So Long Lightning McQueen! Hello Map Wall!

My oldest son Jacob's bedroom has been Lightning McQueen themed for quite some time, and he is at the age to begin the switch to a more neutral decor in his room. He just had his mattress and box spring on a hollywood frame, and his dresser was his changing table from his nursery. It looked like a changing table, no matter how we tried to convince ourselves it didn't!

So, we decided it was time that he got some new furniture. NOW it gets complicated! As I showed you in a previous post, our youngest son Gavin has a queen size bed. When we have guests, it's nice for them to still have a bedroom to sleep in, and since we only have a three bedroom house, the guests always end up in Gavin's big bed. So, when we ordered furniture for our older son's room, we got a trundle bed, giving our younger son a place to sleep when the guests take over his room. The boys loved the first "sleepover" they had together last week in the new bed and trundle.


I must say that I LOVE his new furniture! It took us a while to find a trundle for a boy that we liked and wasn't too girly or too pricey. We won't pay Pottery Barn prices, even though they do have some great trundle beds for boys. We found his bedding at Macy's, and I really like the orange accent in it. We found fabulous orange curtains at the Pottery Barn Kids outlet, which is about 40 miles from our house. The curtains have a blackout lining, so we don't even need blinds!

Our son is really into geography and weather forecasting. Look out Jim Cantore! So, we decided to make him a little weather forecasting area, and to cover a wall in his room with maps. For the weather area, I got a magnetic white board at Costco for $20. I found a U.S. map in the dollar bin at Target with the back-to school stuff. I simply taped the map to the board. He has weather forecasting symbol magnets that I found HERE.

As for the map wall, I was so excited about the project until I started pricing maps. Wow! One evening I mentioned to my husband that I wished I had a stash of old National Geographics laying around to get the maps out of. He then told me that his grandfather had gotten him a subscription to National Geographic for a few years when he was a kid. His Mom saves everything, so we both wondered if it were possible . . . and it was! She had over two years of National Geographics in her basement with maps still inside! JACKPOT!

And they were coming to visit the next weekend! Double jackpot! The only map I purchased was one of the greater Cincinnati area at Barnes & Noble for $4.
This weekend, we completed the map wall. First we rolled on sizing. While it dried for two hours, we laid out the maps on our LR floor.

Then came the fun part. I brushed on enough wallpaper paste for a map at a time.

Then we placed the map on the wall, and my husband and I smoothed it and smoothed it and smoothed it! It was not easy, but well worth it! The finished project looks wonderful! And our son loves it!

We placed the world map so it would be right beside where he sleeps.

Every night since we put it up, we have talked about different countries. I think we're all going to learn a lot!

Beautiful Nursery Banner

I came across the picture of this banner when I was looking for a photo of my youngest son's nursery for a previous post. Isn't it wonderful? One of my close friends painted it for his nautical nursery. I cried and cried when I opened it! My friend got her inspiration from the beautiful (and VERY expensive) banners at Posh Tots. Back then (almost 5 years ago), Posh Tots had a lot more banner choices than they do currently. She painted it on canvas with craft paints, then trimmed the bottom edge in the shape of the flags. She turned the top edge over a dowel rod and added ribbon for hanging. It made the nursery. It fit in so well with his crib and dresser. I hated taking it down!

Construction Room Ahead

We are finally starting to settle into a routine around here, with summer activities tapering off and the start of school and soccer. I am also finally getting some stuff done around here! One of the hardest things for me being a SAHM, especially in the summer, is being around and in my house 90% of my time, but not being able to get half the things done around it that I want to accomplish. I get lots of ideas from staring at these same spaces constantly, but with four and five year old boys running around, there is no easy way to get them to become a reality!
Anyway, the first place we have changed a little is my youngest son's bedroom. He has a queen size bed, a fact which makes everyone laugh, but his room was the guest room before he came along, so it already had a bed! We just used what we had! It remained in the room with his crib, which was great when he was still nursing! When he moved into the bed, we had a hard time finding any suitable queen size, kid themed bedding. So my Mom made a duvet from 1 queen flat sheet and some Thomas the Train fabric. He loved it. But he is outgrowing Thomas, and has been asking for new bedding. I love the idea, because I am ready to get away from the character theme. I am OK with a theme in a child's room, but like it better without an actual character involved. He LOVES construction trucks, and we already had some construction-themed pictures, so a theme was born! Without being tied to a character, queen size bedding for kids is slightly easier to find--especially at The Company Store! I found construction truck bedding that isn't cutesy or too young looking. AND, it matches a striped duvet that I already had! Woo hoo!
His current plain blue curtains and blue walls were also acceptable, so the only thing left that didn't fit in was his dresser. His nursery had a nautical theme, and we had used an old dresser of my husband's that I painted with a lighthouse and sailboat. You can see what it used to look like here. We aren't able to purchase a new dresser, so I decided to just paint this one again. I had thought about painting it a solid color, like brick red, but then my son asked if he could have a crane on his dresser instead of a lighthouse. How could I say no! I used the pictures from one of his construction books for inspiration, and three hours later, the dresser fit into the room perfectly. He loves it, and I think it will hold us off for a couple years until we can buy him new bedroom furniture. Nothing like using what you have!

