I’m here. I haven’t fallen off the earth, I’ve just been sucked into summer with three little kids and all it’s sweaty, whiny, wet and happy craziness. I keep waiting for things to slow down a little so I can get some projects crossed off the list, but then yesterday I realized the crazy is not going to let up until summer’s done.

So I’m going to try to take that minute here and there my kids give me and to get something accomplished. Like their room. It’s still far from done and it’s starting to wear on me.  The overhead projector came out yesterday and I started to draw a map of our neighborhood on the big board.  Nothing like a big junior high flash back in the middle of the day.  If you are too young to remember the drone of the fan and the slightly burny smell of the overhead projector well then you are just too young aren’t you.

If you’ve got a keen eye then you spotted the bumper I made in the first picture. And here is the bunting bumper (rubber baby bunting bumpers!) in all it’s glory. Take a long look, because I will never be making one of these suckers again. You know when you are dreading doing a project and then you start and think, hey, this isn’t so bad, kind of fun even? Well this wasn’t like that at all–it sucked the whole way through.  But thankfully done and off the list.

Painting the dresser is next. Any thoughts?

Here are the first few posts about the room if you need a refresher:

• before
• during 1
• during 2

I need a little help picking out material for curtains. Sadly this is the story of my life, which is why all the curtains in my house are white. I can not commit to a fabric. Ridiculous. The kids’ room is too white for white curtains. And they go to bed before it’s dark out these days, so they need a little light blockage action if they are ever going to get to sleep. Here are the windows (sorry one is a before picture, the other is a during): window one, window two. The fabrics I’m thinking about are pictured above, they are:

1. nani iro painting muji canvas
2. joel dewberry herringbone
3. nani iro saaaa saaa (it looks like I randomly typed some letters, but that’s really what it’s called)
4. alexander henry pirate grid

I want something dark blue and something hand drawn-ish.  So vote away! Tell me what to do. My kids will never sleep if you don’t tell me which to get. Really. And if you have any other suggestions, I love to hear them.

This is all a part of me redoing my kids room and you helping. The posts about the process so far are Before and During.

So this is where we’re at with the room so far (here are all the before pictures). I told you my brother built a bunk bed, but I didn’t tell you it was a cloud bed! He built the loft bit and then we cut out clouds from some scrap wood. I made patterns out of paper first to make sure it was randomy and to see if the clouds would be high enough to function as a guard rail. When I was about half way through cutting them out, I freaked out and thought it might look too dorky theme-y, but I think it turned out okay. What do you think? Now the big question is whether or not to paint them. I think maybe I’ll paint some white, but not all. And maybe one striped like this awesomeness.

I think we’ve chosen a color for the wall–those are all paint chips taped the wall. It’s called cotton balls, really it’s just white. Not that exciting, I know. But I am excited about that big board up there. It’s a quilting board (or something like that, I don’t know, it’s got a graph on the back) that my neighbor gave me a looong time ago. It folds out one more on each side, so it’s pretty big–maybe too big? Anyway, I’m going to paint a map of our neighborhood on it. I grew up “out the back road” so there wasn’t a lot I needed to know to get around. But we live on an actual block! So I thought the kids might like to see the way we go to the library and the store and their friends’ houses on a big map. I’m thinking I need some sort of projector for this project. And I haven’t decided what to do about the places: pushpins? polaroids? have my kids draw pictures? shrinky dinks? Any ideas you have would be fantastic. The baby’s crib will be under it eventually, so pushpins might be out.

This is the closet, or was the closet. Now it is my daughter’s desk (my son got the bunk bed, she got a desk, even steven). I’ve got a few ideas for this, one of them being paint the entire sucker white.  I’m sure there will be more ideas in the future, because I’m taking a class for this very purpose. It’s called Playful Learning Spaces.  It’s an e-course designed to guide you through creating thoughtful spaces for your children to play in and learn. It sounds like the perfect class and comes just at the perfect time for me.

And now for the surprise: the creator of this wonderful class, Mariah Bruehl, has kindly offered to give away a spot in her class to one of my readers! But you have to be snappy, because class starts tomorrow! You have until 5pm central time to drop your name in the hat (that is, leave a comment–sharing some input on the room if you’d like). Good luck and I’ll see one of you in class!

THE GIVEAWAY IS CLOSED!

Celeste from on-hand modern is the winner! Congratulations Celeste!