Archive for January, 2009

What does a child’s room mean to you? What kind of space do you strive to surround them by?

Our Family's Home

Those questions have always rattled around in my head. When I was growing up, I was the last at home. My brothers and sister were already in college and/or married by my elementary school years. I had our entire upstairs “attic” with all the little attics in the walls, one I built a baby nursery in that was literally a cubbyhole built into the wall big enough to be a fort, the other was my “rocket” for some time, but the space was all mine, and it was magical.

My brothers and I.

My only issue was that I was never allowed to decorate it myself. Now it was decorated, nicely. By my mother. Who picked all the peach and yellow tones, and all the fabric and colors for the bedding and window treatments, etc. My mother also picked my attire every day as well, but that’s for another post! I always remember feeling as if I loved the space I had, but it belonged to some one else. It was a distinct feeling I had my entire childhood. I never felt I could be who I was.

So I knew I would make sure my children could have the feeling of magic like I did, and at the same time could express themselves, who they were, with as little constraint as possible. After all, as children, our rooms are really the only place we have that’s all ours. I’m a long time believer that our bedrooms should be our sanctuary.

The only problem I had was the kids did not have “their own” rooms until the girl was 5 and the boy was 1.That’s when we bought our home. It was such an exciting time, we were making a big move across the states, into our first home! We spent hours and hours looking at ideas on line,our daughter had already been a big fan of Trading Spaces: Boys Vs. Girls, so she had plenty of wonderful ideas of her own.(And some outlandish ones, like beds with slides and pillow rounds in the middle of the room!)

We looked at paint samples and played with color combos at places like Sherwin-Williams. I did research on the meaning of colors and what affect they have on moods. We scoured roadside furniture stores and yard sales for pieces of furniture we could renovate and afford. We poured over design mags, and paint samples.

In the end, our daughter chose some of the brightest, most cheerful pinks I have ever seen. After an entire day of painting and trimming, I saw bright pink spots for days. Her room almost seems to glow when lit by light. My wonderful husband spotted a child sized wood furniture desk, chair, dresser,mirror and headboard at a yard sale for just shy of $100.00. And we were in business!

Our daughter chose other bright accent colors and we wanted to blend it all together with a blanket she had gotten the prior Christmas.

Bright, Girly and Fashion!

Now, she’s 8. And she’s into all things sk8er.Skulls, punk style,her favorite colors are red, black and bright pink. Yep, you guessed it, she’s begging for a re-do already!

When we went to pick out paint colors, we made sure to check out the mistakes paint at the time, and ended up with a really beautiful exterior sky blue, and a Ralph Lauren green. Perfect to add dash to our toddler’s room who had just moved into his own twin race car bed! Amazingly for only about 30 bucks more we were able to pull together his room in a day, with Dad taking a couple more to hand draw and paint the rocket on the closet doors.

The Rocket!

Now our son is almost 4, and he’s completely taken with super hero’s, spider man, batman, wolverine, you name it, he loves it! So he’s starting to ask for something a little different in his room as well.

Both rooms have distinct feelings that match each of our children’s moods, our son is really highly strung, and has some issues calming down, and his room feels very peaceful and calming. Our daughter is bright and bubbly with an IQ of 133. She’s basically a mini party in a box. They spend time in their rooms, and play and look at books for hours on end. Every time I go into one of their rooms I get a feeling of entering a different reality, I myself get a boost from the amazing colors they live and dream around.

And in a few years, when our backs heal from the first re do…We’ll let them pick again when they have grown more into themselves, and re create their sanctuary to suit their needs.