Basement Playroom

I am joining the party a wee bit late, but when I found a new blog today, Kelly's Korner, I discovered that every Friday she has a linky party for us all to show a different room/area of our homes. I love that idea! So, last Friday's "Show Us Where You Live" was about playrooms/bonus rooms/laundry rooms. Since this was my blog post on Monday, I decoded to join the party! Better late than never! Go check out Kelly's blog to see everyone else's spaces!

When we bought our house 7 years ago, the basement was just your typical dark, ugly, unfinished basement. If the washer and dryer weren't down there, we would have only gone down when we blew a fuse! Once we had our boys, and the toys began overtaking our once uncluttered home, the need for more space started us thinking about finishing the basement, or at least part of it. It would be the perfect place for a playroom, since the only way anyone HAD to see it is if they chose to! So when we got serious, we began really looking at the space to figure out what configuration would work for us. Of course we had to consider the laundry area, the electrical box area, and the water valve area, and how much space we would want to keep unfinished for storage. The space we decided to finish was almost half of the basement, minus an area that has a rough-in for a bathroom. We left a space large enough to add a bathroom if we ever decide to, but for now, it is where I store all my holiday decorations. I have a LOT of Christmas and fall decorations!

Work on the project began in September 2007, on the day after Labor Day, which was also my oldest son's first day of preschoool and my husband's first day at his current job. Talk about a crazy time! So, here is the space once the studs were up: (BTW, all the wood was brought into the basement through the window!)

The drywall was quite tricky to get down the steps to the basement. The stairwell has a 180 degree turn. We will never be able to fit a full-size sofa down the steps (anyone ever see the Friends episode with "PIVOT!") But, once the guys figured out the trick to turning the drywall just so, the rest of the pieces made it down without a hitch. (I was a little worried for a while!)

Here is the space with walls and a ceiling! We went with the textured ceiling to hide the imperfections from our uneven floor joyces. The door in the back opens to a small space for the electrical box and sump pump. The contractor had a great idea to angle the door to use as little space as possible for the closet! The opening to the left leads to the unfinished half. Our washer and dryer are in this part. It would have been REALLY expensive to finish the laundry area, so we decided to hold off on that.


Here is the room all finished with carpet! Finding the right carpet at the right price was the most difficult part of the project.

And just three weeks after the project began, this was the day we moved the toys down. Yippee!

I love the little curtain I made for the window. I sewed two 79 cent quilting squares together and sewed white rings at the top to hang it from a cheap tension rod. I purposely chose a thin, light fabric that light would easily come through. We need all the light we can get through that little window!

I used as many black accents down here as I could. I love the black with the green (which is Behr Grass Cloth from Home Depot). We bought a cheap black particle board bookshelf for $28 at Target and secured it to the wall:

The white baskets with green gingham liners are from Pottery Barn Kids. They were originally in my oldest son's nursery. The green bins are from Walmart. They only carried this green color for a short while. I was so lucky to find them when I did! Ever since then, they have come in a beige color.

I painted our wicker chair, a pegrack, and my old toy box to finish off this wall:

This black table and chairs from IKEA also received some black paint:

I created a coloring supplies storage system for the wall behind the table, using a wall-mounted magazine rack and two small galvanized buckets. I secured the buckets to the magazine rack using cable ties.

I love our wall of pictures. 8X10 enlargements at Costco are very reasonably priced. The black frames are from Michaels. They come with the mat, and are only $4 when Michaels has their 50% off frame sales! I purchased the "Let's Play" vinyl wall decal from Uppercase Living.

And here is the room today:


We rotate toys around the room and the house as the boys' interests change. I also put some toys away for the summer, so that when we have to spend more time down here in the winter, the toys seem "new" again.

And my favorite part of the basement is behind these doors:



We had a scrapbooking closet built around our old kitchen table! I finally have a spot to keep all my stuff! Of course, an entire room would have worked as well (ha ha!), but I love this space. I can be in the middle of a project, get called away, and just close the doors on it. No more having to clean it all up! My husband loves it as much as I do, because we can see our dining room table on a regular basis now!

And behind door #2 . . .

This is where we left a space for a bathroom if we ever decide to add one. As I mentioned before, right now it is a great storage space for all my seasonal decorations. This is just a small portion of what's in here:

Scary, huh?