We have finally completed our decorating of Karis & Titus’ bedroom! What a fun project it was of practicing making my home lovely! My goal was to complete this in August…but hey, at least it was completed before the end of the year. 
We started decorating the kids’ bedroom by choosing a gender neutral vintage green color. We added red highlights through the curtains, kid’s table, and rocking chair. We also spray painted our picture frames for a photo collection. These colors were selected from our gender neutral crib bedding set. All the furniture was found on craigslist, gifted, or loaned to us. I don’t think we have ever bought a new piece of furniture as there is so much available through used sources.
Pictures
My favorite form of decorating is to fill my home with photos of our family. It helps preserve and treasure memories and keep them fresh before our eyes. This helps us focus on the goodness of the Lord that has been displayed to us in the past. It is also a frugal way to decorate your home! I find frugal frames at Goodwill and Ross in an assortment of textures and shapes. I like to include a mirror (this mirror is from IKEA), candle holder, or various shelf to give more depth to my photo arrangements. For this assortment, I spray painted all the frames red and used a little shelf with wooden blocks to give some dimension and creativity to it. I found the blocks at Target in the $1 bins. Here is my new photo collection in the kids’ bedroom:
Rain Gutter Bookshelf
We saw this wonderful idea for rain bucket bookshelves over at Chasing Cheeries and absolutely loved it. All the books help decorate the room as well by displaying their colorful pictures and designs. We made four shelves and hung them within Karis’ reach so she could have her own little reading nook. Rain gutters are sold by 10 foot sections, so this was one section cut into 2 1/2 foot shelves with a hack saw. Our only tips with this is to make sure you use screws and bolt it into the wall studs! We learned this the hard way. Karis loves it, as you can see!
Letters of the Name Wall Hanging
My sister, Christa, helped me make wall hangings out of the kids’ names with various colored scrapbook paper. We hung these from the ceiling with clothespins and a clothesline. We had them hanging on the wall directly above their beds at first, but I think I like the ceiling better. What do you think?
Craft Cupboard
Lastly, we reorganized my personal desk/sewing machine cabinet to transform the bottom cupboards into our craft closet. We store our paints, crayons, paper, preschool activities bags, puzzles and the like in this cupboard now in their bedroom to make it all accessible at Karis’ level and all in the same place. I wanted to have this special place for her to be able to freely explore and expand her creative juices.
We spent just over $100 for this project – including Target curtains & rod ($25), safe paint ($35), rain gutter bookselves ($25), and picture frames & photos ($40). It was well worth it! Now our house is definitely feeling like our own unique little home!
Do you have any fun children’s room decoration ideas?
Children and teenagers that are overweight are at higher danger for bone and joint issues, sleep apnea, and social and mental issues such as stigmatization and poor confidence.
I’m definately going to have to do the rain gutter book shelf! What a great idea and so cute!
What a wonderful room. And on a small budget!! I am in the process of trying to redecorate my childrens rooms. I have a boy and girl and they each have their own rooms. I dont have a lot to spend, but your rooms show you dont have to spend a ton of money to have a nice room for the kids. I love your bookshelf idea. I think I might try it myself. Each of my children have their own bookshelf, but I like that you can see the books you want to display instead of it getting lost on a bookshelf!! Thanks for the great ideas!
Love the green, and love the bookshelves! Going to have to check that out. We love to re-paint furniture to match our children's decor. We have several dressers that have seen more than one color of paint! Our sons' dresser is currently bright blue with red handles. Looks great with their superhero bedroom.
I only have two pieces of furniure in my home that were never owned by others (one is a homemade gift- bookcase). It’s awesome to use what others don’t need anymore.
“All the furniture was found on craigslist, gifted, or loaned to us. I don’t think we have ever bought a new piece of furniture as there is so much available through used sources.”
I love this! If there are 50 pieces of furniture in our house, 47 of them came from used sources. I am thankful for your wide-reaching influence towards reducing consumption through re-using furniture. So much good stuff has already been produced that it seems a shame to spend a lot of money buying new. (And I don’t buy arguments from people who buy new but justify it by purchasing eco-friendly furniture–it’s more eco-friendly in the end to keep something out of a landfill!)
