Little Boys Room Freshen Up. Part 2 - Decorating

Last week I overhauled my 3-year-old’s room.  I posted about improving the storage here, so today I thought I would show you how I have started to decorate it.  It has been quite inexpensive.  I have taken advantage of some great sales and I made some of the pieces myself.

So starting at outside his door…….

I framed and hung a series of pictures of him we took a few months ago. He chose the poses to photograph and which ones he liked best.  This was his idea as he wanted a set of pictures like  the ones that hang outside his brother’s door.

On his door I applied a decal with his name I ordered from online store, Bright Star Kids.  I decided on placing it a little differently than I intended and ran it up the side of the door.  It is lovely and bright  and the quality of the sticker is great.

Inside his room….

I picked up a set of 3 star canvas from the kids bedding section in Target.  I got these quite a while ago so I don’t remember what they cost me but I know they were significantly reduced.

I wanted something to hang above his bed and to tie in with his pirate print doona cover.  After wracking my brain for a while and not really liking anything I came up with, I decided to frame one of the pillow cases from his bed pack.  I picked up a suitably sized frame from Target, 50% off.

I had purchased a large red magnetic board from Ikea to put in Oliver’s big boy room well before he was even out of the nursery. Before I even attached the board, they were discontinued and I picked up another for an even better price.  These were perfectly siz0ed to fit either side of his window and serve as a place to practice his letter and number skills with magnets.  To attach pictures to the magnetic board I picked up some pirate theme pegs from a craft fair and attached magnets to their backs using glue.

I mentioned in the previous post that I wanted to set up a little gallery to hang pieces of Oliver’s art.  Previously, I had pegged his art to a canvas I had painted and jazzed up with wooden letters spelling, ’Look what I did today’.  It was cute but it was starting to be a little droopy and we wanted to have more hanging room.  

On my last trip to Ikea, I picked up some Nyttja frames in a variety of sizes and colours.  These are great for kids rooms because they not only come in a range of bright colours and are reasonably priced, but they are lightweight and have plastic fronts instead of glass.

 I have made the gallery smaller than I originally intended but I know I can always add to it later.  Depending on the artwork I end up framing, a less is more approach may be in order .

To inject a little more interest into the display, I took some the wooden letters I had around the house and spray painted them blue and stuck them to one of the small frames.  I will pop a picture of my little monkey in the ’My Work’ frame.

On his side table I have his Freedom lamp, picked up from the throw out table.  Adding to the nautical theme brought out in the linen, I used some felt scraps and thick cotton thread to sew a sail boat picture and I popped it in a frame that I was no longer using.

So that is what I have done so far.  I will no doubt tweak and add things in the coming weeks and I will share that with you when I do so.