Ta-Dah!

Finally! Violet's room is done.  Well... it's 98% done, there is still one thing left I want to do.  Violet had originally wanted an "Angry Birds" room.  Call me horrible, but no.  not going to happen. So this is my version of angry birds. They aren't terribly angry but they are beautiful!

The yellow bed came out perfectly.  It went beautifully with the bedding Violet and I agreed on, which is Spring Sparrow by Pottery Barn. I found the quilt which was just the right rusty red I was looking for at Target.  I thought I was never going to find anything that would work, but there it was, just waiting for me last weekend.

The other side of the room.  Violet's room is extremely small, only 8x10 so we did a few things to maximize the space we do have.  The boxes on the side of the dresser are part of that.

I've had these boxes kicking around the house forever, not knowing exactly what to do with them as we don't really have a great space on the wall for them.  They were absolutely perfect for this project.  One holds library books, one holds hair brushes and accessories and the one attached to her desk is basically a stand in for a night stand.  In such a small space there was no room for both (believe me, we tried!) so a sconce above the bed and this box are just right as as a "stand" in.

 Last thing the ruler growth chart! There are a million tutorials out there on how to do this, and it really couldn't be simpler.  Pick up a piece of wood at the lumber yard, stain it, and add numbers with a sharpie. I absolutely LOVE how it came out.  It's a really fun piece to have to measure everyone that comes over, even adults!


That's it! I'm hoping to take a few better pictures this weekend, but in the Pacific Northwest, who knows when we'll get enough sun to improve them so bear with me!

More Pinterest Hacks!

Pinterest Version

Here it is, the ruler that's been haunting me.  So I decided to incorporate it into Violet's room.  I enlisted my Dad to help me, as he's a civil engineer and really good at measuring things correctly.  Honestly, it was just as easy as it appears to be.  The only tricky part was getting the numbers right.  We went through several ideas of what the best way to transfer them to the wood.   Turns out this tutorial was right, only I didn't use the pencil on the back.  I just eyeballed it.  I love how it turned out.   I'll show the full version when I finally, finally, FINALLY post about Violet's finished room.  For now, here's a section.  Not bad for a $10 project.

My Version

Sneak Peak

I'm almost done with Violet's room, but I wanted to show how the bed turned out before I do the whole room. It's beautiful! It was so so worth the work.

It really goes with the bedding she chose perfectly.  It is beautifully set off by the wall color.  Hurrah! All that work paid off!

 Close up of what the brush strokes ended up looking like. Not bad.

Couple tips if you decided to do this project.
1. Sand the brass well
2. Spray the primer evenly
3. Painstaking, thin even coats is the only way to go
4. You only need about a teaspoon of paint when it's all said and done.  I bought a gallon and you can't even tell I used some.
5.Make sure your lighting is good so the coverage is even

That's it! Stayed tuned for the final reveal and how to make the most of an 8x10 bedroom.

Cheers!

Location, location, location

Just like in real estate, location is everything when it comes to hanging things on the walls.  Get it wrong and it looks like your 5 year old decorated your home. So how do you get it right? Templates. Keep in mind this is going to take you a little extra time, but the result will be worth it.

All you have to do is take whatever object you are hanging on the wall and trace it with craft paper, or if you are feeling festive and have some lying around, wrapping paper. The other thing you'll want to do is mark where the hanging points on the paper.  That way, once you get the placement right, you can put the nails in over the paper templates thereby getting exactly the same placement as the template. this comes in handy when you are wanting to hang something in a grid or straight line and your frames don't have exactly the same hanging points.

In this case, I was hanging a scattering of barn stars above my bed and wanted to make sure I got the "Oh, I just randomly threw those up on the wall.  Don't they look fabulous? There was no effort at all" look.  Here are all the paper stars hung up with tape.

Paper Stars

Once I got the placement right, I hammered in the nails, ripped down the paper stars and hung the actual stars.

Actual Stars

That's it! It seems like a little more work, but it's so much easier to move tape than nails if you get it wrong the first time around and you can really play around with it to get the exact look you want.

Cheers!

Put a cork in it!

Last year we got into the habit of saving our corks and displaying them in a decorative vase.  I often think of this as the adult version of displaying all the bottles of alcohol you've consumed on your windowsill in your dorm room.  Not really sure why this is an acceptable decorating practice, but since places like Pottery Barn and Ben Franklin sell corks as "decor" if you aren't "sophisticated" and "classy" enough to be drinking enough wine with corks to create a similar statement it's o.k. with me!  This year's number..... 110.  That's a bottle every 3.3 days (I was so hoping it'd somehow be Tebowesque and be 3.16! Dang! In case you are wondering, you need to drink 115.5 bottles to get that number) yikes..... kind of seems like a lot.... However clearly that didn't even come close to filling our decorative container so we'll just have to try harder this year.  

Cheers!