How to Wrap a Room

One last post about the kids' rooms and then we'll move on, I promise! There were pros and cons to giving the kids a big "reveal" where they got to see everything in their room at one time.  The pro was that they could see how it all worked together.  I imagine it would be hard for them to get excited over opening up something like a bed skirt or lamp if we had just wrapped everything up individually instead.

The con of them seeing everything at one time is that it could be overwhelming and they might not notice just exactly how much stuff they were getting.  For example, they might see that they got a new bed and bedding, when really what they got was a new bed, new box springs, new mattress, new mattress pad, new bed skirt, new sheets, new blanket, new comforter, new pillow shams, and a new throw pillow.  Catch my drift?

Doc and I wanted them to understand how much went in to putting their rooms together and not miss anything, so we came up with a plan: everything would get a gift tag.  Now, that would be silly if everything in the room was from us, but it wasn't.  We knew early on that we'd receive emails from our parents and siblings asking, "What can we get your kids for Christmas??"  So we extended an invitation to anyone who wanted to be involved to go in with us on their bedroom.  I shopped and planned out the bedrooms and then let everyone stake claims on items and pay us for them.  It was a win-win for everyone!

After their rooms were put together, I sat on the floor and wrote out gift tags for every single thing and who each thing was from.

And then I walked through each room tagging items.

    

    

    

    

    

With that done, I needed to wrap the rooms!  Yes, wrap the rooms.  They had to open them, afterall.

I started by running a long strip of painters tape down both sides of their bedroom doors, with the sticky side out.  I had to use a separate piece of tape to tape it down at the top and bottom.

My other supplies were rolls of red and green crepe paper.  I started with just one roll of each color.  If you ever do this yourself, please note that it will take much more than just two rolls.  I had to run to Fred's halfway through the first door to get more, and ended up using almost 6 full rolls.

I started with the green, secured it to one corner, and then strung it from side to side.  This is why the tape was sticky side out.

Then I picked up the red crepe paper and wove it in with the green.  (Notice that I left the actual bedroom door open.)

I just kept going back and forth, alternating colors, until I made it all the way down the door.  Occasionally, I'd add more tape to the edges to secure the crepe paper that I'd strung up.  (Excuse the crazy shadows.)

I left Anna's door open at the very bottom.  This was so that I could crawl in with my camera right before the reveal.  Doc finished wrapping it up after I made it in.

Then it was time for the fun!

Anna won the coin toss so she got to go first.  Please look at how she scared Lolli to death when she busted through the door!

    

    

She finally made it in and collapsed on her bed.

We gave Anna just a few minutes to look around her room before telling her to pause so Wyatt could see his.  It was his turn to bust through the door!

    

    

After the initial viewing, we made the kids go through the rooms and get all the tags.  It was sorta like a scavenger hunt since they had to find them all.  This was good, though, because we wanted to make sure they read them all and saw who everything was from.

By the time we were done with the whole shebang, Wyatt was kicking us all out of his room because he wanted to take a nap in his awesome new bed.  Hey, if this room will make a teenager nap?  We'll take it!

And that's how you wrap a room. :)

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!