big boy's room!

here's the before...


and just to be fair, this was before we moved in obviously, but still... very ordinary beige room.

And now here is his new room!

He has a fascination with globes, so I wanted to find a way to incorporate those, and the colors go so well with what I had in mind for his space.

The board and batten turned out to be no big deal, I'll share the details in a later post.

Trimming the windows always makes a huge difference. I'm a big fan of thick white mouldings, I go gaga for trims.


The "hippie bus" was in a parking lot of a nearby museum when I was on an outing with the boys one day. Lucky for me, I had my camera with me, so I took some detailed pictures (looking like a crazy person out in the rain with a big DSLR camera in the rain). I knew immediately I would use this one in his room.




I found all of the License plates on ebay. I bought them purely for their colors, I didn't even care which states they where. They are one of my favorite parts of his new room.





One of my biggest goals throughout the process was to not forget that a little boy lives here. A little boy plays here, this is his space, and more than being a pretty room, it needs to function for him. I happily embrace toys on the floor and all around. I don't care if he moves things around and does his thing in here. So I tried to leave all of his things accessible to him. I did put the puzzles with smaller pieces up high, mostly so his baby brother doesn't come in and loose parts to games, or eat them. :)



I decided to move these instruments down to a lower shelf so he and his brother can just play with them whenever they want. I love nothing more than to hear them making music and being the crazy little fellas that they are.

The bedding is from Land of Nod, I've loved this set for a while now, but I wanted to be so careful not to make his room too theme-y. I found the quilt on ebay for $55. It's originally over $150, so I think I did pretty well on that!









We had to add some fun vintage items that belonged to my husband and I when we were little. "Scotty Bear", the bear on his bed, was my husband Scott's when he was a little boy. We found him in a box in the garage shortly after we moved in. He had been in our basements in our previous homes. It was a good find.
Carter loves Scotty Bear. The little blocks on top of the bookshelf also belonged to my husband as a little boy. The Native American drum on the bookshelf was mine, from a family vacation when I was just about the age he is now, as well as the vintage suitcase I remember taking to sleep at my grandma's house. He now uses it for matchbox cars storage, both of our boys love to lug it around with the cars inside.


The bookshelf needs tweaking again, now that I moved his bucket of instruments and some other things down, it's a little bare up on top, and I'm contemplating some window treatments, but for now I'm calling it good enough.

The most important part is that it's a colorful and fun place to play, because really what else matters? And he loves it! The first day it was all finished he kept telling anyone who would listen "my mom painted on my wall. my mom painted it special for me." I think it passed the Carter test! :)

Most of the time this is what it will be looking like:


And in reality, it's gonna be a whole lot worse.

And I'm just fine with that!