I’m a mother of 11, grandmother of 6 and I can tell you that little ones will swing on doors of cabinets. Please secure your cabinet that you show the little girl looking into the bottom of. Fasten it to the wall so she can’t pull it over on to her. I have had to rush one of mine to the hospital because of a bookshelf they decided to climb. She was seriously hurt but has now recovered.
Susan
Wow, I love these ideas… and love the name “Titus” My oldest son shares the same name!
I love the rain gutter bookshelf idea. I am a homeschooling mom and we desperately needed new bookshelves, but they are so expensive! This idea will solve our dilemma. Thanks!
I love the rain gutter book shelves! The craft closet is a good idea too…
Great work on an adorable, frugal room!
Simply wonderful! You are very creative!
did you get frames at thrift stores, or is there some wonderful secret store that sells cheap frames!??? i never frame anything cause i can’t bear to spend much money on them!
Totally! I find all my frames at Goodwill, Ross Stores & IKEA. You would be amazed at how much great stuff can be found at Goodwill, but Ross & IKEA have great prices on new frames ($4-5 per frame). The arrangement in our bedroom is entirely from Ross and the arrangement in our entry way is from Ross & IKEA. I never spend more than $30-40 on all my frames per arrangement. That is significantly cheaper than buying paintings or other artwork to decorate your home with!
Adorable!! I love it! One cool thing my grandfather did for my little cousin was to take wine crates that he got for free from a local liquor store because they were just thowing them away he made a house out of them using one wine crate for each room. For a very low cost it had an expensive look like he had bought it from Hearthsong. It might be a nice thing for Karis one she gets older. I am now considering making some display cases out of wine crates. There are a lot of cool ideas of things to make with wine crates.
I love the idea for the book shelves. Those are going up in our playroom very soon.
oh, i just love the rain gutter bookshelf idea…that’s great!!!!
I’ve been looking into various kinds of paint lately;
which brand of “safe paint” did you go with?
Check out my post on Safe Paint.
Your childrens’ room is adorable! I love when siblings share a room! We have a 4 1/2 year old and a 2 year old who now share a room. We moved them in together when our youngest was about 18 months. I has been a wonderful experience for them. My boys have bonded much better and now the third bedroom has become their school/playroom (we started homeschooling). Also, having all the toys and books in one room for them to share has almost eliminated the word “mine” from their vocabulary. Before there was a lot of arguing over what belonged to who and who was in who’s room, etc. Thanks for all your wonderful ideas, Lindsay!
So beautiful! You did a wonderful job!
The bookshelfs are so cool!
We have handmade curtins that I got free fence wood, which is now cut into a one inch strip and it is our curtin rod! We used small nails to hold it up, so you can’t see them! It is perfect for our warm and rustic decor! I hope this can help someone who likes the idea!
For the raingutter bookshelf, did the ends come with it, or do you buy those separately? Were they all in the same section at the home store? The room looks great. What great ideas. I love the different pictures frames painted the same color.
Yes, you have to buy the brackets (to attach it to the wall) and end covers separately but they are all at the same place in the store. Lowe’s has the best price on the supplies.
I am so happy you did the rain gutter book shelves! I have been trying to convince my husband to do them in our daughter’s room. I can’t wait to show him these pictures. They look great. I love that they display the books with the covers facing out and are easily accessible.
Beautifully done! I think I’ve commented this before, but we have the same crib set and we LOVE it! Even though we have twin girls and have no plans of future children we still love the fact that maybe someday another set of twins will enjoy them no matter their gender.
Too cute!
I especially love the bookshelves! I can’t wait to own a home so we can decorate it to our liking
I’ve been planning on making my daughter a special art area too…great idea!
Love it! What a fun place for the kids to retreat to. I absolutely adore the rain gutter bookshelves.
