house, we're celebrating with Twelve Feet of Christmas. Twelve Feet of Christmas Tree, that is.  For years I've been saying we were getting a new Christmas tree, and for years we ended up putting up the same ol' dinky one that looked teensy tiny in our 11-foot living room.  Well, this year in our new house that has a two-story living room, I put my foot down and insisted that we buy a bigger, taller Christmas tree.

Behold, all twelve feet of our new Christmas tree, pictured below at nighttime and in daylight.

  

Y'all, it's big.  Like, really big.  As in, the step stool didn't even get me close to the top.  Nor did the six-foot ladder.  The eight-foot ladder wasn't much better.  It took me almost two full hours just to fluff up all the branches, and then I had to get Doc to take down the top 5 feet so I could decorate them on the ground and then put them back up.  It was quite the feat!  And it still doesn't have a bow or star or anything at the top because we haven't felt like dragging the ladder back out to put one up there.

Know how many ornaments it takes to fill up a twelve-foot tree?  A lot.  Like, a lot a lot.  More than we have.  So if you were to come over and examine our tree, you'd find that there's nary an ornament on the backside.  Nope, only the front got decorated.  Maybe next year we can buy some filler ornaments.

But, as painful and dreadful as it was to get it up and fluffed and decorated, it was so worth it.  I mean, it's so big! And pretty! And sparkly! And magical! Yea, I just went there.  Our tree is magical.  And I love it.

I also love that I already had my presents wrapped before our tree arrived, so as soon as we got the tree up I could stick all the pretty packages underneath it.  For the first time ever, I actually wrapped my gifts in a color scheme.  I've had intentions of doing this in the past but I always get hit up to buy wrapping paper from the kids and end up with mismatched rolls of paper, but this year that didn't happen.  I used a lot of just plain brown packing paper to wrap with and mixed in some solid rolls of red.  I love it!  (Sorry for the darkness of this photo.)

I kinda carried the same theme throughout the rest of the house with my other Christmas decorations - kind of a casual, burlap-y theme, if you will.  We still have lots of empty rooms and empty spaces, so there weren't lots of places to put things.  I decided to keep it kind of simple.  In fact, I still have two or three boxes of decorations in the attic that I didn't even bother to get out.

The kitchen table is major plain, with just two jute twine trees sitting on it.

On the kitchen counter, I have one of my little wooden Christmas trees I made several years ago.

The other two wooden Christmas trees are sitting in the living room, just off the kitchen.

Also in the kitchen I hung this new Advent calendar.  I bought it at an After-Christmas Sale last year for major cheap.  Not sure if you can tell but there's a small snowflake on a string that you move to the star with the current date on it.

Thanks to Pinterest, I was really excited about making a little Hot Chocolate Bar to set out in the kitchen.  I'm not really a coffee drinker, but I do love a good cup of hot cocoa when it's cold outside.  I borrowed the tray from my mom (it's from World Market) to coral all the items for the bar in.

I placed several jars on the tray - the biggest one is full of cocoa mix and two smaller ones hold marshmallows and candy canes.

Hiding behind those jars is a bottle of Peppermint Schnapps...for grownup hot chocolates.

I made a little sign with directions, even though I'm pretty sure everyone knows how to make hot chocolate.  I just wanted to use the cute little ornament holder!

And no Hot Chocolate Bar is complete without festive mugs.  I may switch these out for plain mugs after Christmas so I can keep my bar out through January.

In the entry hall, I set up a magnetic board to display all of our Christmas cards.  I just bought this recently and love it, but it's already full and we've received more cards!  I may have to get another one for next year to have 2 display boards.

This little tree fit in well with my casual, burlap theme.

It was an after-Christmas sale purchase as well and I love it.  It has little colorful balls on the ends of the branches.

Besides the big 12-foot tree, I didn't do much else in the living room.  I stuck these trees into the painted built-ins and pretty much called it a day.

We have a small hallway between our room and Doodle Bug's room where I finally got around to hanging a picture over the piece of furniture that randomly got placed there when we moved in.  I added these three felt trees too - another sale purchase from last year.

And last, but certainly not least, is the little tree in Doodle Noodle's room.  I had randomly purchased this hot pink tree last year (apparently I went majorly shopping for decorations after the holidays??) and thought it would fit well in her room with pink and silver ornaments.  I'm 100% sure she hasn't even noticed it, but oh well.  (She was also unimpressed with the 12-foot tree that I tried to show off to her.)

So that's it.  You may notice that I didn't show any stockings hung by the chimney with care...that's because there aren't any.  Yep, I'm the mom that didn't get a stocking for her new baby.  Oops.  We have cute stockings for the bigger kids, but they're so old that I couldn't find one for her to match.  I'll have to be on the lookout for some cute new matching ones for them.  Next year I'll do better!  (She won't even know this year, right?)

Wonder how long it'll take us to dismantle the giant tree in a couple weeks...