Kids' Room Jungle Decor - Update

So I have been working on the kids' room for a couple of months now and I thought this was a good time to give an update. We decided on a Jungle theme as I already had some crib sheets in the Zoo Menagerie pattern that I made before the kids were born.  You'll recall from my Inspiration Board post that I had assembled a few ideas for adding some mix and match giraffe and elephants to the room.  So here is what we have done so far.

Walls: My mother-in-law gave us these really cute wall decals called Jungle Adventure from RoomMates that we absolutely love. In fact, we loved them so much we shared some picts of the decorated room and they wrote a very cute blog post about our nursery. I'd like to thank Nicole at RoomMates for the awesome articles that you can find here.  (PS Full disclosure: I was awarded a small gift certificate to use in a later purchase for submitting pictures of the room but I wasn't given any of the products by the company to test out or give my opinions about beforehand.)  They are so easy to use, repositionable, reusable and Made in the USA in York PA as well as being very affordable.  Here are some picts of how we used the various animals....

Here you'll see my decorated wooden letters (purchased from Michaels) that I then painted navy and Mod Podged cutouts from the Zoo Menagerie fabric to each letter. The letters are hanging on the wall with command hook poster tabs. Here is a close up of the letter Y.

 You'll also notice that I bought two of the Etsy art pieces of the elephants on the navy chevrons and mounted them with double sided tape to canvases and hung them up over the changing table.

Cheeky Monkey

The green lanterns that you'll recall that I used for the Very Hungry Caterpillar birthday have been repurposed and decorated with fabric cutouts of navy elephants. They are hanging by fishing line on command hooks from the shelf.  You can see here as well that the RoomMates can also be used on furniture (see that alligator on top of the bookshelf?)

Here are the adorable Growth Charts and Matching 8x10 print from Eric Sturtevant adorning the entry of the room.  We decided to get the Growth charts laminated (at Kinkos for like 4$ each) because we knew the kids would just pick at them and destroy them otherwise.  They are hanging my command hook poster tabs.

Furniture and lighting:
We haven't changed much in terms of furniture although I did reupholster the two miniature rocking chairs that I got from my paternal grandparents in a green chevron material.

We also added this very cute Barnslig Ringdans rug and the Skojig Pendant Lamp (plug-in) from Ikea.  At some point I think I'll get the matching table lamp now that we are not using the changing table as a changing table any longer and maybe even some of the Barnslig sheets and duvet covers in the chartreuse color.

Curtains - work in progress
I started making some curtains for the big window but I haven't hemmed them up yet.  Here is what they will look like eventually.

The next big thing other than finishing up the curtains is to decorate the very plain sliding closets doors.  RoomMates is coming out with a large scale tall giraffe and tree branch with toucan (seen here in their 2013 sneak peeks blog post) which I think will be awesome for decorating the large plain white closet doors

as well adding a peel and stick Wall clock if they come out with a kids version (or maybe I'll use this colorful one..)

SO that about sums it up. I am pretty happy with it so far and the kids love to do elephant, lion and snake noises.  Too adorable!!

Super Easy Lightweight Holiday Card Display

Here's a fun and easy tutorial on how to make a lightweight card display on the cheap.

Materials:
Corrugated Cardboard
Felt
Scissors
glue stick
tape
Fabric ( I found mine cheap in the remnant bin at Joanne's)

1. Cut the cardboard to desired size.  Mine is 8" x15".
2. Wrap cardboard with fabric and tape as if you are wrapping a present.
3. For Tree, cut two felt squares 5" square in light green and dark green.  Fold on the diagonal and cut to produce two triangles of each color. For snowman, find three circles of increasing diameter to use as tracing guides for snowman body circles.
4. Glue stick on the felt shapes.
5. Hang and use pushpins or tacks to hang holiday cards.

 This craft was shared with:

 

more fun Halloween and Fall things

Just wanted to post a few more cute halloween decorations, treats, costumes and fall photos from the past few weeks.

Here is my Tulle-o-ween Wreath

A cute spider hot dog (just slice each end into 4 sections leaving the center uncut and microwave). I added candy eyes because i had them but you could use raisins for eyes...

 my kids at the pumpkin patch

 Halloween -I am Bride of Frankenstein and Greyson is the monster...

