Hello Kitty and The Avengers {Room Redo}

My kids have been with their Nana and Papa since Wednesday night. I have gotten so many things done these past 3 days and as glad as I am to have my kids back, I wasn't worried about them at all and I'm so grateful for the time I got to have to myself.

So here's the first project I finished:

For Christmas this past year, Santa brought my kids new bedding. I used to not be into character bedrooms but my kids both wanted specific bed sets and it was fun to see them so happy on Christmas.

Fast forward 7 months later and their rooms hadn't really been updated to match the bedspreads.

I made one set of letters and my friend had made the other set back when my kids were really little. The kids used to share a room and their colors were brown/blue and brown/pink. I loved the letters but unfortunately, they didn't match their rooms anymore!

 Also, my little stinker son had ripped the paper off of a couple of his sister's letters.

So while my kids were gone this week, I decided one of my projects was going to be redecorating their rooms. The only new things I bought were frames for the posters they already had, fabric for Spidey's decorations, paper for their letters, and some wall decals for Petey's room that happened to be on sale.

 Welcom to PINK and HELLO KITTY. :) That is all Petey has wanted forever. She keeps asking for pink walls but I think she has enough pink for now. Petey was flipping out when she got home. She was so excited to see her new room and her reaction was awesome. She definitely loves it!

 {I did take the hammer out before she got home, I promise}

 Her letters are now light/dark pink and baby blue, which are the colors of her Hello Kitty bedspread.

 Spidey walked into his room and looked super disappointed because he was just staring at his bed and he didn't think I'd changed anything. When I told him to look at the other wall, he started jumping around and screaming with excitement. He is a huge Avengers fan and he loves his poster and the fabric wall decorations.

 Unfortunately for my boy, the amount of damage he's done to his room was enough for us to not make it too nice. He has colored in red permanent marker on the walls and poop painted more times than I can count so even though his room needs to be repainted to match, I refuse to do it until I think he's old enough to treat his room a little better. He still loves it a ton.

I had a really hard time figuring out how to redo his letters to have them match the Avengers colors so I ended up doing mostly solid colors. He was so happy to see his name on the wall and as you can see, it's way too high for him to touch them and rip the paper. :) Smart momma.

It was a great 3 days and I am so thankful my in laws were willing to put up with our kids so that I could have a break. I feel so rejuvenated as a mother and am so happy my kids are back with me now.

The Dollhouse

I wanted to blog today but I had no idea what to blog about.

So I decided to look in my picture albums from the photos I took a year ago today. Here is my favorite one:

My kids haven't changed as much in the past year as they have in other years. Their looks aren't as different and their smiles are similiar to how they smile now. That must mean they are growing up. They aren't babies that change every time you take a new picture of them.

I love their scrunched up noses.
I love the setting of the precious dollhouse.
That dollhouse was once played with by some of my kids' favorite role models. It had years and years of use from 3 little girls and then when my kids were born, they spent their toddler years playing with it at their Great Aunt and Uncle's house. I always wished we could keep those memories alive for them and we can. That dollhouse is now ours and my kids love it so much. Petey loves to set the people up. Spidey loves to climb on it and jump off. It's special because I can remember my 18 month old Petey playing with it with her then 10 year old cousin. I can remember Spidey throwing everything out of the dollhouse. I can remember the thousands of times Petey would ask me to tuck one of the mommies into the bed.
I love toys that are filled with memories.
I love family.
I especially love scrunched up noses on happy little children.

The Closet Reorganization

Today was a day...a LONG day. My allergies have been taking over my body and I'm pretty sure it's resulted in a sinus infection.
But today was still a day. And it was a fun day for the kids!
We spent our morning at Toy Town in Ahwatukee and while out that way, I could NOT pass up a trip to Ikea. So even though I was babysitting a 5 week old baby, we made the trip! And though that sweet little baby screamed most of the trip and blew out two diapers AND my son was being a stinker (His silly face is deceiving.). {PS: This picture is the epitome of my children. Spidey being silly and Petey admiring herself in a mirror in the background. I love my kids!!!}Petey was pretty good. But she's still a curious three year old and I had to make sure we didn't lose her (We didnt.).
The reason for our trip to Ikea involved the childrens' closet, which has been a disaster! Everything we don't want to look at gets thrown in there and I was sick of it.
So even though our trip to Ikea was short, I grabbed a few more boxes that hold little toys in.The kids potato heads were taking up too much space in their boxes so I put all the pieces in these containers. Also, Spidey got a Cooties game for Christmas and we fit all of the pieces into a container as well. Space saver!!!We decided we needed to move Spidey's clothes into the kids' closet (They were in a broken dresser in the office.( so I bought a little hanging compartment from Walmart and his clothes fit perfectly!The last piece of smart storage I found was also from Walmart but the original idea came from Pinterest. I bought a shoe holder for the door and stuck a bunch of little toys/barbies/cars/the potato head bodies in each compartment.
The closet is much neater now and that makes me a happy woman. :)

And just in case you needed some extra entertainment tonight, here's a video of my monkey jumping off a stool. He's definitely a keeper!

