elijah's big boy room...

elijah's big boy room is complete! well...almost. there's a few finishing touches we want to do before it's truly done (painting dirt and motorcycles on the wall...putting up some wall stickers and frames/canvases as well as mounting some shelves for "special things")...but for the most part...it's finished! hooray! and i loveLoveLOVE the way it turned out.

here's corie helping me tape...such a HUGE help that was. she actually did most of it...i just did a measly little section in the corner. THANK YOU CORIE!

the next set of pictures are of john finishing up the green stripe. when i envisioned having vertical stripes in elijah's room...i did not envision the hassle it would be to put them on there. i can't find the first picture i took...of the way it looked originally...but you get the idea.





just in case you want to torture yourself and do stripes on your wall...here's how we (john) did it. after taping two colors (red and brown went up first), he came through with a narrow brush and painted the first coat, staying away from the taped edges. then, even before the first coat had dried, he took painters chalking and smeared a thin coat along the edge of the tape. apparently, this fills in the bumps and lumps left by the texturing and prevents the paint from seeping under the tape. he then quickly painted on a nice, thick second coat of paint, this time covering the chalking. as soon as the second coat was up, he quickly pulled the tape off the wall (we used masking tape. john thinks it works way better than blue painters tape...plus...it's cheaper.) leaving a beautifully straight line. he did the red and brown stripes a couple weekends ago and then we taped and painted the green stripe yesterday. he didn't have to paint the blue stripe since the walls were originally painted blue anyways. kinda handy. so...like i said, it was a huge undertaking but thankfully john doesn't mind painting...he actually enjoys it...especially since he didn't have to do the prep work of taping (again...thanks to corie!).






yesterday evening, we headed up I-5 to the IKEA in west sacramento. have i ever mentioned how much i LOVE ikea? mmhmm...a wonderful, wonderful place. we, of course, spent way too much time there...but enjoyed ourselves nonetheless...though i was thoroughly tuckered out by the end of our trip. we were able to get elijah's bed and a little side table as well as a few accessories for his room. some of the fun treasures we found? a little igloo tent (for only $10! not sure if that will stay in his room though...if it becomes a nap time distraction, it might have to be moved), a bright green hanging mesh cubby thingy (for socks, big boy underwares, toys and such), a mat with lots of roads for driving his cars and some pillows for his bed. there were several other things i wanted to get but we decided to save those things for another trip. (though i did get some fun do-das for the nursery...pictures of that to come soon).

all in all...i really like the way it looks. obviously, it will never be as clean or as organized as it is in the pictures, but oh well...it is a little boy's room after all.