Thursday, May 10, 2012

Home Decorating and Decor Week 2 - Star, Dress up, Actress Room

You can't see it well but at the top of the boarder in this room it is written in yellow paint ,and it says, "A Star is Born" on it. When I was going through my divorce, we had an evaluator hired. He was to come and evaluate both parents homes and decide which parent should have the children full time. Someone told me two pieces of advice they were told in the past were important to evaluators. One was that each child have their own room and space. Well, at the time, I had three girls in one room. The other was that I needed a hand rail going down the stairs. Come to find out, neither mattered to our evaluator but it got me hopping to get this room done for Princess number 5.

I will just add here to anyone that may have a similar situation. Pray about what you should focus on. I spent needless hours worrying and putting up a hand rail and painting a room when I could have been focused on my kids. The two things that I felt I needed to do were to put up pictures of the family all over the house. I had some but felt to put up more. The other thing I felt to do was to make the front yard pretty. It wasn't bad but I added flowers. I don't know that the front yard did anything but the first thing the evaluator mentioned when he came to "evaluate" my home was to comment on my pictures. Seriously, pray and follow your feelings on that. He really did comment on the pictures first off and I knew then, I had done right by following my feelings on that.

With this room, since I had only a day or two to get it ready for the evaluation, I used the off white that was already on the wall and used the left over paint from the lime green room of Princess number 1. (click here) I also used the sky blue from that room and the other two rooms. To save me time and painting, I used a non-feather, plastic duster. I don't know if you have seen that type of duster before but I couldn't find a feather duster so I bought the plastic one and used it to roll the paint on with the tips of the plastic duster. The duster came in a three pack with three different sizes so I used one to do the blue swishes and another to make the lime green swishes on the white walls. This saved me paint and time.

This room also had a border. The people who owned the home liked decorating with borders and wall paper. To save me time, I used the same technique I did on the "Winnie the Pooh" room where I took the thick painters taped and used the border as a guide. I put the tape on the wall just under the bottom edge of the border and then used water and a cloth and plastic scraper to get the border off. I left the painters tape on and just painted with a roller the colors I wanted and once they were rolled on, I removed the painters tape giving me a nice even edge. It saved me lots of time.

As you can see in the top picture, I painted solid paint with the opposing color so on the wall I did a lime green border, I swished it with the blue paint and the blue border has green swishes on it. I did the baseboards the opposing color in solid as well.

This princess LOVES dress ups. There hasn't been a friend over in years that hasn't dressed up almost each visit. I have two pictures in the past month alone of two different groups dressed up in costume. I have hours of plays video taped as well. It has been a fun room for her.
 
Once the walls were painted, I painted the yellow at the top across the boarder, "A Star is Born" as she wanted the theme of the room to be dress up, acting, stars, movies etc. So, I went to an overstock sale for the boards and found these four boards with holes for pegs for about $3 each. They were already painted in the exact colors of the room. The had one yellow, one green and two blue and all had sayings about stars, such as, "When you wish upon a star" etc. So even the sayings worked in the room. The funny thing was that the pegs that I bought to go in the holes they already had drilled were more than the boards. I painted the pegs to match the boards and glued them in. I hung the boards. I painted the shelf to match the room. I found pictures of our family dressed in costumes or in plays and framed them, hanging them above the dress ups on the wall.

Since this princess collected Warner Brothers items, I found plates with Characters on them and hung them at the top of the room on one wall with plate hangers. I had a picture of my mother with all her grand-daughters but didn't have a frame to match so I bought a mat to fit in the frame the size of the picture I had and painted it yellow to match the room.

You can see how I painted the closet and the back of the door with alternating squares and then splashed them with white paint. Once again, I would have painted the solid on the door around the knob and frame of the door darker to hide fingerprints. After reading these posts you are going to think my kids hands were filthy the way I write about that but I do that for those that don't follow the post and may possibly only read this post. It is just good information for children's areas in general. You can see the costumes I had hanging from the peg boards. Some of these I made for Halloweens past, others were for dance recitals but most are from yard sales or second hand stores or bought on clearance after Halloween. There is no point in spending money on these items. You can just ask your friends through email if they have any old costumes their kids have out grown or put an add on the local radio yard sale show or in the paper classified section, or facebook yard sale for your area or town. Most people are happy to see their creations or treasures being used. You could send them a "thank you" card with your child dressed up in the costume or something. There are so many cute ideas.

For a place to put her collection, I took the shelves that the previous owner used and sewed covers for them out of lime green fabric. The shelves were a dark wood laminate. If I tried to paint them, the paint would scrape off as it would a Formica counter top. So, I took green fabric, measured the size of the board and made tubes. I made it twice as long as needed and cut it in two and used it to cover both shelves. I could have taken them down and put up a different shelf but then I would have had to find one I liked and painted it and it would have cost me and I really didn't care that much and also like I stated above, I was in a hurry.

Once the shelves were covered, I put on her collection. I wanted to put something across the top as I had the plates on the other wall and I had painted words on the other wall so I found these cute character hats and just tacked them to the wall. I am not sure how else they could have been displayed other than hanging on the bed posts so this gave them a cute way to be displayed. I found the cute Tweety bird goose neck lamp at a second hand store and put that over her bed so she could use it as a night lamp to read.

Also on that wall, I found a movie marker second hand and I had a directors black beret and hung that on a heart peg holder above her bed. Later, I saw some film stamps at the post office and bought them and framed them placing them near the movie marker on the wall.

I had an antique metal bed that I used in there for some time but then she wanted a bunk bed so she could have a little "room" beneath it. We sold the antique bed and use the bunk still. She asked me the other day if she could have Princess 3's room when she left but she only wanted it if she could take her bed down. I posted about her updating her room recently and here is that post showing her bunk with no bed under it where she has a little room with TV, bean bag chair etc. (See that post here) She enjoys her room still as well. I thought for sure I would have had to update one or all of their rooms before now but they just change them when they want and how they want.

They have had fun with their room and I had fun making them for the girls. One more thing, at the foot of the bed, you can kind of see it, I put a full length mirror for her to look at herself with the dress ups. You can see it in one of the upper pictures but it looks like more costumes on the wall as it is reflecting the costumes near it. It was cute when I would walk by and see her admiring herself in the mirror.


I think this would be a fun grandma room to keep as well. However, I think it would make a great work room if I ever started to do massage from home. It is just about the right size. Like I said, I am not in a hurry to have them move out but just thinking ahead...... 

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