Completely NOT staged room redo pictures

I feel as though I am turning into my mother.  When I was young I could guarantee that I would come home from a friends house or the mall and our house would be completely rearranged.  I used to say that was the reason that I never snuck out.  I wouldn't be able to find my way back through the house when I came back in.  I, on the other hand, despise rearranging furniture.  My furniture will be in the same position for YEARS. But as I get older, I find myself waking up in the morning with these brilliant rearranging plans.  It's like my subconscious is drawing up blueprints while I sleep.  Well, on Monday, I woke up with the brilliant idea to pair and older girl with a younger ones in their bedrooms.  To my surprise they thought this was a brilliant idea too and actually decided who would sleep with who WITHOUT fighting!  Bijou and Ashni chose to share and room and Jena and Zion share a room.  So we set about shifting toys, clothes and shoes between the two room.  We separated the little girls' toys so that they each have 5 or 6 bins in their rooms (and they can play together in either room) and did the same with the older girls' things.  So far, it is working like a CHARM.  The little girls are going to sleep faster at bedtime because they don't have the other to keep them awake (they go to bed an hour before the older girls).  And the older girls have been making sure that their rooms stay tidy, which has never happened.  I think my mother would be proud.  These pictures are not staged, so it has its "lived in" feel.  But, this in the neatest either of these rooms has been (without my constant nagging) in ages.

Jena and Zion's Room

Jena and Zion share a full sized bed, which you would think would be a pain, but they all really like to sleep together.  They certainly didn't get that from me, but it's cute to see them spooning in the middle of the night.

Zion's tiny boots next to Jena's boots are just the cutest thing ever!

Bijou and Ashni's Room

Why yes, that is a ballet barre in their room.  It was given to us by a friend.  You can't see it in the pictures, but there's a dance floor there too.  They should never be out of practice!

Crates make great, free book storage and also works as stairs to get into the top bunk.  They are attached to one another with zip ties.

Big Girls' Room Redo

Jena and Ashni wanted to rearrange their room.  This is the only picture that I have of their room before. They don't have a very big room, so re-configuring furniture was a feat.  Oddly enough, they wanted to push their beds together to make on giant bed (Jena has a full size bed and Ashni has a twin).  I say "oddly enough" because they fight (a lot), but for some reason, at the end of the day, they always want to sleep together.  They decided where they wanted to put things and spent the entire day yesterday rearranging.

Little Girls' Room Do-Over

Not long ago, I posted about the girls bedroom makeovers.  All in all, their rooms have stayed about the same.  But the little girls' room seemed to become the bane of my existence every week.  It was constantly a mess, no one ever wanted to clean it up and things were getting broken and torn form being stepped on.  It was driving me insane!  A few weeks ago, I decided to take half of the "stuff" that they had and store it in the garage (to rotate out next summer).   Things were STILL constantly a mess.   So yesterday, I decided that today would be spent cleaning house and the little girls' room was my first stop.  As I was cleaning (mainly alone, because Bijou decided to spend this time laying on her back staring at the ceiling), I realized that it was pretty difficult to get toys in and out of the bins on the shelf. 

The only logical solution, of course, was to build a new shelf.  So, that's what I did!  I am going to insert a complaint here.  I love Home Depot, don't get me wrong.  But I was SO annoyed with HD today.  I went in to get wood for the shelf, found the pieces that I needed place neatly above a $5.98 price tag.  The very helpful HD employee even did some comparison pricing for me with a piece twice the size to see if we could cut a cents off the price by just cutting them in half.  We found that it would be about the same price, so I got my four boards.  The very helpful HD employee cut my boards and loaded them into my cart.  I get to the cash register with my plan to spend about $27 on wood and about $4 on nails.  The checkout girls scans the pieces and they are $8.40 a piece!  I mean, it's not a HUGE difference, but it added like $12 - $14 to my total cost!  I was so annoyed...ugh.  Anyway, complaint over...  The shelves were quick and easy to put together and the bins are much more accessible for small people who don't want to work to hard get their toys put away.

Big Girls' Room Preview

In all honestly, the big girls' room has been finished for weeks now, but because they are "big" girls, it is quite difficult to get a picture of a clean room. So I figured I would share the one picture I have of their little writing/work table. I really will share more pictures as soon as I can get the room clean for more than 30 seconds because it really is cute.

My favorite part of this little area is the turquoise typewriter. It's in perfect condition (they occasionally type little notes for me). I spruced up the cork board with a stencil of Shingai Shoniwa of the Noisettes (the girls favorite band right now). The red drop leaf table was mentioned in one of my very first blog posts, here.

The Little Girls' Room

The little girls' room makeover is finally complete! Yay, me. I have to say that they really are enjoying having their own space. My mom hasn't moved yet (she's leaving in a couple of weeks), but the bigger girls have already moved into their new room and my mom is their temporary roommate. I still have some work to do on their room. Anyway, here are some of the perks of the room redo (that were not featured in the room spoiler post).

