Eliza's Big Girl Room

Goodbye, sweet baby nursery...

This summer keeps getting busier and busier, but for some reason I have recently been overcome by an unquenchable desire to re-do Eliza's room.  Do any of you suffer from the same problem -- no matter how much is on the to-do list, if you get an idea in your head you can't let it go until it's done?

I've actually been wanting to do something cute and girly since she was born and I've done bits and pieces of it over the past couple of years, but something about getting her potty training and her approaching 3rd birthday made it imperative to give her the room she never knew she always wanted...  (Click to enlarge pictures.)

Hello, big girl room!

It began with that banner over the window, which I made for her first birthday party using the Girl Friday collection from Cosmo Cricket.  I knew that would be my color inspiration for the whole room -- turquoise and pink with little hints of green.  I completely splurged (for me) on the bedding, and had such buyer's remorse after about it after that I was determined to do the rest of her room on as small a budget as possible.  I'm going to show you the whole room today, and then over the next couple of posts I'll show you the blow by blow of a few of my favorite elements.

I think the most eye catching element is the tree mural:

I wanted something to break up and lighten up all that turquoise.  My first thought was big wide vertical stripes, because I'm kinda obsessed with stripes at the moment.  But since I had already done stripes on the dresser (and didn't want the room to look like a circus tent), I opted for a large-as-life tree.  I wanted something graphic but still organic -- what do you think?  I'll post details on my tree-painting saga in another post. (You can check out that post here.)

My favorite little bit about the tree is this little "carving" I put in:

And also the pretty pink bird cage and birdie (which you may recognize from my blog header -- yeah, it's pretty much my favorite graphic I've ever created.  And it's available in my etsy shop if you're interested!)

The other big eye-catcher in the room is this dresser:

Which I bought at a yard sale for $10 when it was officially The World's Ugliest Dresser.  A little paint and voila -- fabulousness!  I will be doing a complete tutorial with pictures for this one in my very next post.  You have to come back just to see how ugly this puppy started out.  The round mirror was another ugly yard sale find, made much happier with a few coats of white spray paint.  The cute pink flowery thing on top is a felt flower ball, for which you can check out a great tutorial here.

Other happy details:

Some friends of ours kindly gave us the pretty girly bed, which was in good shape except for the brass knobs, which were pretty beat up.  I painted them with the same pink from the dress re-do.  My husband thought I was insane, but I LOVE the little bit of whimsy they add:

And every girl needs some big puffy flowers over her bed, right?

And here's a close-up of the banner, which I blogged about in greater detail here:

Eliza may not have ever told me she wanted a new room, but she love love loves it.  Her favorite part is the birdie on the wall, and she really loves the hanging poof balls.  Plus, there is plenty of room for dancing:

And jumping on the bed:

A big girl room for a suddenly so big girl!  (If you know any way to stop her getting big so fast, please let me know!)

A few notes:  The color on the wall is Behr Eucalyptus Leaf, mixed at 3/4 strength by the nice man at Kwal.  If you'd like to get a better look at the cute little table and chairs, I blogged about them here.