Map Room

We have a terrific room in our house that is unused. Since the boys are happy sharing a room, we use the "map room" as our guest bedroom. With minimal overnight guests, it has occurred to me to take advantage of the full wall map for our upcoming unit exploring countries and cultures. I am very excited to have a vision for this room. (There will still be space for guests... don't worry!)

You'll see in the pictures below that there is a lot of work to do. Lots of patching, sanding, 

priming and painting. Again, work for Darin and work for me to be patient. I'm willing to help, 

but it's better for both of us if I watch the transformation from the sidelines. 

(He's the painting perfectionist and I'm the "hurry, let's get it done" girl.)

 Isn't this a great map! Darin is going to add picture molding around the edges of the map. 

We're going to change the wall color. I don't care for the gold. Any ideas? 

I welcome all suggestions. Anyone want to come over and be our color consultant? :)

Darin's almost done with all the patching and priming. He's getting ready to paint the ceiling, moldings and prime the walls before he does the top coat. I'm thankful for my hard working hubby. 

Can't wait to show you the final results! Don't forget to share your color suggestions. 

The Blue Room

We're slowly chipping away at some home projects around here. And when I say "we," I should say Darin is doing the work and I'm working at being patient. ;) We are 95% done with Ethan and Aaron's room. The last 5% is up to me, but it might be a little while until I can complete it. (Trying to keep my focus on school prep... only 12 days!)

Take a look...

 The walls were previously white. I spotted this blue color at a 

friends house and thought it would look great with their quilts. I love it!

 Darin did a great job painting the blue and red stripes! It was much harder then you'd think. 

I repainted their name letters with the same blue as the stripe. 

This is their favorite corner for setting up Playmobil scenes. 

 My mom and I made the navy curtains with white stars for Ethan's nursery in our old house. 

So glad to keep using them! They are great for keeping out morning/evening light. 

I repainted the wooden star wall hanging to match the blue stripe too. 

 We have some hooks to hang to the left of the door. Trying to decide 

if it is wise to hang them or if the boys will just use them to scale the wall! ;)

Here is where my project comes in... See that empty wall? 

I'm determined to make something special to hang there. 

I bought this value pack of 12x12 canvas's. I'm planning to use

four to hang together in a square. With a little help from 

my artist dad, I have great plans. You'll have to wait and see! Stay tuned...

Switcharoo

It's been in the works for a couple months to switch around the boys rooms. Luke and Ethan have shared a room for the past four years. Aaron has always had his own room and over the last year he has been sadly aware that he is the only one in our house who isn't sharing a room. It's not uncommon to wake in the night and find him squeezed in between Darin and me, or laying at the end of our bed or on our floor in his sleeping bag. A couple times, I found him on Luke and Ethan's floor in a sleeping bag. He just doesn't want to be alone. Sweet little guy!

We finally decided that after Christmas we'd paint/decorate the rooms and make the room changes. Ethan and Aaron would be roomed up together and Luke would have his own room. Although we've talked about getting started on our project, we haven't made any progress. The boys decided last Tuesday they were tired of waiting and anticipating and asked if Tuesday could be the day for the switcharoo. I was agreeable so we washed sheets and quilts and swapped the boys. 

Here is Aaron his first night on the bottom bunk with Ethan. 

Ethan was overly excited to be on the top bunk... as you can see by his excited expression!

The first night Luke has slept alone in a room since he was three! 

Finally on Thursday afternoon, we had time to tackle rearranging all the clothes, books and toys and in the process purge many of the baby items we still had around. It was a much huger job then I expected. Luke was an awesome helper working non-stop with me from 12:30pm until 5! phew! 

He is a kid who loves to organize. Hmmm... wonder who he gets that from?

Here is a before picture of what was Aaron's room. It was a mess. We had piles of clothes, books, toys that needed to be moved around and sorted. We needed to make this room look more like a 7.5 year old room without a glider. Luke helped me take everything out of the closets and reorganize. 

It was awesome having him help me!

Here is the after picture of Luke's closet. 

A few younger toys on the top shelf, but mostly cleaned out. 

Here is an after picture of Luke's room. We're going to keep the awesome mural that was here when we moved in. Hopefully soon, we're planning to repaint the green walls a similar shade to cover some holes from the previous owners.  I need to start thinking of some appropriate wall art. 

Luke was very quick to set up his legos and is loving having his own room!

I never snapped a before photo of this room, but I love it being organized. I know it's not going to stay so neat and tidy and I'm trying to prepare myself for that. We have great plans for the walls in here and the colors selected. I'm also pretty excited to play around with canvas and paint to make a few wall hangings. We've already had to remove the glider from the room since it was being used for some crazy stunts. And yes, that is a very large horse on the top bunk. That is one of Ethan's best friends... Blaze. :) 

Hopefully I'll be able to share some after photos once we Darin gets painting. My husband is the project man and he is VERY thorough and meticulous. He'll paint ceilings, trim, room door, closet doors, and walls. I've tried to help before, but he prefers to work alone with his iPod tunes. 

Can't wait for him to get started!