Thinking about the alphabet blocks…one of my friends glued alphabet blocks – picked up at garage sales and thrift stores – and used a hot glue gun to spell out her kids’ names. She has them on a little shelf with their baby picture and a decorative item.
Wow! I’m so happy to have found your blog. It’s full of good things. I’m a new follower.
This room is too cute…well done. Also, my youngest son is named Titus!!! I haven’t met anyone else yet who shares his name.
love, Love, LOVE the bookshelf. I had heard of doing this with rain guttering, but had never seen it. I think we may do this.
Thanks for the inspiration.
This is great! It looks like something straight out of Pottery Barn Kids, but you only spent a bit over $100!!! Wow. You have mentioned before that you are not naturally creative, but from what I have seen I would say you are far more gifted than you know! Great work here.
Lindsay, you did a great job on their room. Living in a 2-bedroom condo, we also had to come up with ideas to decorate a boy/girl room. I found everything (except the furniture) at IKEA, which is super inexpensive and it came out so, so cute. Enjoy my ideas here:
http://athreestrandcord.blogspot.com/2009/08/boy-meets-girl.html
I had so much fun with this project. I LOVE making our home a haven through simple, clean, and organized decorating. Thanks for your post!
Lindsay and Debbie, I love your adorable children’s rooms! I am trying to slowly decorate my daughters’ room that they share, but it is taking forever, because of wallpaper removal that needs to be done. Does anyone know of a natural, safe, but effective solution? I am literally peeling of a centimeter at a time. :O(
A steamer. You need a special round circular thingee that makes holes in the wall paper… then you need a steamer to steam the pieces off.
What kind of wallpaper is it? I love wallpaper over paint any day.
I’m thinking if you go and ask for this at lowe’s they *should* know what I’m trying to say. Just tell them you are trying to remove wallpaper. Lowe’s or Home Depot.
It’s a really lovely antique looking cream wallpaper with small pink roses, and was perfect, but it has been colored on with magic marker by our two year old. LOL… there’s actually nothing magical about it right now. The steamer is a great idea, thank you for that idea. I wonder if I can rent one at Home Depot or Lowes. I loved wallpaper too, before this!
I’ve removed wallpaper from multiple houses. The only thing I’ve ever needed to use was vinegar and water. It stinks for a while, but it works! I’ve never needed to rent a steamer.
I just finished pulling down wall paper. We got a $5 scorer (I believe it was called papertiger, or something like that) from wal mart and sprayed a 50% vinegar 50% water solution let it soak in and then peeled the paper off. Before we got the scoring tool, we were using a knife to score the paper, which also worked, but not as well. We had 3 walls that were solid wall paper, so it took a while, but it was effective
I love the rain gutter bookshelves. It would be a good idea for the nursery at church!!!
I love the grain gutter book shelves! To decorate our plain walls in the nursery, I want to get some quilting/ needlepoint hoop, paint them and put complementary fabric (or leftovers that are painted) in them, and paint bible verses/ letters/ or such on them.
Everything looks great. I like the names from the ceiling the best. Great ideas. We made a rain gutter bookshelf this summer, too. Fun!
What great ideas! I especially like the rain gutter bookshelves…how clever and ideal for little people. Regular bookshelves aren’t easy for them to put books neatly away in. And the little name signs are awesomely creative!
Love those colors! We are using the same combo in Evies room. I hadn’t seen the gutter shelves, wow! How easy for kids to use!
It looks GREAT!!!
I especially love the rain gutter book shelves!
I agree with you that using family photos is an excellent way to decorate the home…. Enjoy!
Heather
Very precious. I love it. I like the colors and it feels refreshing just to look at it. Good job, mama.
Everything looks great!
The rain gutter book shelves look great. I would have guessed it cost a lot more than $25 to put those things together.
I love, love, love the rain gutter bookshelf!!! That’s such a great idea!!! My husband and I don’t have children yet but I love the idea and I’m going to file the idea away for when we do.
The whole room looks great for a little boy and girl. I love how you used colors as well, the picture frames just look beautiful.