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!

New bed and bedroom changes.

I spent my Saturday cleaning out my garage to make space to build a platform bed for our new king sized mattress that will (hopefully) be delivered this week. Now we don't live the in the biggest house, so with a family this size, I am ALWAYS trying to make things that serve multiple functions. I scoured the internet looking for free platform bed plans (because I'm cheap like that), but didn't really find anything that I liked. Plus, I really wanted somewhere that I could store all of the books that had been taking up space in my garage. So after hours of Google searches, I decided to just design my own. I wanted something really simple with ample storage.

The great thing about this is I could have the lumber cut to size at the hardware store (because, as you know, I do not own power tools) and I put it all together in about an hour and a half. The total cost of the bed with lumber, cuts, sandpaper and wood glue (I had nails already) was about $95. (I will post more pictures when we actually get our mattress and move it into our bedroom)

Our house is going through some sort of spring transformation right now. My mother is moving back to St. Louis to be closer to my older brother, so the girls are separating into two rooms (bigger girls in one room, smaller girls in the other). There are a lot of redecorating projects in the works (which means my entire house in a disaster area at the moment). Here are the bones of my ideas for each room:

Smaller girls room has beige walls and a bare wood bunk bed. They will get their own pretend little town. They will have the play kitchen, the doll crib and clothes in their walk in closet to play house. They will also have a book shelf and the old modern doll house and barn. I just found (for crazy cheap at a church yard sale) a Melissa & Doug wooden mailbox (pretend post office) and a wooden work bench. I am turning the workbench into a farm stand that will be stocked with felt produce. There are a couple of other things that will happen in there.

The Bigger girls' room is green. They will get twin beds and the new modern dollhouse (I haven't taken pictures of it yet). We have a red, antique drop leaf table (that belonged to a relative of my grandmother) that will become their writing table (pen pal letters and such). I also found a vintage, turquoise typewriter (YEEEEE!!!!) at the thrift store in perfect condition. It will go on their writing table. I'm not sure what else I'll come up with as I start putting things together, but I promise to share pictures as I go.