Transformation

The last few weeks have been filled with planning and rearranging our "room assignments" for the girls. Now, this has NOTHING to do with the sex of the baby...just for those of you wondering! :-) We were planning all this before the sonogram! LOL! Anyway, we are thankful we have a 4 bedroom house and have the freedom to be flexible with our kids' rooms. We originally thought the new baby could just sleep in our room for the first year or so, allowing us more time before playing musical rooms. But, we then decided to go ahead and make a nursery so that we would have the ability to lay the baby down for quiet naps without the "comings and goings" of our days.

We went back and forth on plans - the girls have all slept together "forever," so should we just put them all in one room? Or what? We loved having our 4th bedroom as a playroom/schoolroom and didn't want to lose that. But, what was the best combination of kids in which rooms?

So....here's the results...

ACat is now sharing a room with the playroom/schoolroom. Her original room (which will now be the nursery with a play area) was adorable - baby blue with strawberries (picture is from 2004 - after moving in and before painting strawberries on the walls).

Smiley moved in there before Little Bit came along but that was due to the fact that she lived and slept in there all the time anyway! Every once in a while she mourns her pink ladybug room that she had at first. But, seriously, it was unused and unlived in! Anyway, the girls have outgrown the "look" of the strawberry room, so we were getting close to redoing it anyway. It will now be "baby" again!

So, ACat's bed was the first step in the process (this was after much deliberation on who got what bed and did we need to buy another one and such). I needed to see what things looked like and where to go from point A. Here's a picture of the playroom in 2005 before finishing the green squares and decorating.


Because of all the effort it took to paint this room, I really did not want to repaint the playroom. As a result, we decided to go black and white with ACat's new bed covers and decor. We went ahead and gave her an early birthday present - the black crinkle puff comforter and sham from Pottery Barn Teen. Love it!! My mom is planning to give her the zebra print "highlights" for her birthday and ACat is thrilled about the "older" look. We are still working on a few details of getting all her clothes and things in there, but she has part of a bookshelf on the desk side of the room and will have under-the-bed storage, too. We also need to get her shelves on the wall for all her soccer trophies and music boxes (her two newest trophies are on the windowsill in the above pic). I have found a couple of cool frames I plan to get for her b-day, too.



After this step, we talked to Smiley and Little Bit about which room they wanted to share. They both (thank goodness!) chose the yellow room, which was Little Bit's nursery. We had put a double bed in there in May, but it again was rarely slept in. Our girls do love to be together! So, this last weekend, we began the move into the yellow room. The main issue is that this room is smaller than the blue room and the two girls have lots of junk...err, stuff...well, treasures. This is what we came up for now.



I plan to work on their under bed storage soon, along with switching out chests of drawers. And, I need to get shoes rearranged (get the correct shoes with the correct girl in the correct room!). I see in the second picture, I still have our elephant diaper holder still there! That definitely needs to go!! The baby swing/bed contraption in the second picture was in the playroom, so this has helped clean out that room for ACat's bed. We also pulled our small table and chairs set from the playroom and are planning to put it in the new baby's room...to create a play area around the window.

I wasn't brave enough to post a pic of the blue room in its current state. It is a LOT scary! I'm strictly culling through toys - baby and big kid - we have so many! We still have lots to do but we are beginning to make a little progress. With the holidays fast approaching, we will lose time on this reorganization. I'm thinking we will hit a point where we need to stop until after Christmas and ACat's birthday. Of course, then I will be just 6 weeks out from my due date!

Cindy and crew