Goodnight art

My son and I have a night time tradition. Since daddy puts him to bed, he usually says goodnight to me downstairs. For the last year or so, we've said "A huggle. A kiss. And an I love you." Huggle is a word he made up to mean snuggle hug. 

I've seen lots of typography art with phrases and lyrics like this for children's rooms:

Source.

I thought it would be fun to personalize our tradition into art for D's room. I knew I wanted to use yellow because that's D's favorite color. I used some leftover paint from the yellow in his bathroom and closet (Sherwin Williams Solaria) on canvas.

I really like this yellow because it's cheerful but not overpowering. 

I thought I was done...

...Til I held it up to the light and saw all the bare spots!

Once, the paint died, I used sticky letters and eyeballed they placement on the canvas. 

Once I was happy with the placement, I removed the protective paper and stuck the letters on the canvas.

I used a straight edge to make sure the letters were straight. 

I also used the straight edge for spacing the lines.

All done!

I finished it just in time for bedtime. 

D checks out his new art. "I know those words!"

After I was done, I remembered that my original idea was to put a photo of D on the background. It's a little plain, but I like the simplicity. The next plan to get another canvas and do a Dutch version as well.

***updated 7/15/12***
I picked up another canvas at Hobby Lobby so I could make the Dutch side of D's art. I ran into two problems. First, the letters for "Ik hou van you" (Dutch for "I love you") were too big for the canvas. Second, I ran out of "U's"

I solved the first issue by buying some slightly smaller letters for "I love you" in both languages. This is also added a little extra color. I found a piece of black foam with a sticker side, so I traced a "U." My cutting skills also need some work.

Fortunately, the black letters came right off.

And the red letters were easy to put on:

And done...sort of. It still looked a little plain to me. 

I found some star foam stickers. D helped me put them on.

Tonight we got the finished art on D's bedroom wall.  

  The view from D's bed. 

We're getting very close to being able to do a full reveal of our D's room!

Linked to: 
Tuesday's Treasures
House of Hepworths

D's book nook

When we were still designing our house plan, we had a long space between our bedroom and D's bedroom. Originally, the designer drew it as a HUGE walk-in closet for our son. We couldn't imagine how D would ever need a closet that big, but weren't sure what to do. Til we saw this picture:

Source

We figured our boy would much rather have an indoor tree house than an obscenely large closet, so we created a nook. Since D is only three, we knew he was a little young for the high fort, but since he loves books, it's perfect space for a book nook--or super secret hiding place, as he likes to call the space.

I found a few more ideas on Pinterest. This one uses the Ikea spice racks, like we used in D's bathroom.

Source

This one has shelves made our of rain gutters, which is really cool, but not the modern look we wanted.

Source

We liked the way this one had the secret hideaway aspect, plus the Ikea photo shelves, which we knew we wanted to use.

Source

For the last four months, since we've moved in, his nook has looked like this. I used an extra shower rod I had, and the extra yellow block-out curtain that we needed in our apartment. It's too long for the nook because I think the scale is off, and because it's too high for me to peek over to check on him!

Last month, we finally made it to Ikea to get the shelves. Oh Ikea, why must you be so far away!?!  Then yesterday, I had the idea to repurpose the shower curtain I accidentally shrunk when I washed it. It's a much more kid-friendly height now.

Form of: Super secret hiding place.

Getting started. We decided to go with five shelves.

D wanted to help. Note the level in his hand. He was saying that he'll be ten before he's as tall as the shelves. I think he'll make it by four.

First shelf up.

Second shelf up.

By this point, D really got the idea. Here he's saying, "Daddy! It's reading time!"

Helping Daddy hammer.

To distract him away from Daddy, I taught D how to use the clips on his project strip.

Hanging up the project strip.

Hanging up the letters. Not quite straight.

And done! 

The left side has a shelf for D's Dutch books and a shelf for his Bible books.

The back wall has transportation books.

The other side has one shelf for global books and D's project clip.

The reading area has an Ikea Lack table, a cute chair D was gifted, and a Target lamp that I personalized with foam stickers.

Close up of the lamp. 

I bought the foam letters at Hobby Lobby.

I bought the project strip at TJ Maxx a few months ago and personalized it with cardboard letters.

We're so happy with how it turned out. We think he'll get several good years out of it...til he starts asking about the tree house!

Updated: You can now get a full tour of his room.

Linked to: 
Thrify Decor Chick *I Heart Naptime * My Uncommon Slice of Suburbia * Centsational Girl * Dedicated House,  * I'm an Organizing Junkie  * Mums Make Lists * Remodelaholic

Color Selection

This is a bit of slow season in our build as the electrical/plumbing/HVAC finishes up. There's been a little bit of insulation blown in and then we're see the drywall going up. At the point, our house will really start to look like a home.

We've handed off our flooring selections, and the folks from Charis will do a little research so see if we can get the costs in line with our allowance. 

The other big batch of decisions we made this week was selecting the colors for our soon-to-be walls. Sue, from Charis, came over with her big book of Sherwin Williams color swatches and we got to work. Our allowance is for six colors, though we could always pay more for additional colors if we wanted them. Our current house has five colors (mostly one outside the bedrooms), so we figured six was plenty.

In our current house, our base color is what I call "chocolate milkshake." When we put in on almost 5 years ago, it really reminded me of a Wendy's Frosty. But as we've been looking at models and watching HGTV, we've been won over by gray as the new neutral. It works with our modern bent and our steel appliances and fixtures, so we think it will look nice. 

Thanks to the Sherwin Williams Color Visualizer, we're able to get a large scale sense of how the colors will look.

We'll use the darker gray as the base on the first floor for the kitchen, great room, dinette (maybe, see below), foyer, mudroom, office and maybe in-law bath (if we don't go with the room color). We'll  use the lighter gray upstairs in the guest bedroom, hallway and our bath, with a transitional treatment using both hues on the stairway. 

SW Classic French Gray

SW Light French Gray

The next decision was the in-law suite. We knew that it would be the same (or Sherwin Williams equivalent) or our current master bedroom colors, which is sage green and chocolate. I was happy to keep those colors (since we have all the accent decor) for our new master until my awesome hubby said we could use plum: my most favorite color! So here's the color for the in-law suite (and laundry room)

SW Dried Thyme

So, our room will be this pretty plum color! Our wedding colors were platinum and plum, so of course, I love that subtle reminder in our bedroom. What can I say, my husband is the greatest!

SW Expressive Plum

Just for giggles, I did this rendering for the dining room. It looks a lot richer/deeper than the rendering of our bedroom. Interesting. Our dinette will be very bright because it has windows on all three sides (and open on the fourth), so I think we could play with a darker color if we wanted to be crazy with it.

SW Expressive Plum

Our 2.5-year-old son's favorite color, for quite some time has been yellow. When we asked him what color he wanted his new room to be, he has quite consistently requested yellow. However, yellow is not really the calm nap/deep sleeping-inducing color we have in mind, so we're sticking with blue like he has in his nursery, but more of a "big boy blue. We saw this particular color in another Charis home and we feel in love with it.

SW Bracing Blue

So that leaves one last color. We had to decide between the vibrant orange Dutch bathroom I put off in our current house because we needed to be neutral or yellow for our amber-obsessed son. After looking at pictures of my Dutch decor, we decided that the yellow would work, so this is the yellow for our powder room and D's bath. The power room will have orange tulips for accents, and D's room will have blue accents.

SW Bee's Wax.

We made all these selections in our home, at night, under warm lights. Sue, our interior designer, is ordering larger samples that we'll bring to the new house to view with natural light. If needed we can adjust the tones.

I can't wait to see it all come together!