projects: the twinkie's room

A dream come true ... my brother- and sister-in-law recently bought a house for their growing family and have asked me to help them decorate their house, room-by-room.  Ahhh!  How much fun!!! I recently finished the first one: their two-year-old twin daughter's room (affectionately called "The Twinkies").  I was given $300 and free reign to beautify the space.  Here are the results:

Before:

 

After:

I absolutely love the way it turned out.  Since the room had been recently painted an off-white color around the time of the home purchase, my sister-in-law didn't want to have to repaint the whole room.  Instead, I decided to paint these bright white, semi-gloss, 12" stripes all around the room to add some interest.   

The bright yellow bookshelves I got off of Craigslist for $10/pair, which I painted the cheery yellow to bring in some color.  (The paint refused to completely cover even after sanding, priming and three coats of paint, so I ended up sanding everything down to give them an aged and antique look.  And heck, after being in a little kid's room for any length of time they would have ended up like this anyway!)

All of the artwork was hand made by me.  I had no room in the budget ($300 may seem like a lot at first, but boy-oh-boy it was gone so fast!) to purchase wall art, so after creative thinking, this was the result!

The bedding is a mis-match of items from Target, Ikea, and Babis R Us.  I absolutely love the way it came together.  I had a hard time finding reasonably priced toddler bedding (their cribs convert into toddler beds) that is actually cute.  Most of the options I found were covered in characters (i.e. Minnie Mouse and Dora the Explorer), which is not quite my taste.  The stuff I love (eh eh Land of Nod eh eh) is waaay too expensive for this budget.  But I like this result much better.  Once the girls get old enough for twin beds, the black and white throw pillows can be kept too.

I changed out the light fixture from a boring "boob light" to this fabulous thing.  Gorgeous. And it makes the room so more special.  From Urban Outfitters.

They loved it and I had a great time putting it together.  Excited for the next project!