Girl's Room Makeover

My girls are so great about sharing a room. I think it is good for kids to share a room, it has to build patience, unselfishness, and kindness! It must be good training for marriage because most of your life you have to share a room with your husband! However at ALMOST 13 and 10 we decided to make some minor changes to their living arrangements. They have a HUGE room so we thought we would divide it in a non-construction type way.

Here's some before pictures. The loft bed has been nice to create a private space for the oldest, but part of the challenge has been TWO TOTALLY DIFFERENT personality styles. Daughter #1, Ally, is kind of a minimalist; pretty neat, hates clutter. She's the type of kid that reads a birthday card, says "AWW that was sweet" and puts it in the trash immediately. Lets just say we'll never see her on one of those hoarding shows.

Daughter #2, Gracie, on the other hand probably still has every note, card, drawing, sea shell, and letter ever given to her. Her love language is gifts and every knick-knack has a story that she remembers. She can tell you about the time Nana bought her something for $.25 cents from a gumball machine and because of that special memory- she must treasure it always. We always encourage creativity and B and I both will help our kids construct odd things they dream up, draw out, and create out of lumber or craft supplies. Gracie loves and hangs on to these inventions a bit long for her older sister's taste. She also has enjoyed wallpapering the walls with horse pictures and drawings.

So the room redo began. Each girl drew out her ideas, but in the end Mom and Dad had to work out something that was actually possible. I spent about $100; which is a lot more than I planned. But it was really neat to let them have creative freedom and try to be really frugal. So many of my frugal ways have worn off on my girls. We spent money mainly on a new bedspread, fabric for pillows with lots of JoAnn's coupons, just a few special touches like wipe off posterboard sheets for $.33 (who knew they made those?), and a roll of ocean print paper for $7.99 at Michaels with 1/2 off coupons.

So, I know way blurry photo! You walk into the room and see we have divided it in two mainly with the dresser in the middle of the room. We braced it on the back with a large sheet of plywood and pushed the other sister's dresser against it for extra stability. I think Dad might of actually put a screw from the dresser to the bed for safety, but I hope not.

So now Gracie has her own private play space and lots of room to spread out, decorate walls with pictures, and lots of grazing land for her model horses to roam & enjoy.

Here's the backside of that same dresser with Ally's side of the room. We covered the plywood with the ocean print bulletin board paper.

She has always wanted to have a brown/green/turquoise kinda scheme so we found some great fabrics, whipped up some curtains ourselves, and made a body pillow to turn the bed into a cool hangout couch. She loves the rag rug made by her great-grandmother even if it doesn't really match.

Ally asked me to make her a sign with Jeremiah 1:5-9 on it. She planned it out and wanted Africa in the background. It was a fun project and the girls are really happy with the results. We required them to fill a large box with stuff to get rid of before we would begin the redo. AND it was an educational project, too! We did lots of drawings, measuring, figuring, planning, sewing, and lots of creative thinking to make it all come together! I love encouraging my kids to see how much they can make out of little, that is a creative skill that comes in handy so much in ALL of life.