And that's how Suze sees it!

Kids' Room/Play Room Redo{Again}

Yes, we have redone the kid's room a little bit. And yes, I am here to tell you all about it...again.
It's just that we followed through with a great idea and I want to share it with all of you!
So here is the first picture. This is right as you walk into the kids' room. Notice anything missing? Maybe a huge load of toys that are usually scattered on the ground? Now, that wall is only home to two mini couches, a toddler basketball hoop, and a rocking horse. Organization at it's finest.

Now let's move to Petey's bed. Notice a change there? Where is the top half of the bunkbed?!

Oh look! I found it. It is now the bed of our dear little Spidey. When he sleeps in it, he looks so small but luckily since it was the top bunk, it has a rail so he won't fall off his new big boy bed. Bye bye, crib! This room has definitely graduated from a baby room to a little kid room now. :(

So I know you are wondering where AL of the toys went. That was our biggest change and the master plan behind all of this moving around of beds and things.

Let's take a tour of the kids' closet...

Hey look, I found all the toys! And they are neatly organized in those metal cubbies!

So now feel free to ask yourself why the heck we would stuff the kids' toys into their not-so-big-closet. And the answer is simple and the most genius idea of all. We turned the lock to the closet around and now the toys are ALL locked up.

The kids have been wonderful with this new change and know to ask one of us if they can play with a certain toy. They have also learned that when they want a new toy out, that other toy better be cleaned up before mom or dad will get them another toy.

Booyah!

Greatest idea we have ever had.

This change has taken so much stress off of Petey and I because we no longer stare at a terrorized room at the end of the day and wonder how we'll ever clean everything up. There are usually one or two straggling toys at the end of the day and we just put them back in the closet and lock it up for the night.

Easy, peasy, lemon squeezy.

And that's how Suze comes up with a solution to a very annoying problem. :)

Kid's Room/Play Room Redo

Ever since we moved the kids into our master bedroom, I've been procrastinating moving their wall hangings into their room and organizing it into a room made just for them.
I finally buckled down and decided it needed to get done last week. :)
Here is there room right as you walk in. *Gasp! My son's real name!*

I made vinyl wall hangings for each of the kids. Spidey's (do you find it funny that I'm still using that name in this post?) is SO him. He loves all things car, train, and airplane.

On the opposite side of the room, to the right of the door, are all the kids' toys. I dug the kids' wooden table out of the garage and the chairs are from Ikea (I'm in love with them!).

This is Petey's bed. Her wall hanging is definitely for both of them (since they're both children of God) but when it originally hung in her room only, I made it girly with flowers and butterflies.

I use the top bunk for storing their millions of stuffed animals and a couple of toys I don't like them to get into without asking mom (mostly, it's Petey's dress ups).

On Pinterest a while back, I saw the great idea to use Ikea spice racks as book shelves. I loved the idea and grabbed a couple spice racks while we were there. I spray painted them the colors of the kids' room (light blue, lime green, and hot pink) and hung them up on the wall above the toys.

They are perfect! I have three more I am going to hang lower to the groun so the kids can grab certain books when they want but a certain someone in our house is going through a phase where he rips pages out of books so most of the books will remain on the higher shelves.

Then today, in preparation for Spidey's birthday party tomorrow, I moved the kids' table and chairs out into the main room (more eating area for kids tomorrow).

(Also, do you love Petey's hair in that pic? Hilarious. She had just taken out all her rubber bands a minute before) I was outside when I noticed Spidey's basketball hoop we've been meaning to wash off and bring back in the house. So of course, I cleaned it all up and the only place it seemed to work well was the exact place the kids' table was in. I haven't decided which of them will get to keep that special spot in the room but for now, Spidey is having a blast being able to dunk all the balls in the hoop. It's probably one of his favorite toys.

I'm glad that the room is finished (well, it's finished until I decide to change it in some other way). I love the color theme and I love that it is a big enough room for everything to fit so nicely. Moving them into the master bedroom was probably one of my better plans in life.

And that's how Suze sees it.