I cannot believe how fast time is flying now, or busy I have been.
But in the past two(?) weeks, I have pretty much redone and switched around the three bedrooms in our house to make room for our (VERY) soon-to-be baby!
The room Ethan used to use is now the "grownup" bedroom. It is the room with the attic access, so I wanted to make sure we ended up in there:
I had painted it a shocking blue for him when we moved in, but I thought John and I might benefit from something a little more soothing, so I mixed up a ton of paints I found in the basement and ended up with a lovely green.
All I did was toss our stuff in there for now -- some of it quite literally -- and I'll deal with putting it all away as soon as the kids' rooms are totally in order.
The boys moved into the former adult bedroom. The room was very bright and cheery for us, but just a cream color, and I wanted to do something extra special for the boys (especially since we were making them share a room after always having slept in their own spaces).
So I had them pick out some paint colors,
And with a little masking tape and some careful rolling, the boring side walls of the room were transformed into personalized Happy Walls. :)
Noah's side:
and Ethan's side:
I am so pleased with how it turned out (not too shabby for only a few hours of work in one evening!) and the boys LOVE their new space. Sleeping has been blissfully uninterrupted and they are already totally adjusted to the new arrangements.
Once their room was in at least partial working order, I started in on Lydia's room (formerly Noah's room).
I knew I wanted yellow, but I had been agonizing over shades for about a million years. After I found two I liked the best (both very different, but with qualities I admired for various reasons), I bought two of those little sample jars of paint and put two swatches on the wall, which stayed on there for another million years while I scrutinized both of them in every kind of natural and artificial light possible.
Why all the fuss over a silly shade of yellow? Well, painting with yellow can be positively disastrous.
See, I put a gorgeous yellow in the kitchen in the apartment John and I lived in around the time we got married (incidentally, that is my wedding bouquet in front of the wall in this picture):
Bold and rich, not too shocking, just warm and lovely. So when we moved to the house in Scranton a few years later, I couldn't wait to have a perfect yellow kitchen again!
I failed.
It doesn't show in this picture, but the shade I picked was practically NEON in any kind of bright light, especially artificial -- you know, nighttime lighting when you need a day-glo nightmare to help you unwind for bedtime...
So I had indeed achieved my yellow kitchen again, but with none of the pesky tastefulness of the former kitchen. I eventually grew to like it, but would never ever ever ever have picked that shade again for any wall, no matter what, ever.
You can understand my fear of commitment here, yeah?
To wrap up a ridiculously long story, I stared at those swatches for weeks, memorized what I liked best about both of them and finally took the plunge Sunday.
By Monday, I was two coats of primer and one coat of paint in on Lydia's walls:
Late Monday night, starting in on the second coat (just a gratuitous belly shot, really):
And as of yesterday afternoon:
What a PERFECT yellow!!! It is exactly what I was hoping for and I am beyond thrilled with the way the whole room is coming out. The color is soothing and buttery in all light, and is like heaven when the sun sets and shines through the slats of the blinds in the evening.
I have a lot of things I love in there, including my childhood dressers which I refinished when we were expecting Ethan, and the brand new crib and glider from my parents, but one of my favorite special touches is this switchplate that my parents saved from when I was little:
I like that it is the last thing I see as I leave the room.
I still have a lot of closet rearranging to do and laundry out the wazoo, but I have three weeks left to get that done and I think I can do it, unless someone decides on an early arrival. :)
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