a bedroom for boys: almost done

My little boy turned 5 recently. Since we moved into this house the boys room has been an eyesore. I've been dying to get rid of the ugly elephant wallpaper and edge to edge blah color. I mean the baseboards were even painted the same color, and closet doors... He's never had a room that really was his, since he shared with his sister before. So it was time we rewarded the little boy who keeps his room so clean. Seriously, his is always cleaner than the girls'.

We finally got around to beginning it and emptied out their room. Z was SO excited to sleep on the floor and had been dying for his turn since his sisters did while they waited for their new bed to be put together.
 
First I had to remove that awful wallpaper border. Which thankfully wasn't as hard as I thought it was going to be. My mother in-law had to help me get over my fear and get to it. :)

Zurich has wanted a Spiderman room for a while now so of course we went with that. I wanted a paint scheme that would age well though so I had it in my head to do a cityscape silhouette at twilight in comic book greys, which are really more blue and purple. Gary couldn't envision what I was describing but went along with it anyway, what a dear.

He left me to pick out the paint by myself and he went to get the wallpaper... What? you are supposed to match the paint with the wallpaper? no.... I think it will all work out though.

Gary came in from working on the beds and taped off a few visually identifiable silhouettes, and I worked on the general buildings. Tip: paint top color first to the lowest point your buildings may dip then tape off building lines and roll or brush into paint. I didn't roll down far enough and had to touch up some later, but I had to do that anyway so it's not a big deal. I had my basic line at 33 inches where a chair rail would go and had some higher and lowers along that line.

I'm pleased with it.


We also had a set of bunk beds from my days growing up. Sturdy suckers. However, when we moved here we chose to keep some brand new mattresses in the house and found they were xl twin. So we had to make new side rails to lengthen the bed. We just covered up the unfinished wood with bed skirts in the mean time.

Gary and his Dad decided to make some necessary and some pretty modifications to the beds and sand them down and re-stain and gloss them to match the dresser. It turned into a pretty big project but they sure turned out pretty.
Here is the room partially put back together so the boys could sleep in their room again. Giddy is still in the crib so that will free up space when he moves to the bed. 


While waiting for the wallpaper and decals to arrive we haven't put any of the pictures back up and I was missing the clock. So I got his Thomas clock and decided it would be easy to add a Spiderman face to it. The blue border would work well. Of course we are mildly out of black ink and its 10:30pm and Gary is gone on a business trip so I decided the little ink failure adds to the effect. Don't judge me. I'm moving on with my life.

I used the image from here: http://everdaylittlethings.blogspot.com/2010/10/spiderman-head-svg-mtc.html and stretched it a little to make it circular. Downloaded the free spiderman font that had numbers here: http://www.1001fonts.com/homoarakhn-font.html  I reversed out the 3 and 9 with a little text rasterizing and erasing.

Snap the thing back together and I can hang it up tomorrow when kids aren't sleeping. Gary said he will pick up more ink on his way home tomorrow... The numbers run into the border a little. Hmm maybe I will fix that and print it out again... maybe.

Summer's end: Floral Pens

Tuesday night while shopping with Olea she saw a pot of flower pens and said she liked them and wanted to make some so we picked up a roll of floral tape.

I already had everything else I figured we needed. So today I invited everyone out to do our outside jobs so we could do our project. Olea chose to ignore me. I figured I would let the consequences speak for themselves. As I directed the two younger kids I had to repeat myself several times, And so I figured I would open up the opportunity for Olea to listen and added some clarifying paths, "Get your shoes so we can do our jobs and then do our project." "Ok, lets hurry with our jobs so we can make flower pens." etc.

We went out back and picked up the pot from the Mother's day plant that I managed to kill (every year) and filled a barrel with leaves and then went inside.

We washed out the pot. I let the kids pick out flowers from my stash from our old house where they had hung in bunches like so: (top left of the picture of the epic battle between Olea and Zurich) I'm just not feeling it in this house, so we are going to re-purpose them.

Zurich liked the black ones and wanted them "big and tall." Nev had a hard time deciding. We wrapped the flower and pen together with the floral tape. They each did two... and had to make sure the pens still worked after being decorated.


Then Zurich poured a bag of dry beans into the pot and they arranged their flowers.


And helped decide where to put our pretty pot.

Olea never joined us. I was genuinely disappointed because this was the project she wanted to do and much more her skill level than theirs.

When I tried to talk to her and invite her to do her jobs so she could make some she plugged her ears, screamed and put herself in time out. :( Hopefully tomorrow she will get to make a pen.

There is one problem with this project. I now know how I want to decorate my kitchen... but I am so not in a position to do it. And we found an outlet under the island tonight. That could be quite useful.

