My DIY Project

The Hubs was in Germany this week. It has become a more frequent occurrence in the last year for him to need to travel for work. Neither of us are huge fans of this, but we try to make the best of it. In the past, my mom has been able to come visit to help me with The Chubs but because of the short notice of this last trip, I was forced to go it alone. As some of you know, I am an artist. Mainly of the graphic variety (read: computer geek), however, I do dabble in other medias as well. One of my favorite things to do is try to revamp rooms in our home on a very tight budget.

We have a room in our home that rarely gets used and was mainly just collecting dust that we decided would become The Chub's play room. This was my project while The Hubs was gone:

The theme of the room was centered around owls for a few different reasons. One being that I love owls. The second being that Lexi makes this owl hooting noise that is absolutely hysterical. And the third being that my father used to sing me a song when I was little called The Wise Old Owl, which was also the song my Grandma used to sing him. It is framed in the room. on the opposite wall. I drew the mural on the wall by hand and then used those sample cans from lowes to paint it in. They are only a few bucks a piece. I already had some cheapie paint brushes left over from when I did the mural on Lexi's nursery wall.


Toys are stored in the leather ottoman. This was an ottoman we already had in our basement that never got used. I thought it would be put to better use up here. It's soft so I know little heads won't be banged on the corners and the top is easy to lift. The most expensive thing in this room was the tv stand which was $70 from Target. I actually assembled it myself. I was quite proud. It took me 2 hours though. KIND OF PATHETIC.You may have noticed the pockets against the mural wall. They were wall pockets from office depot. They were advertised at about $5.95 a piece on the office depot website. When I got to the store they were priced at $10/piece. I wasn't super thrilled about that but I was pressed for time after waiting in line for over 10 min. and had a grumpy child in my arm so I didn't have time to hassle the lady at the counter. I'm still confused about the whole pricing issue. Next time I will order them from the site if I choose to get more. I purchased fabric, made a pattern and covered them using a hot glue gun and mounted them to the wall. They will hold books and were placed at a level where The Chubs can drop books in herself once she's walking on her own. I had extra fabric so I made these:


... two extra throw pillows. These were sewn by hand because I do not have a sewing machine. The ribbon on the argyle pillow was just hot glued on because I'm classy like that.

The tissue puffs were probably one of my favorites because they were super easy and super cheap. Literally they took about 5 minutes once I knew what I was doing. The tissue cost about $2, then I just had to buy some craft wiring, I put a small nail in on each side of the window, wrapped the wire around each nail, and then hung the tissue puffs on a string from the wire. It just added some extra color and texture to the room and Lexi loves to look and point at them.


And finally, the opposing wall to the mural wall, the "inspiration" to the whole theme of the room, is where I have the lyrics of "The Wise Old Owl" song framed. I couldn't get a good close up picture of the frame because there was too much of a glare. I used a brown paint pen to letter "The Wise Old Owl". Here are the lyrics to the song:

There's a wise old owl in the tree, in the tree,
And he sits quite still all the day.
His big round eyes peer at you and me,
In a most surprising way.

When all the world goes to sleep at night,
And there isn't a single ray of light,
Mr. Owl wakes up,
Spreads his wings for a flight,
WHO WHO says the owl in the tree.