The Big Boy Room

Stage Two of moving the boys' bedroom out of the playroom was actually an idea born before we even decided to move the nursery. One of the bedrooms was already painted a lovely "boy" blue when we moved in. This room was our storage/catch-all room. Maps on the walls, boxes of dance stuff, sporting goods equipment, anything that didn't have a particular place found its way in there.

Of course this room being the only big bedroom that was unoccupied it was the logical choice for the new boys' room. We decided that the new room would be the boys' main Christmas present from us. This included building beds for the boys and making coordinating quilts.

We started planning in the fall and I began sewing the quilts right away. The beds, however, were somewhat of a procrastination project. In fact, we did a good bit of the work on them Christmas week, even staying up until 2 a.m. one night, in order to have them ready. They are compatible as bunk beds if we ever would like to stack them. We measured the family's bunk beds to get the right size, then cut and sanded each piece of wood before assembling them. They are made out of pine and we bolted the pieces together.

The beds will be stained this summer, hopefully.

Jaired and I put our heads together to come up with the quilt design. The Lion and Unicorn were drawn by Jaired, then I cut them out and appliqued them onto the quilts. I have made quilts before, but this was my first time doing applique, so I was a little nervous. The little squares give a very deceptive idea of this quilt being difficult to make. The only hard part about the quilts was making sure to keep the diagonal pattern going throughout. The quilting itself was relatively easy, too. I did free-hand on the rectangles around the animals, then straight diagonals through the blue squares. These quilts were very fun to make, and I am now doing some brainstorming about curtains for the windows.

Jaired really likes the medieval time period and likes to draw knights, swords, castles, etc. So the Lion and Unicorn go along with that idea and Jaired plans to do the artwork for this room himself in the near future.

The Thomas the Tank Engine sheets and the tractor pillowcase are gifts from the boys' Aunt Ellie. Sure they don't go with the "medieval" theme, but they are great for our train-loving little boys.

I also made these birthday cross-stitch samplers for the boys. Edmund's has been done and rather homeless for a couple of years. Nathaniel's I just finished this month. I am glad to have a permanent place to hang them. We plan to print and frame pictures of the boys, probably from when they are a year old, that we will hang with their cross-stitches.

A view of the closet: up until now the boys were sharing a small chest of drawers, but they have outgrown it. All the shelves in here make for pretty good clothes storage and eliminate the need for a new chest of drawers.

The world map was drawn by Jaired when he was about 13 or 14. The frame is blue and I really like how well the colored pencil artwork goes with a children's room.

That is all we have for now, though between when I started this post on Saturday to now Jaried has started, and made good progress on, one of the drawings for this room. I will post pictures when he is done, and maybe we will see some curtains go up in the next few months.