Nora's Room

First of all, let me tell you that my four younger children have all switched bedrooms more than a few times.

We try to make things work with sleep schedules, bedtimes and boy-girl ratios.

So the room that Nora is now in, was at one time Anne Marie's room. Then Nora moved in with her. Then, when that wasn't working, Anne Marie moved out and Nora now resides in this room.

When it was still Anne Marie's room, I worked painstakingly on the wainscot look around the bottom of the wall. I didn't have money for real wainscotting, or even beadboard wallpaper. So I handpainted the little lines around the whole room.

It took days. Which for me, anything that takes days is slow torture.

But I am happy with the final product.




Now, those curtains used to be in my family room. They have traveled with me from house to house and state to state for the last 10 years. They are my favorite Ikea purchase ever. They have been in multiple master bedrooms, living rooms, and now Nora's room.

The white frame with the daisies was also in the family room, holding a picture of my children.
The picture of my children is still there, but with a different frame. (Hopefully I'll show you the family room next week, if you care. You do care, right?)

This next picture also holds some items from my family room. The star coat rack, the lamp, and the paper flowers, all used to be in my family room as well.

The birds have always been in Nora's room. My lovely friend Teresa made them for us, and they are one of my absolute favorite things.



This wall mural has an interesting back story. Well, it's interesting to me anyway. I have wanted to put owls in Nora's bedroom for about a year now. They are whimsical and sweet and easy to find at the moment. Target has a really adorable toddler bed set that has owls on the comforter. They also have a matching wall hanging, pillow and lamp.

Well I knew there was no reason to buy the bed set. Nora refuses, and I mean it literally, refuses to sleep with anything other than that white and blue flower blankie you see in the picture. She will cry and wail and not go to sleep until she has it. So why buy her anything else, no matter how cute?

But she loved the little pillow. And I loved the wall hanging. But I did not want to pay 25 dollars for an 11 x 17 wall hanging that while cute, wasn't quite big enough for the space. So I decided to be a copy cat. I am not an artist. I can't draw anything our of my own head besides stick people. But I am pretty decent at copying things. So I took of picture of the wall hanging with my phone,
praticed drawing it onto a piece of paper, and then using that as a visual guide, I painted it onto the wall.

This was an easy subject matter to do this with. The style is naturally whimsical and therefore not perfect in it's lines or color. So I was able to pull it off with a fair amount of success. Here is the link to the "real" one.



And Nora loves that I colored on the wall. She kept doing a little dance while singing, "I like it, I like it, I like it."

That little song and dance were worth all the hard work.

Finally, this chandelier. I bought this chandelier years ago at Target on clearance. It was 10 bucks. I didn't know what I wanted to do with it, but I knew I loved it-passionately. So I bought it and hung onto it. I'm a big believer in buying things that you really love. If you really love something it will fit in your home, I promise, it's true.

So finally, this dreamy little girls bedroom presented the perfect backdrop for a pink, fake crystal chandelier.

I even wired it all myself. Jeff helped me a little at the end when it required one set of hands to hold it while the other put things in place. But I will tell you, nothing is an empowering as realizing I can wire something by myself.



So there you have it folks. Reusing stuff from another room in the house, plus a little paint, and we have a fun, sweet, whimsy filled bedroom.

Now, if she'll just love it until she a tween at least.......