Summer's end: Milk Jug

Today we were going to have family pictures but it just got rescheduled so I guess it's okay that I let the kids play with sharpies again.

Olea's cousin sent her some post mail a bit ago and included in it was a craft idea that can be found here: http://alphamom.com/family-fun/crafts/milk-jug-decorative-window-crafts/

Ours are much less fancy than the ones shown there. But fun none-the-less.

Today was a repurposed, reuse day. It also falls under craft.

So today after breakfast I rinsed out our empty milk jug and set it to dry. I had been saving a few but they went out with the recycling on Monday. But it was fine because one ended up being plenty for us.

Zurich asked for hot chocolate while I was feeding the baby and had been asking about every 5 minutes so I entertained that desire first.
Why not? right?

As described in the link we cut, colored, punched and I decided to make mobiles with them too. We had 3 empty macrame hooks on the porch and everything. I used the metal rings I bought a long time ago for tatting (and haven't gotten around to). The kids picked their string color (once again, tatting stash). They colored their shapes and I punched holes and tied it all together.

The mobiles are fun and kinda make some fun noise in the breeze on the porch.

The three of them strung on the porch.

And the extra ones as window ornaments.

Make your own snow globes

Olea brought home a snow globe from her last day of school before the break. I, of course, figured that it could and should be accomplished by our family. Esp with two weeks of vacation. I obtained appropriate bottles via facebook shout out and Freecycle. I did a lil internet research about it.

And then for FHE we set to work sculpting our figurines out of sculpy clay. Bless Gary for helping the two younger ones do theirs, Zurich asked for a Reindeer spaceship, I wouldn't have known where to start! Nev quit trying to destroy what I was working on when Gary helped her make a Christmas tree.

We cooked the sculptures and went to bed. This picture is minus two sculptures.

The next evening we put them in their globes.


I had a lot of frustration with mine from the beginning to the end but it ended up working out fine. They were worth it, it was a lot of fun and the kids love them.

Olea also made one for her cousins that were coming the next day.

It turned out cute but after a little bit the tree ended up coming unattached from the base, so it was a floaty tree. I think it was because it was rushed a bit where the other ones weren't. It was still fun and appreciated at least. :) All the other ones we made are holding up great.

REpurpose junk mail

You know those fake cardboard credit cards you get in the mail? 18 month olds LOVE them. I know this because every 18 month old I have had LOVES to pilfer through my wallet and purse. So keep those fake cards, and fill an old wallet (or one from the Dollar store) and let the child go to town.

It's fabulous motor skill work, taking the cards in and out and can keep the kids occupied for quite a while and since to them it looks important and real they think they are being sneaky while playing with it.

When I put one together for my first child I didn't have any saved up from the junk mail so I just used some old matte board I had and cut them down to the right size and drew words and pictures on them. Olea is now 6 and I unwisely threw them away a month ago... while getting ready to move, and I am going to have to gather again since Nev is in need of more cards for her play wallet.

Print out a wallet size picture of your family or the child too. I use whatever fits basically, old library cards, info cards, business cards. It adds variety and interest.

Nev's favorite thing to do is sneak around my side of the bed and go through my purse or my tatting bag.... So this has saved me having to reorganize my purse OVER AND OVER!

Electric Company Earrings

That's what Olea calls these earrings.

We had a bunch of these star sunglasses from some activity a few years ago.

I found the lenses popped out by Zurich on Olea's bedroom floor and they were

falling into the trash can when I had an idea. So I pulled them out and took them down

to the studio. These are the tools and supplies I thought I would use.

I didn't end up using the round nose pliers.

It's totally easy.

Pop out lenses.

The second pair of glasses had much thinner lenses than the first pair, they both came from the same place and were the same brand, as far as I know. Party Land.

The thicker lenses are better I think, so if you have a choice...

Use 1/8th inch hole puncher to punch hole in plastic lens.

Open ring. I think these are almost a quarter inch rings. If you don't know anything about jewelry making and opening rings... open them up and down not apart.

Thread both the lens and the ear wire on the ring and close it. Down and up (not together)

The lens has a curve to it. Make sure when you are adding them to the ear wire that the curve faces the right direction for each ear. I wanted the center out and the star points cupping the side of my head, if that makes sense. So I guess there is a right and left earring in this pair. It's worth reopening the ring and fixing if you don't get it right the first time.

It's cute just like that but I decided to add a little bling with Sawarovski crystals I had on hand for Tatties.

There you have it friends. Dress it up any way you like.

I'm a Creative Cat.

And found Fabulous for Less.

And I did it myself: