When you turn five you do things like go to kindergarten, learn fifth position, and get a big girl room!
There are a couple other finishing touches that we want to add along the way but as a whole, Kenzie's big girl room transition is done. It feels like it has been a super long time in the making. And really... it has. We have been talking about it for more than 6 months and it took over 3 months to finish once we started. Here is her new room:
Love it! It changed so much from her little baby nursery. To start we changed her wall color. Initially her walls were green and blue (to simulate grass and sky) and that just wasn't working with a big girl room. Super cute for a nursery but not so much for a big 5-year-old that is just going to keep getting bigger. The new color is more likely to grow some with her. We decided on a pink and gold motif. Eventually we decided to accent in a light blue color, as well. So, when we started to look at wall colors we thought a light pink would work well. Kenzie ended up choosing Art Deco Pink by Valspar. It wasn't too pink and wasn't too dark. Kenzie really wanted red and purple as room colors but we shut that down really quickly. I should add that she wanted them together. Ugh. Thankfully we were able to convince her that wouldn't work. Pinterest and Google were definitely our friends in giving her other options and ideas.
The next step was ordering her bedding. Yep. We did that before we even had a bed in the room. We did it because there was a sale on the set we had been watching for a while. We went with the Sheringham Road brand at Target. We chose the Kennedy quilt set. This was good because it had white and light pink but not so much pink that it overpowered the room after the walls ended up pink too. It also had the light blue accent color and a light purple which was good in fulfilling Kenzie's want for a purple room. Plus, it was a girly girl type of bedding and looks like it belongs to a little girl instead of a baby. No cutesy characters or anything and something that (again) should grow with her some. Bonus, it is reversible. The other side is a solid pink but it's still an option if she wants it one day.
Her bed was actually the hardest part. Not because we had a difficult time choosing one but because the timeline to wait on it was crazy. We chose a twin bed from Rooms to Go Kids. We actually picked it out online first and researching online saved us more than 50% on the cost of the bed. It was on sale online so we went to the store to look at it... but it wasn't on sale at the store. We ended up getting it for the online price though because we knew about it. The downfall was that it is one of their most popular beds. That combined with the awesome online sale made it super hard to come by. It meant that we had to wait over a month for delivery. Crazy! But true. We were actually supposed to have to wait about 2 months but I ended up checking the status online and finding out that we could get it delivered sooner. Steven was super skeptical and it wasn't until they showed up at our door that he believed it would be delivered a month before we thought it could. And it is awesome. She LOVED it when it was all set up in her room. It immediately transitioned the room even though when it went in, there was absolutely nothing on her walls or anything since we were waiting for the bed before we started putting things up to make sure everything was laid out how we wanted. Speaking of which, the bed was longer than I anticipated. I mean... I knew the length but seeing it in the room made me realize that the rooms aren't huge. Which we also knew. Also, her bed is somewhat of a sleigh style so it sticks out a bit farther than a typical twin anyway. What that ended up meaning was that we moved furniture around for a few days trying to figure out what the most functional and aesthetic option for everyone.
Initially we had plans to ask Grandma to make curtains for Kenzie's room from fabric K chose at Hobby Lobby... however, once we removed her current blackout curtains which are not as much of a blackout as Will's but still block some light, we realized that we were going to need to change our plans. Her sleep went down hill with that much light in the room later in the evening and earlier in the morning. We even had to go as far as putting a quilt over her window at night while the curtains were down so she would sleep. We ended up picking out some blackout curtains we liked from Target but they weren't cheap and were pretty hard to find because they discontinued them while we were in the process of deciding on them. As it turned out, Nana and Papa found them and got them for Kenzie for her birthday. They were super blackout. Which meant they were crazy heavy! So heavy that we persuaded Nana and Papa to help us hang them. Steven and I don't have the best history of hanging things like that together. Plus, it let them come visit to see her bed and everything. The other high point to that was that I had help from Nana to put up all the other wall decor in her room. The gold dots on the curtains were actually a running theme through the room. If you look super close, you can would even notice the gold dots on the background in her shadow box for dance.
One main thing we knew we wanted in her big girl room was a gallery wall. We started picking out things for this wall months ago once she decided on a color scheme. Honestly, it has been a plan in the making for close to a year. We have been gathering things for a while. Some of it is bought but some is special. First off, I made the cross in a frame using some ribbon I already had. The frame was one I found in a box in the garage. That ribbon is actually what made us think that accenting in the light blue could be good. The other items are ones I found randomly most of the time. We only really set out to buy the chevron print wood painting. The others were accidents that worked out really well. Another thing we added to it later was the ballet shadow box. I have actually been waiting for more than a year for Kenzie to finally grow out of her ballet shoes. It didn't help that they stretched some and her feet haven't grown quickly in recent years. Once she did though, I knew immediately that I wanted to shadow box them along with the barrette from her first recital and a picture of her at that recital to remember her first year of dance. She is our little girly girl and dance is one of her absolute favorite things. Even if she doesn't do it forever, I wanted something to remind her of where she started in it and how much she loved it. Plus, when she gets older and thinks it is babyish or something... I'm taking it and keeping it forever. =) We had a harder time deciding on other items for her walls after the gallery wall. The hardest part was actually deciding how to hang it all. I seriously sat in the living room for about 45 minute moving items around trying to find the best arrangement. Then, when Nana arrived we did it together until we came up with what we liked. I took a bunch of pictures and we used them to help us hang everything on the wall one at a time. It wasn't easy (though it wasn't so difficult that we regretted the decision to have one) but it was so very worth it. We realized we had to go out more than up when we were doing the layout because her bed headboard is higher than we thought it would be but it worked. I don't think we could have been any happier with how it turned out. Kenzie loves it. (Ignore those stuffed animals on the bed. Kenzie was playing with them and I forgot to straighten them for the picture but those are two of her top "guys" right now so they are in her bed for nighttime.)
The Bethany Hamilton print in the frame is actually from a poster that she has had in her room for years. She loves it and we have talked about what a courageous and inspiring woman Bethany is. Kenzie wanted to keep the entire poster which was actually advertising the flip flop line she is a part of but that didn't really fit any longer so I cut down the picture of her surfing and put it in a frame that was on her wall previously. It turned out awesome. You can't see it in the picture, but we also have a small metal thing that has a picture of Cinderella on it that says "Change your shoes, change the world" that was so cute and on clearance at Hobby Lobby so I grabbed it when we saw it. The Cinderella blue is the same as the accent blue color too (along with Bethany Hamilton's ocean backdrop). We knew we wanted to keep her hair bow holder but we moved it.
We also knew that we wanted the gold dots to look sort of like confetti coming out of the corner of her room but it was hard to choose other things for her wall without doing too much and making it look overdone. Those dots ended up being the bane of my existence. Our walls are super textured so they didn't want to stick. I admit to using double sided tape to hold them up there. Whatever. It worked. We also had to put her Frozen light back up. This was actually a gift from her Grammy in Mississippi a few years ago but she loves it at night when she goes to sleep. It has a light show that lasts about 20 minutes. There is actually and Elsa decal that goes with it but we elected to leave it off the wall this time. We actually didn't think it would stick right anyway after we had to remove it from her prior wall.
One thing I thought would be good for her was a bulletin board because Kenzie is like me already and somewhat sentimental. She likes to keep cards or special pictures people give her, etc. The thing was though that I wanted it to be the cute ones with the fabric and ribbon. Luckily, that is actually a super easy thing to make. Initially the plan was to use the fabric that she originally wanted for her curtains but when we got to the store, we saw this gorgeous white fabric with gold roses. She LOVED it. She chose a light pink organza ribbon and gold push pins as accents. The ribbon is sort of hard to see on the board in pictures but in person, it is super cute. She loved the entire thing and couldn't wait to get pictures up on it. Actually over the last month she has asked me to hold certain things in preparation of putting them on the bulletin board. In addition to a new bed, we also purchased a small table and chairs from Ikea. Kenzie is super into puzzles, Legos, and coloring so this was perfect for her to have in her room to work on all of those things and more on. It's very small so I don't know how long it will last as far as size goes but she loves it for now. Eventually she will likely need a desk but we are hoping that the kids have aged enough at that point to transition the play room into more of a bigger kid type "play"room complete with desks for each of them or something. Right now she has a pencil box that I found from when I was working that she has pencils in and she likes to walk around with a notepad checking things off. Because she is strange.
There are a bunch of other small touches in her room that most people may not even notice. To start, I painted gold polka dots on her light switch. Looking back, I wish I had not tried to seal it because since the switch was a smooth plastic, putting on the sealer over the paint made some of the paint do strange things. I wish I had thought to spray the other sealer I have on because that wouldn't have been as big an issue. We also attached two hearts from the tree decal that used to be in her room to an outlet cover so she has something remaining from her original nursery. I plan to spray the sealer on those at some point. I just haven't had the chance yet. We left the remainder of the wall with her bulletin board and light switch blank for now. We know that she will want to add some posters and what not. For instance, next weekend we are going to the UCF Fanfest and there will likely be some posters of the football team there. She is going to want one. she always does so we are leaving this area as her "poster wall" for now. Eventually there might be something else there or as she gets older and we update again, it could change.
We are still missing her lamp. We actually own a gold lamp (or at least we think we still do) that is in Steven's parents' attic. When we go visit in a couple of weeks, we are going to bring it down to put in her room. For now, she is still using her lamp from her prior room. I love that her little nightstand actually has her Bible and the book we are currently reading on it. Like such a big girl.
Her room looks entirely different. It's crazy when I walk by it now and instead of this baby room I see this room that belongs to our little girl who is growing faster than I ever thought she would. Before our eyes, she is turning into a young lady. Now she has the room to match.
There are a couple other finishing touches that we want to add along the way but as a whole, Kenzie's big girl room transition is done. It feels like it has been a super long time in the making. And really... it has. We have been talking about it for more than 6 months and it took over 3 months to finish once we started. Here is her new room:
Love it! It changed so much from her little baby nursery. To start we changed her wall color. Initially her walls were green and blue (to simulate grass and sky) and that just wasn't working with a big girl room. Super cute for a nursery but not so much for a big 5-year-old that is just going to keep getting bigger. The new color is more likely to grow some with her. We decided on a pink and gold motif. Eventually we decided to accent in a light blue color, as well. So, when we started to look at wall colors we thought a light pink would work well. Kenzie ended up choosing Art Deco Pink by Valspar. It wasn't too pink and wasn't too dark. Kenzie really wanted red and purple as room colors but we shut that down really quickly. I should add that she wanted them together. Ugh. Thankfully we were able to convince her that wouldn't work. Pinterest and Google were definitely our friends in giving her other options and ideas.
The next step was ordering her bedding. Yep. We did that before we even had a bed in the room. We did it because there was a sale on the set we had been watching for a while. We went with the Sheringham Road brand at Target. We chose the Kennedy quilt set. This was good because it had white and light pink but not so much pink that it overpowered the room after the walls ended up pink too. It also had the light blue accent color and a light purple which was good in fulfilling Kenzie's want for a purple room. Plus, it was a girly girl type of bedding and looks like it belongs to a little girl instead of a baby. No cutesy characters or anything and something that (again) should grow with her some. Bonus, it is reversible. The other side is a solid pink but it's still an option if she wants it one day.
Her bed was actually the hardest part. Not because we had a difficult time choosing one but because the timeline to wait on it was crazy. We chose a twin bed from Rooms to Go Kids. We actually picked it out online first and researching online saved us more than 50% on the cost of the bed. It was on sale online so we went to the store to look at it... but it wasn't on sale at the store. We ended up getting it for the online price though because we knew about it. The downfall was that it is one of their most popular beds. That combined with the awesome online sale made it super hard to come by. It meant that we had to wait over a month for delivery. Crazy! But true. We were actually supposed to have to wait about 2 months but I ended up checking the status online and finding out that we could get it delivered sooner. Steven was super skeptical and it wasn't until they showed up at our door that he believed it would be delivered a month before we thought it could. And it is awesome. She LOVED it when it was all set up in her room. It immediately transitioned the room even though when it went in, there was absolutely nothing on her walls or anything since we were waiting for the bed before we started putting things up to make sure everything was laid out how we wanted. Speaking of which, the bed was longer than I anticipated. I mean... I knew the length but seeing it in the room made me realize that the rooms aren't huge. Which we also knew. Also, her bed is somewhat of a sleigh style so it sticks out a bit farther than a typical twin anyway. What that ended up meaning was that we moved furniture around for a few days trying to figure out what the most functional and aesthetic option for everyone.
Initially we had plans to ask Grandma to make curtains for Kenzie's room from fabric K chose at Hobby Lobby... however, once we removed her current blackout curtains which are not as much of a blackout as Will's but still block some light, we realized that we were going to need to change our plans. Her sleep went down hill with that much light in the room later in the evening and earlier in the morning. We even had to go as far as putting a quilt over her window at night while the curtains were down so she would sleep. We ended up picking out some blackout curtains we liked from Target but they weren't cheap and were pretty hard to find because they discontinued them while we were in the process of deciding on them. As it turned out, Nana and Papa found them and got them for Kenzie for her birthday. They were super blackout. Which meant they were crazy heavy! So heavy that we persuaded Nana and Papa to help us hang them. Steven and I don't have the best history of hanging things like that together. Plus, it let them come visit to see her bed and everything. The other high point to that was that I had help from Nana to put up all the other wall decor in her room. The gold dots on the curtains were actually a running theme through the room. If you look super close, you can would even notice the gold dots on the background in her shadow box for dance.
One main thing we knew we wanted in her big girl room was a gallery wall. We started picking out things for this wall months ago once she decided on a color scheme. Honestly, it has been a plan in the making for close to a year. We have been gathering things for a while. Some of it is bought but some is special. First off, I made the cross in a frame using some ribbon I already had. The frame was one I found in a box in the garage. That ribbon is actually what made us think that accenting in the light blue could be good. The other items are ones I found randomly most of the time. We only really set out to buy the chevron print wood painting. The others were accidents that worked out really well. Another thing we added to it later was the ballet shadow box. I have actually been waiting for more than a year for Kenzie to finally grow out of her ballet shoes. It didn't help that they stretched some and her feet haven't grown quickly in recent years. Once she did though, I knew immediately that I wanted to shadow box them along with the barrette from her first recital and a picture of her at that recital to remember her first year of dance. She is our little girly girl and dance is one of her absolute favorite things. Even if she doesn't do it forever, I wanted something to remind her of where she started in it and how much she loved it. Plus, when she gets older and thinks it is babyish or something... I'm taking it and keeping it forever. =) We had a harder time deciding on other items for her walls after the gallery wall. The hardest part was actually deciding how to hang it all. I seriously sat in the living room for about 45 minute moving items around trying to find the best arrangement. Then, when Nana arrived we did it together until we came up with what we liked. I took a bunch of pictures and we used them to help us hang everything on the wall one at a time. It wasn't easy (though it wasn't so difficult that we regretted the decision to have one) but it was so very worth it. We realized we had to go out more than up when we were doing the layout because her bed headboard is higher than we thought it would be but it worked. I don't think we could have been any happier with how it turned out. Kenzie loves it. (Ignore those stuffed animals on the bed. Kenzie was playing with them and I forgot to straighten them for the picture but those are two of her top "guys" right now so they are in her bed for nighttime.)
