Toddler Boy Room – Transportation Theme!

Continuing on my journey of decorating our new house…..it was very important to me that my 3-year-old son’s room was very special!  We were transferring him to an official big boy bed in the process, and we wanted him to know that this was HIS room and that he loved it!  So, it all began with a car shaped toss pillow that he picked out at Target one day!  And, the transportation room was born!

I found the adorable Oscar bedding at Pottery Barn Kids  and fell in love!  Unfortunately, I wasn’t so in love with the prices!  So, I began to build a room for less with the Target pillow and Oscar bedding as my inspiration.  I found the Oscar pillowcases on clearance from Pottery Barn and snatched them up.  I decided to purchase solid color sheets and comforter elsewhere since the sheets are never seen and I didn’t want the comforter to be too busy anyway.  I then found this great Ebay/Etsy store called 3buttons*n*2bows which carried drawer knobs and toss pillows made with Oscar fabric.  So cute!  Add some great tin signs from Hobby Lobby, a custom street sign from Ebay, and a hand painted road along the wall and we have a very UNIQUE transportation room!

A few EASY projects that added that UNIQUE touch:

1)  We repurposed furniture from the nursery and from our old master bedroom by sanding and painting it navy blue to match the room.   See detailed instructions on the previous post here.

2)  The road on the wall – so much easier than it looks!  We used a laser level and painter’s tape to fix the outline of the road onto the wall and painted it with some black paint from an earlier project.  After it dried, we used plain white contact paper cut into small strips and applied it to the road to make the stripes.  It added the perfect extra touch to finish off the room!

3)  A personal touch…..I took photos of my son doing “transportation-ish” things (i.e. driving his Handy Manny truck, sitting in the racecar at the children’s museum) and pasted them onto a piece of scrapbook paper with colors that coordinated with the room.  I then printed out two words on strips of paper that related to transportation (Zoom, Beep) and attached them to the paper underneath the photos.  I purchased two scrapbook frames from Michael’s and hung the framed personalized art on the wall of his room.  It added a nice splash of color and also a great personal touch!

The moral of the story – if you find something you like for a room, use it as an inspiration and find ways to build on the theme without spending the money on the entire set.  By piecing together various items rather than purchasing the “bedin a bag” sort of things, we ended up with a less expensive and much more UNIQUE bedroom for our little man to enjoy!

Notes:  A couple of other items from the room that we LOVE – the bed is the Grimen bed from Ikea which is a platform bed which sits on the ground and is padded on all sides and covered with gray fabric.  WONDERFUL for a first big boy bed – no sharp corners and not far to fall!  We hope the bed will also grow with him and transition into a cool teen bed in a few years….time will tell!  Also, the great stop sign rug is from CSN stores – great pop of color and my son loves it!  If you see anything else in the room you like, just leave a comment and I will let you know where it came from!

One Bedroom Set – Four Rooms

OK guys, I just moved into a new house, so life the past few months has been full of boxes, shopping trips, and furniture assembly!  (Thank you Ikea!!)  My goal has been to make a comfortable, beautiful home without totally breaking the bank!  The key for me has been to cut corners where I can, but to splurge in the areas that matter most to my family.  One thing I was able to do is repurpose a few items from our last house to work into our new decor.   I was so scared to start each of these projects, but I am thrilled with how they turned out and with the fact that I saved money and repurposing is good for the environment!  What could be better?!

So, my husband bought a bedroom set from Rooms To Go for his first apartment after college in 2001.   When we moved, we decided to upgrade the bedroom set and move from a queen to a king bed.  (This was one of our little splurges for our new home!)   So, instead of getting rid of the old set, we split it up and repurposed individual items to use in different areas of our new home.  By the end, we had used pieces of the set in four different rooms!  And, the only cost to us was paint and minor supplies!  Here’s how we did it:

The two largest pieces of the set are now used for our guest room.  We left the bed and the armoire the same, so this photo will help you see where we began and how the set looked before any changes were made.

As you can see, the set was pretty basic and started out with a light stain.  The first project was to create a dresser for my 3 year old son’s room.  (More about his room still to come!)  So, we took the large dresser from our old set and sanded it to take off the smooth finish.  You really just have to make sure to take off that smooth top layer to give your new paint something to stick to.  We then chose a water based primer – the folks at the paint store said latex would work better, but we wanted to avoid the fumes for our son’s room – and tinted it blue.  The primer covered nicely, but we did two coats just to be sure.  Then, we painted the dresser navy blue using a semigloss paint.  We removed the old knobs and added some custom made knobs to match his new room decor!

Like many bedroom sets, this dresser also came with a mirror that attached to the back and rested on the top.  Since my three year old son didn’t have much use for a mirror so high off the ground, we decided to use it above our fireplace instead.   This project was so much easier than I expected and it looks so great and UNIQUE in our living room!  I purchased a few bags of these great colored stones from Michael’s (they reminded me of polka dots, and you will soon see that I LOVE polka dots!).   I simply scored the wood frame of the mirror gently with a knife to help the stones adhere later on.   I then purchased small tubes of Epoxy glue from Lowe’s and applied the epoxy to the wood frame in small sections (refer to the tube for application instructions).  Then, I simply applied the stones randomly to the frame to form a bright pattern around the mirror.  So simple and looks so great!

Finally, I took the last two pieces of the bedroom set, the nightstands, to repurpose for our bedroom.  (One part of the new set that we decided not to splurge on!)  I got the great idea for this project from this post on another site.  I used Michael Miller’s Yellow Cherr-O fabric and black semigloss paint.  (I also used my blue tinted primer leftover from the dresser!)  Some fresh knobs from Lowe’s, and my project was complete!  A great, UNIQUE addition to our new room – woohoo!

So, that’s how I turned one bedroom set into furniture for four different rooms!  Guess what?  It was actually FUN!  I hope you can get some ideas from this post and add some UNIQUE touches to your home too!

Hello world!

Hello!  Welcome to my blog!  If you are looking for ways to add  a unique touch to your life and save money doing it, you have come to the right place!  I think it is such fun to think outside of the box and find new ways to do things!  And, I LOVE saving money, so finding unique solutions to everyday living at a cheaper price just makes me smile!

Throughout this blog, you will find ideas for decorating your home, celebrating life’s milestones (small or large!), and much more!  If you have something in your life that could use that unique touch, please post a comment and let us see what we can come up with!  Once you train your mind to think outside of the box, you will be amazed at what you can come up with to add that “special touch” to your life!