Making it theirs, Part 4: Operation Decoration

Read Part 1 here, Part 2 here, and Part 3 here.

While making all the items to go into the kids rooms stretched over a couple months, decorating their rooms was done in a day. They knew we were doing something with their rooms, but we wanted the final version to be a surprise. Jeffrey started hinting, “Mommy, you know what would be cool? If my room was all Star Wars, and then I could invite all my friends over to see it and they would think it was awesome!” Then Lexie would chime in, “And Mommy? It would be so cool if my room had fairies!”

Check, and check.

So, once Steve was back from his month-long school on the east coast, and everything we’d ordered had been received and everything I could finish had been made, I spent a Thursday night prepping it all for Operation Decoration. Friday morning, as soon as we’d dropped Jeffrey off at school we rushed home, put a movie on the TV for Lexie, told her not to go into either kids’ bedroom, and…

…quickly discovered my prep had failed in a few significant areas. I hadn’t tested the screws that came with the drawer knobs; the ones for Lexie’s dresser were too short and the ones for Jeffrey’s dresser were too long. We couldn’t find the painters tape for marking positions on walls (I know I have like 3 rolls, but they’re all still packed) and I’d forgotten to get pushpins for hanging the fabric hoops (then, once I did have them, I discovered that while that method worked great on drywall, it’s a failure on plaster walls, so I needed nails anyway). And the first thing I wanted to hang was the gauzy bed hanging, so we needed to hang a hook in the ceiling, which required us to drill a starter hole…and our neighbors had our drill and drill bits. And they weren’t home.

Fortunately, we had a spare drill, but Steve still needed to buy new bits…but finally, 3 trips to Lowe’s got us everything we needed. Then we decorated like crazy people (actually, I’d been doing that during all the Lowe’s trips too), but we still didn’t get every single one of the small room decals up in Jeffrey’s room. I was calling it a win anyway.

We got Fatheads for both kids; I couldn’t believe they had Tinker Bell and her friends.

I loved how the painted fairy knobs I got worked with the polymer clay drawer pulls.

Since Lexie declared Tinker Bell and Rosetta her favorites, I put those 2 right across from her bed where she can see them every morning. And if she changes her mind, the wall graphics are all easy to move!

Forgot to mention this display in the last post; I made it simply with canvases and stencils from Michael’s and the paint from Lexie’s furniture. The saying “Faith, trust, and pixie dust” comes from the Tinker Bell movies Lexie loves to watch.

For Jeffrey we got the Clone Wars (cartoon) version of Anakin Skywalker (pre-Dark Side) and Obi-Wan Kenobi.

His dresser drawer knobs combined his 2 favorite things: Clone Wars and Legos. He can even move the arms, legs, and heads of the figures. The knobs were a custom order from DaRosa on etsy.

The lightswitch plate was also Lego Clone Wars, this time from vglaser on etsy.

But would the kids like their rooms?

I’m going to say yes.

And Jeffrey’s wish came true, too. When he brought his neighborhood friends in, one of them looked around and said admiringly, “Jeffrey, your room is off the chain!” At least, I’m pretty sure that’s a compliment!