This is their little chill out/reading nook. The orange rocking chair was mine as a kid (and another lady's before that) and is about 60 years old. It's been painted and repainted so many times that I couldn't get all of the old layers off. So I just painted it orange and did a little rough sanding. I couldn't sand the seat very well (it was very close slats), so I cushioned and upholstered it with a nice soft fleece. The little piano is one of those Melissa & Doug ones that I spray painted a glossy black.

(I probably should have vacuumed before I took this picture, but honestly, this is what it looks like most of the time...)

Zion's awesome quilt was a HUGE score at a local yard sale. Sometimes it pays to show up at the eleventh hour. I acquired this hand sewn morsel for literally nothing. They were to the "fill up a garbage bag and we will sell it to you for $3" point in the sale. The quilt was originally marked $125 (I repeat, hand sewn), but If I hadn't bought it, it was going to Goodwill. So they were happy to shove it in a $3 bag for me.

Jena and I made paper cranes from scrapbook paper scraps and some maps of NY city that I had laying around. Those we made into the lovely crane mobile.

The play mat was definitely a labor of love. Their floor was a large expanse of ugly blue carpet and I wanted to make a play mat for them to build block towns and play with their little wooden people. It took me a few days to draw and paint the little topographical landscape and sew on the little felt trees. My dining room/craft table will be forever speckled with green paint (this is why we can't have nice things).

And finally, I figured while I was painting religiously for days, I may as well make the play mat two sided. So what does every preschooler need in their bedroom? Yeah, hopscotch. Double the fun. The girls have been really good about keeping their new room neat while spending a lot of time playing in there. Next up, getting the big girls' room looking like a big girls' room.

Little Girls' Bedroom Spoiler

The big move hasn't officially happened yet, but redecorating the little girls' room is in full swing. (I will post pictures of the whole room once the bigger girls have moved out) For now, I thought I'd share a few completed projects. The little workbench had been successfully turned into "Little Monkeys' Farm Stand" complete with shopping carts and specials chalk board. If you need to drop off some mail on your way to pick up groceries, there's this little mailbox on the way! Once you've mailed your letters and picked up your groceries, it's time to head home to make dinner (or maybe vacuum or take care of the baby). I am still stocking the kitchen with canned goods and such.

We finally got a bookshelf back in the room (we moved it out last year because Bijou and Zion kept pulling ALL of the books off and throwing them around the room). Now all of the books that have been stored are sorted and shelved. The big girls' books went on the big book shelf in their new room. The little house on top of the book shelf is a super simple little night light that I put together for Bijou (who is afraid of the dark). It's just one of those papier mache houses they sell at Hobby Lobby (about $4) and a battery powered LED touch night light with an adhesive back (about $5). It casts great shafts of light from the windows and door of the little house onto the ceiling and walls of their room at night.

This is the little workbench as it was when we bought it. Notice the curious little one trying to figure out what the heck I'm doing.

A couple of wooden boxes we already had and a plethora of felt food later, they have a cute little market stand.

I painted the black sheep painting for Bijou when she was first born. I think it works well here.

In closet playhouse, complete with vacuum for tidying up!

I didn't really have anything to stock the kitchen pantry, so I saved a couple of cans and glued pictures from magazines to the outside. I just used up some stickers we had in the craft cabinet for the words.

The night light after dark. Looks a little creepy here, but it's not creepy in real life.

And finally, my very sweet little Zion in front of her newly organized bookshelf!

Finished Bed...

So our mattress came and the bed is completely assembled in our bedroom. I realized, after I shelved all of the books that we had hiding in the garage, that we really didn't have THAT many books. So now I have plenty of extra storage space to buy more!

The next batch of pictures will be little girls' room makeover...

Spring Cleaning...the girls' room

Round two of spring cleaning takes me into the girls bedroom. My seven year old and three year old share a room and we FINALLY got them bunk beds. Yay, bunk beds! The bunk beds are really simple and I will probably spruce them up at some point, but for now, they are the greatest thing since sliced bread. With the addition of the new beds I had to rearrange the entire room (well, I probably didn't have to, but I'm OCD like that). There is finally storage space for everything and the room can be easily kept neat. Life is good. I tried to make sure that their shared space is not too "little kid" for Ashni, but still little kid friendly enough for Bijou. I think it works well for the two of them. I think eventually I will build some storage boxes on wheels to go beneath the bottom bunk for storing pajamas, but at the moment they are tucked away in the closet and that works for me too.

The paper lanterns are left over from the Mad Hatter birthday party a few weeks ago.

These little flower shelves are a Goodwill find from a while back. They work for holding small objects like glasses and small artwork.

The art is a mixture of my art, the kids' art and that little mushroom painting (from the Salvation Army)

This white shelf was given to me by a friend and all of the bins are from the Dollar Store (my favorite one stop shop for storage containers). The orange cloth bins we've had for years.

The new play kitchen area.

Next up, my living room/office...