Lost in Laundry

Saturday, April 3, 2010

We've lived in our house nearly 2 years, and until last week the boys have had nothing decorating their room. Nothing. Their room consisted of a bed and two mismatched dressers. Accented by a huge laundry pile in the corner.

We are faithfully working our FPU plan (Yay for Dave!) and as such, bedroom decorating does not have a place in the budget line. But I wanted to do something for them, so I undertook a bedroom redo on a $20 budget. Here we go!

It began with this light-up globe my mom bought the boys at a garage sale:

Cost to me, zero dollars. Since the globe was literally the ONE decorative item in their room, and I had a lot of maps I could use (my grandma sent me her supply) - voila! A map theme it would be!

For $6 dollars I bought three canvases. For $3 dollars I bought some green and blue paint, and just started painting with no real plan. (Not recommended. Ruined one canvas. Big shock.) I ended up using modge podge ($4) and decoupaging the boys' names onto the painted canvases with letters cut from maps. Cost: $13 dollars.

Next I set up the boys with some blank paper, and blue, gold, and green paint. They got to work creating some art for the walls.

Ryan painted a monster and a globe. Dylan, a waterfall/mountain scene. (He explained it was the same scene - one view is from close up, one is from far away. What artistic interpretation.) Cost to me: zero dollars (Full disclosure: A friend gave me a huge supply of these glass clip frames from Ikea. So I was spared the cost of buying any frames.)

Next I used maps as a background for the boys sports photos. Poor quality glare-y pic. Sorry. Cost to me: zero dollars since I had already purchased the sports portraits and had them in a box under the bed

Lastly, I went online and searched for images of silhouettes of different planes, and then painted them onto maps and framed them. (Thanks to my friend Anne for the suggestion.) Cost to me: zero dollars

The boys asked if they could hang maps up beside their bed. Why not? One got Oklahoma (lucky!) and the other had to settle for Texas (ya know I love ya Lubbock!). They both study the maps before going to sleep and are becoming quite the TX/OK geography experts. Again, zero dollars.

Lastly the boys made some paper airplanes out of maps and hung them from the ceiling in the corner. Zero dollars. And there ya have it! Likely this room redo won't be featured in any home decor magazines, but I have a happy little 7 and 6 year old.

For a grand total of $13.00!

-

permalink | posted by Starr at 2:42 PM

9 Comments:

Melynda had this to say:: Very good..I love it! And the only reason it wouldn't make the home decor magazines is because they don't know about it. Good job Starr!; April 3, 2010 at 3:13 PM
Anonymous had this to say:: LOVE IT!!!!! Wow, wow, and wow. Good work mom. I need to use some of your ideas for our monsters.

Cheri; April 3, 2010 at 3:16 PM
Starr had this to say:: Cheri - I'm laughing that most people reading that comment probably think you're referring to your children as little monsters. Ha!!; April 3, 2010 at 3:22 PM
Kelly had this to say:: Very impressive!; April 3, 2010 at 5:26 PM
Susan had this to say:: Great job! I love it.; April 3, 2010 at 7:23 PM
Vanessa had this to say:: Looks great! Good job.; April 3, 2010 at 9:54 PM
Lori had this to say:: Very Nice!!!; April 10, 2010 at 7:44 PM
valerie in TX had this to say:: Awesome! Very creative...I love it. I am oh-so-lacking in the "being creative on a budget" department. :(; April 13, 2010 at 11:04 AM
Mrs. and Mama K had this to say:: super cute and creative!!; April 20, 2010 at 6:25 PM