Middle Child Syndrome

Sadly, I have to say that I have fallen short as a mom, my middle child, Fisher, was the very last person to get his room done. Not at all because I love him any less or I forgot about him, simply because I got really tired. After painting all of the other rooms in the house and not having a clear vision of what I wanted, it kept getting put off. However the end result has to be my favorite bedroom in the house... I really love it!

Before was a large mish-mosh of random things, including his sisters flower sheets from a previous room. Luckily I have a really manly husband and Fisher was not harmed by the adorable girl sheets... I knew that I wanted the pottery barn dinosaur sheets because they had a great color pattern and were not cheesy. I found it was really hard to find boy sheets that were not super childish or super dorky. This was my starting point. Here are the befores...

I, in my "all or nothing", mentality decided that I was going to attempt a chevron stripe on one of his walls. If you are not a math person, DON'T TRY THIS AT HOM!! Actually it was not that bad but getting the first stripe up there was the hardest. I used a meter stick and a pencil and a piece of cardstock that was cut at the angle I wanted each stripe. To make it easier I made each stripe the length of the meter stick and decided that I wanted the white strip 5" and the brown stripe 7". After I got the first one done I just measured down 5 or 7 inches depending on what color I was doing. Then comes the fun part...TAPE, TAPE, and more TAPE. This actually took the longest, and honestly I had a blister on my hand from rubbing the edges so hard so the colors would not bleed...

Once you tape, your are ready to paint the first color, be sure and lightly with pencil write what color stripe is what, it will definitely help you not paint the wrong color...

Once everything had dried I had my cute little helper help me get ALL of the tape off...

This is the first color, after you have completed this step go ahead and start taping again for the second color. Right about now you will ask yourself, "Self, why in the world did you start this crazy project, because you still have to paint the rest of the room too?" I can't answer that...

Here are the two colors half way done, and of course I ran out of tape so I had to wait to finish...

But after you are done, it really does look amazing. Here are the afters... and Fisher I love you so much!

I got the artwork idea from Potterybarn, of course, but for like 179 bucks...not worth it. So, I made my own version for 3 bucks! It is just 3 fence posts from Home Deopt, and then I painted my own version of a dinosaur. Much better on my budget... And the bed was from a antique store for like 40 bucks, it was black but I got out my spray paint and painted it this very pretty blue.

I got the bookshelf also at an antique store for 20 bucks, it's made out of reclaimed wood and fit perfectly with the artwork. I love the room so much, and now I am trying to figure out how to teach Fisher to keep his room clean. Boys...