 Daddy is Igor and Jack is Dr. Frankenstein (al la Gene Wilder in Young Frankenstein...)

Halloween Spider Lantern

Just getting going on some halloween decorations and I'm starting with this cute hanging spider lantern.  Basically this is a black lantern (found in three packs at Party City) with white and black felt eyes and giant chenille pipe cleaner legs.  Getting the legs to stay put with hot glue was a little bit of a challenge but I just gobbed it on and adjusted the legs after the glue was dry. I did poke the end of the legs through and into the lantern just to give them some added stability.  What do you think??

This craft was shared with:

Safari Bedroom Inspiration Board - Elephants and Giraffes and Monkeys, Oh My

So the boys are 1 now and although I love to design and decorate, I have done very little in the way of decorating their bedroom.  Before they were born, I made a few things for their room and it looked pretty good.  The fabric collection that I used is the Zoo Menagerie Collection by Eleanor Grosch in both cottons and flannel. I made some bunting flags, a couple of crib sheets, a lamp shade cover, a bedskirt and a window valance.  The print is of giraffes, elephants and rhinos (expect for the window valance which are the whales from the same fabric collection)

Since we've moved I'll admit that I haven't decorated one iota.  Their room is bigger now in our rental house and we have two cribs as well as their changing table and the glider.  I have been reluctant to hang pictures as I didn't want to put holes in the walls and those command hooks for me are always hit or miss.  But I was recently at a twin mom friend's house and she decorated her girls' room so cute that I got inspired to revamp the boys' room. Here is an inspiration board I put together for their room

So I think the colors will be along the lines of lime and navy with elephants and giraffes and maybe a monkey or two thrown in for good measure.  I really love the chartreuse elephant and giraffe fabrics along with the coordinating chevron print from Premier Fabrics.  They are about $7.50 and yard so I am not sure if I am going to use them for curtains. I would need about 6 yards for the giant window in their room and I am thinking about doing a roman shade application.  As for a rug, well, the room in carpeted wall to wall in beige carpet which i hate because it gets dirty so quickly and its a rental so the quality of the rug isn't great for sitting and rolling around on the floor all day.  I have been in LOVE with FLOR carpet squares forever and used them all over my previous home.  Here I think I might do a lime green 5x7 or so carpet which should only run me about $170, depending on the style of carpet I choose.  I have samples coming in the mail to test for softness and color.  

For bedding I already have a couple of sheets in the Zoo Menagerie fabric but I have been contemplating adding a few different sheets, maybe in the Safari Sky print from Carters (right middle with coordinating quilt and giraffe lamp) or the SkipHop Elephant Parade sheet (right bottom) which is like $24 but is really cute and has a different pattern on the top and sides to mimic a bumper without having bumpers. I also really love the Pottery Barn Harper quilt with the elephant and name applique (top right) but that runs like $110 and is mostly white which is not great for kids in my experience.  I guess it would be just for show so that is a pretty expensive wall hanging.  I am going to see what I can find at our big Garage Sale at the beginning of October before I go out and buy anything new.

For decor, I found some really cute things on Etsy.  The top middle shows a cute print of an elephant with a navy blue chevron.  The artist had two of the same print with the elephants facing opposite directions so I bought those and figure I will frame them and use them to "bookend" a decorative shelf on the wall.  I love the idea of name blocks or letters and I think i'll make these myself with wooden letters form the craft store. Vinyl wall decals are the hot thing in nurseries these days and there are TONS of options on Etsy.  I like a jungle scene with a tree and a couple of animals that you can customize all the colors.  They are pretty expensive, usually over $100 for a large scene, so I have been looking for decals that are reusable so that we can take them with us when we move again.  I figure this would be a great way to spice up the plain old white wooden closet doors.  I also found this giraffe and elephant stuffed animal set that just happens to be made from the Zoo Menagerie fabric so I might pick those up as well.  

I have been so eager to get started on the decor but I have done only one craft project so far. I made this adorable hanging elephant lantern mobile from the lanterns I had used for the Very Hungry caterpillar decorations at their birthday party.  Basically I just strung the lanterns together vertically and then decorated with navy blue fabric elephants that I cut out of some material I had laying around.   I just pasted them on with a glue stick and hung on a nail away from the wall so they can spin.  The kids seem to like it and it was so easy!

before

After