Here is everybody helping paint the desk. Yes, we paint in the family room. Doesn't everyone?
Here are a few before shots. They had a sort of pale lavender color and pinkish, flowery wallpaper. The previous owners of our house loved their wallpaper borders, that's for sure.
Our paint color choice was a long process and the color palette changed a couple of times. Then, we narrowed it down to four colors - a deep purple, a bright blue/turquoise, lime green and hot pink. Then I looked around and realized these four colors are everywhere. I always think it is funny how your taste is informed by trends without you even realizing it. Heidi also painted Kat's room these four colors a few months ago, so the cousins coordinate with each other. :)
This girls got tents for their beds out of the deal, too. The carpet is the big thing that still needs to be replaced. Someday we'll get the whole upstairs done. For now, every time someone spills juice or ketchup or something, I take some quiet solace in the fact that nothing could really make me hate the carpet any more than I already do.
The desks Derek built.
I found this image on iStockphoto and fell in love with it. I bought it and manipulated it in Photoshop to make a mural for the girls wall. Debbie Pisacreta helped me over Christmas put the colors into it. It all sort of came together. Grace took one look at the mock up and burst into tears. Apparently, she didn't share my vision. It took a while, but it grew on her. She helped me paint some of the parts and she did the birds with stencils.
This was the original image for the mural
This is my PS mock-up (i did my own tree)
Here is the finished product.
From the other end of the room (excuse the bad flash photography)
I enjoyed the painting project. As full as my days are the past few months, I looked forward to working on it. I painted, like, 15 leaves a day for the most of the month of January. It reminded me of painting the mural on Charlotte's wall before she was born. All those evenings after work, listening to music and painting while I waited for February 1 to finally come around so we could meet her, our first baby.
When we put up the tents for the girls, we had to move Grace's bed frame so that her mattress would still fit under the top bunk. So, we finally got around to taking down Eli's crib and he inherited Grace's bed frame, with a new mattress and a set of Thomas sheets. He was totally cool about it. He didn't even glance at his crib, where he had slept every night for 3.5 years, sitting in the corner. He just walked in and climbed up on the bed and beamed, "Eli's bed!"
Here's the before of his room (which I hope to be next to redo).
Eli has the worst wallpaper of all. He also has pink carpeting and a little half-bath inside his room that has a pink sink and a pink toilet. Nice! He also has my grandfather's pinball machine in his room. Pretty cool.
Eli's bathroom is that door on the left. I figure for a boy with 2 older sisters, having your own bathroom may be a really good thing.
Charlotte made Eli this picture and hung it up for him.
If you have made it all the way to the bottom of this very long post, I have a question. We have been playing around with ideas for Eli's room. He has a cool roof line in his room, so I think we are going to do white walls and a colorful ceiling. He likes animals alot. I came up with this design, with animals going all around the room and I bought some sets of silhouettes online.. Derek and the girls all contributed ideas. We are down to three color palettes. What do you all think? The background color is for the ceiling (and the grays are the doors and windows). I like the quilt for #2 best and I think I lean towards that one, but I think the overall favorite in the house is #3. You can click on the image to see it bigger if you feel like it.
Kind of a boring post. Thanks for reading!
