The Big Reveal!

This project has been in the works for the last few months. I devoted just about every nap time and spare minute toward completing this room. And I am happy to say it is finished! (Or at least, almost finished.)

It all started back before summer began when my friend Becca and I discussed how we both needed bunk beds for our kids. Then my friend, Caren, told me about this web site where you can get great furniture plans for free called knock-offwood.com (it's now called ana-white.com). I went and checked it out and found a bunk bed design that was exactly what I was looking for and the website estimated that it would take about $200 to build. I had never built anything that large so I enlisted the help of my good friend Kjell (he built his own house) to help construct the bed(s). Yes, beds. Becca and her husband Ben loved the design also, so we had a building party! Kjell, Ben, and I got together over about 4 weekends throughout the summer to assemble the beds. Ben and I were thankful for Kjell's expertise because without him I think they probably would have looked more like a 3D Picasso masterpiece (okay maybe not that bad, but you get the picture).

After the beds were built, then I spent just about every free minute sanding, filling holes, sanding, painting, sanding, painting, sanding and painting some more. Along the way I came up with the design for the girls' new room and put it together. Ever since we moved into this house, Jenna has asked for a purple room, and that's what she got! Hope you enjoy the tour below...

The new bed!

With scraps from the bed I was able to construct the cool book shelves that hang next to each bed.

And my masterpiece wall! I borrowed a transparency projector from the church to project a silhouette of the Oakland Temple on the wall that I traced and painted. I picked Oakland mainly because I thought its silhouette was sort of castle-like. Above the silhouette I put a vinyl word art I found at Hobby Lobby that says, "PRINCESS, Daughter of a Heavenly King."

BTW, I learned the secret to getting crisp paint lines the first time when doing stripes and such. If you want to know how, let me know.

I painted each of these silhouettes onto canvas. No, I didn't do it by hand. I took pictures of their profiles and then made stencils of them using stencil plastic and a stencil cutter. The rest of the pattern was taken from a Princess Aurora pattern I found online (found here).

This dresser was a craigslist find that used to be an ugly 70s dark wood with hideous drawer pulls, but with several coats of paint and new hardware it has been revived! (I'm still thinking about either a picture collage or a nice framed picture of Christ for the space to the left of the lamp.)

Curtains from Target.

And all this results in happy girls! Olivia wanted me to take her picture because she was there when I was taking the pics. Once it was completely together, Jenna came up to me three times that night and gave me a hug saying, "Thanks Mommy, my room is exactly the way I wanted it!"

And the final detail is still in debate. Robby thinks the little beads on this lamp make it look, too cheesy. I love it. Should we keep it, or take it back? What do you think?

Halloween Preview

Last night we had our ward trunk-or-treat. It was an "oh, so pleasant" 37 degrees outside with wind from the WNW at 20mph and gusts of 33mph -- perfect for an Iowa trunk-or-treat! Obviously, I'm not a true Iowan because I really wished we had moved inside the building. Unfortunately, we got caught in a last minute miscommunication that the event was moving indoors, so we didn't bring coats for the kids since we were in a hurry. The crowd changed their minds before we got there and decided that it was tradition to do the trunk-or-treat with trunks, so we arrived and were surprised to see everyone outside. You can see below how our kids were dressed. They made very cute popsicles while daddy quickly ran back home to retrieve the coats!

At least Jenna had long sleeves and tights!

Olivia, on the other hand, was dressed for a warm indoor ballroom.

But of course, all had fun because candy makes everyone happy (even through chattering teeth)!

Robby was probably the warmest dressed of the bunch since he had two long sleeved shirts...

and a cloak.

I now have to take a moment to mention the temporary insanity that had overcome me earlier in the day. Two days ago, Robby finally told me what he wanted to be... Frodo Baggins from Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. He showed me a picture of Frodo from the movie and expected me to pull a costume out of thin air. I looked at several stores, and couldn't find anything close, and even told him he was going to have to come up with something else. So the afternoon of the trunk-or-treat, I was overcome with temporary insanity, and I found myself standing in the fabric store searching the remnants table for cheap fabric. Once he got home from school, I cut up one of his old shirts to use as a pattern, and quick as I could whipped up a vest, shirt, and crafted a cloak from a throw blanket we already owned and a few safety pins. This was my first time putting in sleeves and I finally succeed after putting the first one in three times (inside out, upside down, and correctly). I am now waiting for Robby to submit my name to the Mother-of-the-Year award committee. At least, he did tell me that I was the best mother he ever had.

Happy Halloween everyone!