The Bethany Hamilton print in the frame is actually from a poster that she has had in her room for years. She loves it and we have talked about what a courageous and inspiring woman Bethany is. Kenzie wanted to keep the entire poster which was actually advertising the flip flop line she is a part of but that didn't really fit any longer so I cut down the picture of her surfing and put it in a frame that was on her wall previously. It turned out awesome. You can't see it in the picture, but we also have a small metal thing that has a picture of Cinderella on it that says "Change your shoes, change the world" that was so cute and on clearance at Hobby Lobby so I grabbed it when we saw it. The Cinderella blue is the same as the accent blue color too (along with Bethany Hamilton's ocean backdrop). We knew we wanted to keep her hair bow holder but we moved it.
We also knew that we wanted the gold dots to look sort of like confetti coming out of the corner of her room but it was hard to choose other things for her wall without doing too much and making it look overdone. Those dots ended up being the bane of my existence. Our walls are super textured so they didn't want to stick. I admit to using double sided tape to hold them up there. Whatever. It worked. We also had to put her Frozen light back up. This was actually a gift from her Grammy in Mississippi a few years ago but she loves it at night when she goes to sleep. It has a light show that lasts about 20 minutes. There is actually and Elsa decal that goes with it but we elected to leave it off the wall this time. We actually didn't think it would stick right anyway after we had to remove it from her prior wall.
One thing I thought would be good for her was a bulletin board because Kenzie is like me already and somewhat sentimental. She likes to keep cards or special pictures people give her, etc. The thing was though that I wanted it to be the cute ones with the fabric and ribbon. Luckily, that is actually a super easy thing to make. Initially the plan was to use the fabric that she originally wanted for her curtains but when we got to the store, we saw this gorgeous white fabric with gold roses. She LOVED it. She chose a light pink organza ribbon and gold push pins as accents. The ribbon is sort of hard to see on the board in pictures but in person, it is super cute. She loved the entire thing and couldn't wait to get pictures up on it. Actually over the last month she has asked me to hold certain things in preparation of putting them on the bulletin board. In addition to a new bed, we also purchased a small table and chairs from Ikea. Kenzie is super into puzzles, Legos, and coloring so this was perfect for her to have in her room to work on all of those things and more on. It's very small so I don't know how long it will last as far as size goes but she loves it for now. Eventually she will likely need a desk but we are hoping that the kids have aged enough at that point to transition the play room into more of a bigger kid type "play"room complete with desks for each of them or something. Right now she has a pencil box that I found from when I was working that she has pencils in and she likes to walk around with a notepad checking things off. Because she is strange.
There are a bunch of other small touches in her room that most people may not even notice. To start, I painted gold polka dots on her light switch. Looking back, I wish I had not tried to seal it because since the switch was a smooth plastic, putting on the sealer over the paint made some of the paint do strange things. I wish I had thought to spray the other sealer I have on because that wouldn't have been as big an issue. We also attached two hearts from the tree decal that used to be in her room to an outlet cover so she has something remaining from her original nursery. I plan to spray the sealer on those at some point. I just haven't had the chance yet. We left the remainder of the wall with her bulletin board and light switch blank for now. We know that she will want to add some posters and what not. For instance, next weekend we are going to the UCF Fanfest and there will likely be some posters of the football team there. She is going to want one. she always does so we are leaving this area as her "poster wall" for now. Eventually there might be something else there or as she gets older and we update again, it could change.
We are still missing her lamp. We actually own a gold lamp (or at least we think we still do) that is in Steven's parents' attic. When we go visit in a couple of weeks, we are going to bring it down to put in her room. For now, she is still using her lamp from her prior room. I love that her little nightstand actually has her Bible and the book we are currently reading on it. Like such a big girl.
Her room looks entirely different. It's crazy when I walk by it now and instead of this baby room I see this room that belongs to our little girl who is growing faster than I ever thought she would. Before our eyes, she is turning into a young lady. Now she has the room to match.
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