Tag Archives: Bedroom

A Faerie Room for a Faerie Princess

Elanor was moved into what has been the nursery for the past 10 years. It was a somewhat emotional “thing” to be painting over the green and yellow that I painted in there 10 years ago, when we were FINALLY expecting.

I think her room is my most favorite…but don’t tell the other kids. It’s a smaller room, it’s cozier, it’s always felt very “warm”. Not to mention that it was the easiest one to repaint and fix, even though there was some tedium with removing all of the wall moldings to paint properly.

Ellie is very much a fantastical girl, she loves faeries and magic, unicorns and rainbows. I wanted a room that embraced that, but allowed for the beauty of faeries and not just overblown pixies.

We went with a very woodland feel to her room. Painting the walls shades of pinks, but keeping the furniture very earthy. We went with Behr’s Desert Coral on the walls, then I mixed white ceiling paint in for the lighter colors.

Most of the decor, bedding, and furniture in her room we had on hand. The bedding was from Avelyn’s first big-girl bed (an Ikea duvet). I did purchase the netting from Amazon.com: I was expecting it to be way expensive, but the one I found was $15 and more than sufficient. Our biggest problem is getting her to keep her bed in one place.

Ellie’s bed and dresser are antiques; they were actually my dad and his brother’s when they were kids. When my grandfather passed away I held onto a lot of the furniture for “someday” and I’m glad I did, because the green is perfect for her room, as is the detail on the headboard. It’s pine cone perfection!

I bought the flower and faerie decals from HearthSong. So many other decals were way more money or they didn’t have what I wanted or ENOUGH of what I wanted. This one was perfect: Easy to put on, easy to re-position!

The mirror my mother in law picked up at a yard sale and the needle work (crewel) my grandmother did years ago for me. The cork board was from Amazon and I just painted it.

Just like in the boys’ room we stayed away from a bookcase and opted for wall storage of books. This was another piece of furniture from my grandparents’ home.

A shelf that my uncle had built for my grandmother years and years ago to hold her collection of decorative plates and bird figurines, I just painted it white. If you look at the top shelf you can see some of the plates that I held onto for this room.

I tried to keep things above the border light colored, and things below more earthy tones, to really help with the feel of being in the woods.


Again, the artwork for this room was mostly stuff that I’ve held onto for the past few years. The insects are a series of Pottery Barn paintings that my mother in law found years ago at a yard sale, that just never quite fit in anywhere. Now they do! The letters I ordered off of Etsy and painted to match the rest of the room.

We saved a spot to someday put a desk in her room. Right now, Ellie is more interested in playing on the floor and spreading out than she is at sitting at a desk.

The curtain panel I picked up at Pottery Barn Kids on the last day it was open and managed to get this heavy crochet-laced trimmed drape for $15.

Of course I immediately came home and washed it…and it shrunk, because I was an idiot. And now it also has black paint on it from the kids. THIS is why we can’t have nice things!

There it is! Ellie’s Big Girl Room!

Setting Sail for Adventure

Boys' Nautical Bedroom

This past fall was filled with projects. The kids’ rooms haven’t been done since they were babies and it was really time to move away from the monkeys and elephants, particularly since all three boys are now in a room together, and the girls each have their own spaces.

I’ve long planned on doing a nautical themed room for the boys. Henry and James are the only two of my children for whom I actually made their quilts, the rest are all in limbo.

Boys' Nautical Bedroom

I still have to make Peter’s quilt, it’s on my list. We went with 2 bunk beds nestled together in the corner. We need 3 and having a fourth seemed prudent given the very real possibility of having guests.

I picked up the nautical pillows a few years ago at Ikea, in preparation of someday. The book ledges were repurposed from other projects that I just repainted to match quilts. The letters I ordered on Etsy and just painted them.

The walls were a mess from all the thumbtacks used to hang things and I refused to deal with that again…oh the hours of hammering, spackling, sanding….it was a nightmare. We used command strips this time.

We went with Behr’s Shipyard for the walls, aptly named.

Even Peter has his little spot…now if only he’d STAY in his FREAKIN’ bed. We’ve been trying this for the past 4 months…and we’re not getting any closer. He sleeps in the bed, he’s up wandering the halls or climbing in the beds of everyone else. He’s the worst. If he climbs in our bed, he smacks us in the face and tells us to sk-u-tch over.

I didn’t want a bookcase that was going to take up floor space, there really isn’t that much space in a room once you put in a wardrobe, a dresser, a chair, and 4 beds.

The ledges were simple enough to make and we managed to fit 4 of them on the wall behind the door. Illustrators put so much energy and beauty into book covers, that it’s an absolute shame to just hide them.

The lamp I got at a thrift shop and painted it to match the ledges. I felt like the turned wood really lent itself to the nautical theme….it reminded me of a ships wheel, captain at the helm.

A lot of the pieces we managed to steal from storage at Matt’s parents or picked up at thrift shops and yard sales. I think a lot of people want to do nautical themes, but very quickly outgrow them.

My friend Katie did the vinyl letters for around the anchor, which turned out perfectly! The anchor was through etsy.

The curtains are actually shower curtains that I bought from Amazon and added a thermal drape to the back of, then clipped with some curtain rings. I still need to make curtain rods for them; why ARE curtain rods so expensive?!

After I got them up I realized that they were maps of Cape Cod, they even have the bay that Matthew’s college (Mass Maritime) was on, Buzzards Bay.

Boys' Nautical Bedroom

We didn’t do anything with the floors. They desperately either need to be repainted, refinished, or replaced, but none of that was in the budget for any of the rooms.

Overall, I’m pretty pleased with how it turned out. There’s still some work that needs to be done, some pictures that need to be hung, but I like it!