Good-Bye Forever, Part One

Good-bye to the wildflowers. This was Zoe Bug's room, and she loathed it for ages. I get no appreciation from that kid, I tell you. It took me months to stencil all the wildflowers and bugs onto these walls, and she has the nerve to tell me that a) her favorite color is brown and she does not even like purple, and b) she hates bugs and flowers.

The nerve. Ever since Zoe BUG was in Mrs. Moeller's preschool class, her favorite color has been brown. Brown! Zoe's first grade teacher pulled me aside early in the year to ask if Zoe was color blind because why would a kid prefer brown over every other color in the rainbow?

A kid who likes chocolate, that's who. It's in the genes, I think.

Well, I told Zoe that I would never be painting this room again, so she better get used to it. And I stuck to my guns for a long time . . . but then we decided it was time to pull up the nasty seventeen-year old carpet in her room.

And when you're pulling up carpet, you might as well repaint, right? You don't have to worry about taping off and you can fling the paint around willy nilly without worrying about the floor.

I couldn't pass up that opportunity. I could be Jackson Pollock for a day.

I started ever so gingerly by painting over my flowers. I had to take a moment of silence in preparation for saying good-bye.

And I got over it faster than I expected. Painting without consequences is very rewarding. I embraced it with reckless abandon.

What? I stepped in the paint tray again? Silly me. Look! Footprints. Oopsie.

Before I knew it, the top of the wall was done. This next part is my favorite.

The color is milk chocolate. No lie.

This is the new flooring. It's a wood laminate, and all of our bedrooms have the same type of flooring as well as the hallway and living room. With the dog and two cats, it's much easier to keep clean. Cleaning carpet is loathsome. Yes, I think I just made that word up.

Nope, I just looked it up and it's a real word. Goodie, I have lots of uses for it.

This was the closet before. Since the carpet had to come out, so did everything else. That means the shelves too. I loathe painting closets, so since I never plan to do this again, and now it's in writing, the closet went white.

Never. Again.

This is the closet put back together, but it's not organized yet. We started this project a month ago, and putting everything back is a loathsome process. 

See, it's a useful word.

As I was saying, the girls both have so much crap, and we are going through everything and purging as much as I can get my hands on, but things keep coming out of the Goodwill box and finding their way back into the room. Which then forces me to accidentally break things in order to make the eviction permanent.

I'm tenacious like that.

I considered decapitating this freakishly large unicorn stuffed animal and playing Godfather with it, but I'm afraid it might scar Zoe Bug for life.

This is the furniture we had in the room before. It's all white picket fencey looking, and it doesn't really go with the new vision for the room. Horsey.

Although, I am not going to stencil horses on the walls. I've had to repeat this statement to Zoe Bug at least 587 times.

I have this Old West Cricut cartridge that I'm going to use to embellish the room a bit. Eventually.

And I am not going to go overboard with this theme like I did with the wildflowers and bugs. 

I'm saying that to myself as an affirmation. I might need reminding.

I tend to take a theme and beat it to death.

Geez, where was I? Oh yeah, furniture. We swapped out this furniture with some of Stinkerbell's furniture because it doesn't scream DAINTY FLOWER! like this furniture does.

And the bedding. Sniff. It's covered in bugs and flowers which are now loathsome.

I'm going to kill that word from here on out.

Here's the new bedding. I got it from Pottery Barn Kids and it's boy bedding. I picked it because it's relatively neutral with no theme, and it has blues and browns. Perfect for the look I'm going for. The dog under the bed was not on the design board and is not part of the vision for the room. The trundle bed is now in that spot. You might see it when I do part two of this post. Possibly in August.

I need to redo the magnetic board, but that's not high on my priority list. For now, it's tucked away next to the dresser.

The window treatments are gone. The vertical blinds were a pain in the neck. The individual slats were always breaking off.

For now, this is all we have up. I'm toying with the idea of a blue bandanna treatment. Since I have to make it, it could take awhile. This works for now.

The toy box needs to be repainted and debugged. Perhaps we'll pull the wings off. I mean replace the dragonfly with a neutral back. Again, I'm not in a hurry.

I also put an old wood dresser in here, but I forgot to take a picture of it, and I'm too lazy to run upstairs and rectify the situation, so I'll get back to you on that in part two.

Meanwhile, this is what Stinkerbell's room looks like. For three weeks all Zoe's stuff was either stuffed in here, or stored out in the living room. It was awful. I cannot stand living around so much chaos, and it made me cranky. I was obsessively washing dishes just so I could have one room in my house that was put together.

No matter that it's always an illusion anyway. In my mind it's very different. But then I'm crazy.