The Things We Do For Our Kids . . .

My youngest daughter, Olivia, is turning 10 in a month. She has been wanting to redo her room for about a year but since our house was on the market, we said wait until we move because, seriously, what was the point!

Needless to say, as I had previously mentioned, our house hadn't sold and there weren't any houses we just "had to have" so we decided to stay put for the time being. Minutes after that decision was made, two things happened. One, our house became trashed (having to keep your house clean for showings at any time is exhausting, especially with two kids, one husband, and a black Lab!)! And two, a little, blonde girl climbed on my lap and asked if I could redo her room. What's a mom to do? So here's pics of Olivia in her current room.




Her room is cute but just feels cluttered (maybe because it is!). There is also something you need to know. My oldest daughter, Caitlin, has a large room. In fact, it's actually two rooms in one.

Caitlin's room was featured in a makeover article in the St Petersburg Times in August 2009. Caitlin is on the bed, little sis Liv, on the chair.

So when we decided to redo Liv's room, the goal was organization. She is a clutterbug and hangs onto all kinds of items that invoke wonderful memories (I call it crap!). So we sat down with our new best friend, Pinterest, and started posting items she liked to her folder.


This is the bed she loves. It is from Rooms to Go Kids and cost $800. It has storage above and a trundle below (the trundle costs extra but we already have one we can use). The funny part is that the bed is called The Olivia!! I think it was meant to be. There are two problems, one the design Olivia wants is to center the bed on the wall and put a bookcase on each side. That is a great idea but it will block 1/3 of the window, which we are both kind of ok with. Two, the bed costs $800 and we currently have two perfectly fine beds (one in the garage and one in her room) that would work just as well. This decision is still currently pending!!!

Others have already been made. Olivia has expensive taste and in the spirit of finding storage, found these:




I love them too! They are from Pottery Barn Teen but at $599 and $699 (respectively), I couldn't bring myself to get them plus, we needed two and S&H had a $75 surcharge per bookcase - EGADS!!






























So I was able to convince her to go with these:


They aren't as fun since they don't rotate but will look nice and are from Target. We had to order them on-line. They were $280 each, had an additional 15%-off sale and free S&H so a mommy is not going to complain (until they arrive and that will be another post, just as a teaser, they look great IN THE END!)



As for the colors, Olivia knew she wanted zebra so she wanted zebra "fur" under her chair rail and lime green above. Now, a lot of times, I let my kids just go with it. However, I had visions of me trying to vacuum the walls, and since I barely vacuum the carpets, that was not gonna happen! The color palette we decided on was lime green below the chair rail, high gloss black on all the trim, white above the rail and zebra as accent. It will actually look great and quite sophisticated for such a young lady but it is what we were able to compromise on.



So that's the room makeover in a nutshell. The process has begun, starting with stripping the popcorn off the ceiling! But that's for another post!