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Dexter the very evil doggy mcdoggersions

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We had such a beautiful weekend here, I tore myself away from the machine, and got down and dirty with the kids and the house. We played outside, did some light clean up, washed the car, and I started to finish my bedroom project.

All this thinking about their room’s reminded me that I put my husband and mine on the back burner, and it was time to turn up the heat!

So I touched up some furniture with some robins eggs blue, since we are creating around our rug. Now I’m on the hunt for some retro style wallpaper to do a couple of the walls in browns and blue, and wall painting and papering can begin! It’s an exciting thought actually having the sanctuary we dreamed of as well.

The Beginning.

Book shelf

Hubby's Table

Dressers

You get the idea.

Let the painting begin! It’s almost Spring, a great time to start getting ready for everything fresh and new.

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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.

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The Girls's lifesize age 5

This was our daughters we made almost 4 years ago when we lived in Arizona.

Our Boy age 3

This is our sons we made together last week.

This is such a fun and versatile project. You can use any kind of paper you have, or get a roll of white paper. You can also use white sheets and make life size stuffed pillow dolls! Try it on large cardboard and make a stand alone life size! Whatever you do have fun.

Each time I had the kids lay on the paper so I could trace their wiggly little bodies.
After we had our lifesize bodies, the kids chose how to decorate, our daughter picked a Drama Queen back in the day. Our son went a slightly different route, wanting to see himself resemble a super-hero.

Using our digital camera I took head shots of the kids.I downloaded them to my computer, and printed out life size versions on normal print paper. ( I think photo paper or printable canvas would be ideal for this craft, I did not have any either time.) We cut and trimmed around the head and glued it to the head on the life size tracing.

In the boys case, I also had to find a picture of a batman mask to print in scale for his life size door poster.

life size trace

Then decorate your heart out! Use fabric, felt, construction paper, sequins, glitter, paint, markers, beads, whatever your little one’s heart can glue down.

All that is left is finding a spot to hang or place your work of art, and enjoy a bowel of ice cream!

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You can’t beat them if your kids have progressive, punk type style. Our daughter is in love with Becky Bones. And Journeys Kidz carries skate shoes by Osiris, that use Becky’s characters and themes.

They also carry the more whimsical converse chuck taylor’s, hi and lo tops, Van’s, and other assorted shoes.

Our son loves the marvel shoes.

We adore Shoes!

Here’s some cute ones I think you should check out at journey’s today! And don’t forget the socks! My little fairy snails love new socks!

lo top marvel-grey

Becky Bones!

Skulls!

Girly Skulls!

Happy Looking, and guilt free shopping. We’ve always been treated wonderful by them, had fast shipping, wonderful store service. They have a great assortment of belts, shoelaces, belt buckles, and wallets for kids as well.

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Picture © www.istockphoto.com/Russell Tate

Maybe I’m the last in the know on this. But it was a pretty shocking news bit to me today, especially considering it’s from 2005!

I’ve always been a believer in the less is more aspect of TV. I’ve heard the studies linking it to violence and ADHD, risk taking behavior even some say, promiscuity. This is the first time I’ve heard a specific age where it seems to make the most difference. Our son is about to turn 4, and he’s just started to play some video games, his sister was raised on the Vsmile and Leapfrog devices, and Santa brought a playstation 2 for her this year. He gets very stressed and even brought to tears with the thought of “the green guy getting him” on Batman Lego, to something with a top hat around the corner in a spongebob game.

I’m pulling the plug and coming up with a unique way to limit all TV time, video games included. Have you tried anything that changed things in your household?

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Handipoints Chore Charts

Handipoints screenshot

I found this last week while looking for yet another, hopefully newer model of the chore chart. Over the years I have printed every free one offered via google, I have made them in every way imaginable, and was yet again on the hunt for a little boy who is almost 4 years old.

Handipoingts Chore Charts is great for say 7 to 12 year olds. My daughter loves it.The only drawback is to open up the full capability of play you have to become a member, so our daughter lost interest quickly when she could not use her points to play the game.

You can set your own point scale, you can have savings goals, even for charity!
I like that both dad and I can check in, and grade the chores, and we love that the system has demerits as well. (We are currently working on, playing calmly together.)

My thoughts are, it’s a great concept, think Club Penguin, only with points from chores giving you the ability to play!However in the current economic downturn, I would be more apt to print out another pattern of free chore charts, and hit the old dollar general for stickers and call it a day.

But the kids love Handipoints Chore Charts so what’s a Mom to do?

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