Tweaks to things we already had (i.e. bought before we even knew what our house would be like when we were just dreamers in Wisconsin!), meaning that these upgrades were F.R.E.E. to our current budget!
First on the docket, this fun "set"
The table is from IKEA for just shy of $20 and was unfinished wood. I wasn't a big fan of any of the IKEA kids' chairs that were made of wood except for the expensive ones (as in, as expensive as the table...per chair. Not a bad price relative to other stores, but more than I wanted to shell out for something toddlers will tip over, bang, and probably color on).
The chairs were at Marshall's in Middleton, WI. I walked in one afternoon on a whim, wearing my son in the Ergo as I was not expecting to buy anything after our pass through the scrapbook store in the same shopping center. But these chairs were perfectly sized and on clearance for $10 each (originally $25 each). The only problem: they were girly. Like way girly. See the fairy and bright pink flower? Yeah, not so much gonna work for my boy! They were made by different companies but were identical. So we hauled them to TN and left them in the garage for a while until I'd have time to get to them. Then came the kickstart I needed: when I signed up for our mail to be forwarded, I (as usual when we relocate) requested Pottery Barn catalogs as well as some other favorites. When the new PB catalog came, it included a flyer for Benjamin Moore paints, who provides all PB paints for their catalog rooms and to match products. The flyer allowed me to go to the nearest BM provider and get two F.R.E.E. pint samples of paint in any color I chose!!! So off we traipsed to Ace Hardware and got a pint of "True Blue" and "Apple Green," while deciding to paint the table white with the paint we already have on hand for our kitchen cabinets...whenever we get around to painting those!
Et voila!
Each chair is a bolder version of the wall colors in his room, and the table is neutral and matches the trim. (And if we have a girl in the future *ahem hubby's sperm, get the hint! I need a girl in this family* I plan to dainty the table up a bit by painting on placemats for her little tea parties...and repainting the chairs to match her room at that time. Ya know...IF we have a girl....that's a big IF in my husband's lineage. I hope to break the trend!)
Obviously my son loves this addition to his room as you can see it cluttered with his Snuggly and snack bowl already! I had to bribe him to step out of the picture to take this shot!
Another thing about my son is his love of reading! He's 20 months old and already knows all the letters, most of his numbers 1-9 (though not quite how to count them beyond 1-2-3 yet), and all the 8 basic colors in a pack of Crayolas! The other night, he even repeated every word of the bedtime story his daddy read to him that night! The kid loves books, and has quite the library to match. So he needed a reading spot.
Enter one of his other loves....pillows!
These shams are from Target and tie together all the colors and similar coordinating hues of the colors in his room. I bought them when we lived in WI because I knew I wanted to do my son's room in green and blue and loved the shades used in these flowers (which are also my favorite flower to decorate with...the zinnia silhouette). I used some old guest-bed pillows that we've since replaced and just tucked them at the end of his crib on the floor so he can prop up and flip through some Sandra Boynton or Eric Carle tales anytime he wants!
Next, we're on to a battle many parents of diapered kids fight: the stink. We took over a year to finally find a system that minimizes the smell of our cloth diapers between washes after they've been soaked or soiled. And while our current system of keeping them in an XL zippered wet bag and used wipes in a tightly sealed lidded trash can works better than any previous attempts, nothing is perfect. I don't want to burn candles in my son's room for safety reasons, and I don't like the artificial smell of plug-in deodorizers nor the chemicals to inhale from sprays, so we started using a reed diffuser in WI and still had some oil and diffusers left over. The bottle of oil had dried up just before we moved, and rather than buying a new one (cheap as it may have been), I just stuck the reeds down in the giant bottle of refill oil. This, however, was not the most attractive solution, and the tall sticks still attracted my booger-nut to try to reach for them and risk spilling the don't-get-on-your-skin-labeled oil.
So my solution:
Stick the thing down in a fun colored vase that I used to use as a center piece in our old white-walled apartment when I wanted spring vibrancy. It fits, the reeds still diffuse the gentle scent easily, and my son is oblivious to them, thus leaving them alone!
Here is the vase as it sits on his dresser, unnoticed (by him!)...back by the lamp and surrounded by 3 classic stuffed animals: Mickey, Paddington, and Classic Pooh (which I bought on my first date with Hubby, 8 years ago!)
And this brings me to our final change. The mirror we added. I bought this brand-new-still-in-the-package IKEA round mirror for $10 at a re-sale in Madison, WI knowing I'd use it somewhere as we only had a mirror for the master bedroom and would need more. It has 4 hooked anchors that hold it securely to the wall so my son can't kick it off or pull it down on himself during diaper changes, but he can stare at his adorable face afterward or when standing in his crib across the room.
His room is coming together! I am considering painting the silver S monogram to match one of the chairs (probably the blue?), though I'm not set on that just yet. And we need to hang some art. Hubby is working on a birth announcement to frame like this one, and I want to string a taught wire over the crib to hang art, photos, and shapes along that wall by clothes pins or cute clips.
Before long, we'll also be ripping up the carpet all throughout the first floor to replace it with oak laminate wood floors. Afterward, I'll probably be searching for a nice, plush, area rug to fill the middle of my son's floor for warmth, sound absorption, and bonk-absorption when he takes a toddler tumble!
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