Before I get into this, you should know that this is the third "room" that Maddie has had. She started out with a pink and brown nursery, moved into the yellow toddler room with brightly colored accents and now is in her sweet lavender big girl room. I hope she likes it because it's not changing anytime soon.
Here are a few shots of her nursery. You will notice I had not yet gotten to painting the window trim...this didn't happen until the summer of 2009...yes a full three years after we moved into our house! It was a pain in the butt, so I was avoiding it:)
As Maddie started outgrowing her crib, she also outgrew the bedding that went with it. Someone had given us an adorable quilt from Pottery Barn when she was born, so we decided to give her a new room at the same time as Jack's was being done. Had I know it would only last 9 months, I would have left it! We painted the walls a soft yellow called, "A Dandelion for Roo" and accented with pinks. Looking back...it would have looked a lot better with white furniture, but it was a cute, fun room for a time.
When it came time to buy a big girl bed, we needed to find new bedding as well. Maddie started begging for purple walls...I tried to find purple bedding that would coordinate with the yellow walls so I wouldn't have to repaint. Alas, sitting at the computer with me one day, Maddie spotted this bedding and she won the purple wall battle. It was on clearance and I can't turn down a good deal, so I guess we both won in the end. It's got a soft, lavender background and the bright pink flowers allowed me to keep all of the pink accents we already had.
I knew I wanted the softest lavender I could find for the walls, but the actual shade was tough. I didn't want it to match the bedding exactly, but I was afraid the lightest shade on the swatch would be too "white". Mind made up, we went to get the paint...and then we let the lady at the store talk us into the next shade down. Should have trusted my gut - got home and knew I had just bought two gallons of paint that were now going to sit in our basement forever. Too dark...went back to get the original shade. It's called "This is it!" and while in these pictures it does look rather white, in person it is the perfect shade. If anyone needs two gallons of "Raleigh's Folly" paint, let me know! It's beautiful, but wasn't right for this room.
Maddie helped me paint the letters of her name a dark purple to match the darker purple in her bedspread. She's a good little painter!!
I have had this moon mirror since college and discovered it in Maddie's closet last weekend. Considering our attachment to the moon and the circular shape in the bedding, it was a perfect fit! I got some more circular mirrors from Target and voila!
I grouped one of the circle mirrors with a set of three pictures I had printed in a pink tone. I love pictures and wanted Maddie to be surrounded by people who love her when she sleeps.
Whoops - guess I should have cleaned the fingerprints off the mirror before I snapped photos!
This is the biggest expanse of wall and with the bed being off-set I totally struggled with it. I had a ton of pictures printed and was going to do a gallery, but I didn't want it to end up too choppy. So, I framed a pink polka dotted fabric in the middle and flanked it with pictures of our family.
I saw these bright pink picture frames and couldn't resist. I really like the punch of color they add.
My mom got Maddie this M when she was a baby. It fits so well in the room now and Miss Madelyn loves to play with it and carry it around.
A few coats of high gloss white spray paint and this once kind of dowdy cream shelf was good as new!
This picture of Jack has been in Madelyn's room since right after he died. She won't let me replace it and since it's one of my favorites, I'm ok with that. The angel was a gift from our friends, the Kinateders, and though it has been dropped & chipped once, we absolutely cherish it. Maddie calls it her "Jack angel" and she thinks it's so funny that the baby is naked.
Like I said, I may make a few more changes over time, but overall I'm pretty happy with the way the room turned out. I can see her here until she decides purple is no longer her favorite color (so probably when she starts school and meets a friend whose favorite color is blue or something) playing with friends, growing and changing everyday.
Sometimes she asks me to lay with her in her "huge bed", as she calls it, while she falls asleep. I know, this is a terrible habit to get into, but for now I am obliging her because usually it's then that she wants to talk about her brother. She often describes the scene she saw the day he died and I know she's been struggling a bit with that lately, but many times she just wants to talk about him. And so do I. So we talk. And we pray. And we cry.
We might talk about how she used to make him talk and laugh or how she would help feed him or give him a bath. We talk about how he is now with Jesus and how we're thankful for that. Most of the time though, we just talk about how much we miss him and wish we could have him back. I asked her once if she thought we should get some butterflies to release on Jack's birthday. She perked right up and said, "YEAH! Then they can fly up there and bring him back to us!!" Don't you wish we really could do that?
Thinking about that as I was at Target and saw some metal butterflies, I thought about getting them to put on the wall over her bed. I decided not to for now, but we're still thinking about sending some messages up to Jack on his birthday, be they on the wings of butterflies or attached to colorful ballons. We have time to think about that, but right now I will keep snuggling with this precious little girl, talking about her brother in her new room...fit for a three year old.
Wow, Annie! The room looks FANTASTIC--in ALL three stages :)
ReplyDeleteLove the idea of sending messages up to Jack.