Stealing Ideas

We finished our playroom almost a year ago but I never got around to putting anything on the walls. The walls took so long that I didn't really want to deal with them again. Underneath those Wellington Blue walls, there is the 1960's fake wood paneling with a layer over that of shiny 1980's blue and pink wallpaper that the previous owner put up. I guess it was an improvement over the paneling but not by much. We put up with it for 9 years but finally covered it last year. It was a long process involving putting up paintable wallpaper and then painting that. So anyway I was looking at the Soulemama website and then I got her book free at work. I would link to both of those things but I have no idea how-I will learn soon. Her site is in my list of places I visit everyday. The book is crunchier than me but has so many good ideas. She also lives in Portland so its sort of cool to keep up with her. She has something she calls an "Inspiration Wire" which is just a piece of wire strung on the wall that her kids hang things from. I saw that and decided it was the solution to the piles of artwork I live under. Grace loves art and could spend all day doing it. Declan loves it a little less but still manages to produce quite a lot of it. I went to Staples and discovered it was my new favorite store. I just had to buy wire and clips but the clips were so cute! I held back from spending over $10 on the fancy decorated ones and just bought plain old green ones. It took about 2 minutes to hang the whole thing up. I also decided to add 2 canvases that Grace painted when she was 3. They are either brilliant modern art or the work of an average 3 year old-I'm too biased to decide. No one else seemed to care that I did these things but I'm glad it finally did it.

It's hard to see but the wire is to the right in this picture. I also cleaned up all the bins and tossed out about half a recycling bin of old plastic toys. Don't tell my kids! I'm hoping they never notice and the truck has already taken them away to be made into other useless plastic toys.

These are 2 of Graces watercolors. One is some sort of bird and the other is a frog on a lily pad. The first thing Declan noticed was that it was mostly Grace's stuff up there so I'm sure he is already planning in his little head what he needs to make so he is represented.