Big Kid has a new room!
Actually she has the same room, just different stuff inside of it. But it is new, improved stuff!
Grammy took BK out this weekend (Baby and I tagged along) and bought her a new bed, dresser, nightstand, bedding and some accessories. Prior to this excursion I had a bunch of set ideas about what I wanted BK's room to look like, and it was this whole vintage floral idea, with a Jenny Lind bed and Target Shabby Chic bedding, milk glass bud vases, that kind of thing. She is the uber-girl and I thought that would hit the spot with her.
However, it became very clear very quickly that it was the Big Kid and Grammy Show and what they came up with was different from what I had envisioned. It was an excellent exercise in remembering that my children are not me. Some day their room(s?) will be something terrible to behold, and yet a sacred sanctuary that I cannot interfere with lest the resulting battle should create a rift in time and space through which Shub-Niggurath, the Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young, can enter.
So they had their way all over town, and it's quite cute:
That's the new stuff. I am positively stumped as to why this would be, but although there was no change in the type of furniture in her room, no extra storage, no structure removed that was not replaced with something functionally equivalent yet larger, she seems to have a great deal more space. I didn't even organize anything. It was just swapping out a toddler bed for a twin and ditching one chest of drawers for another. Oh, what mysteries shall be explained on the other side!
I'm more or less happy with the preceding part of her room (I think I'm going to change out the drawer pulls, and the nightstand is coming later; the owl lamp will go on it next to her bed), but there's still some work to be done elsewhere:
This child's hutch was up at my great-grandparents' ranch when my dad was a child. I love it, but it's proved a little awkward and I'm still not sure how to use it best. The print needs to be hung, but I'm going to buy a new frame for it. I'm kicking myself for not buying more of those little Liberty frames. I didn't know what to do with them when I bought them (they were in my room, which is why they still have pictures of the girls), but now I am stoked on the idea of using them for BK's sweet little doodles.
This is the Bad Wall. The bookshelves are mismatched and not quite adequate, the French alphabet up there needs framing, and there is a big blue plastic tub of stuffed animals just to the left of this that is ugly as sin. The stuffed guys are going in a rolling under-the-bed bin, and then on the Bad Wall I'm going to do this. Almost exactly. I will omit the middle shelving unit, and I think I'm going to add doors to the bottom of the two units we'll get, but it will be a white floor-to-ceiling deal that should carry both girls through for a long time storage-wise. Frankly I'm not even sure we'll need two, since everything she has is out here as you see it (there's a closet, too, with blankets, dress up and a bit of toy storage).
Bonus time!
I had to move the old furniture out of the room so the delivery guys could bring in the new stuff, and the manky toddler bed ended up on its end in our bedroom until I could move it out to the garage. When her dad got home I made BK recreate Sarah Connor's psych ward pull-up scene from T2:
Because I'm a nerd. That's why.