A Bedroom Fit for a "Tween"

Yay! It's finally done!



Joy's bedroom fits her personality so well! I'm so glad we accomplished that....and I'm glad it's finally complete!



She picked the bedding out herself and it was one of her bigger Christmas gifts, so she's had it for awhile waiting for us to get to the bedroom redo. The bedding was the inspiration for the all colors. She is not-so-much a pink girl (anymore). She wanted to bring out the aqua. The color on the wall is called Pool House.



The full size bed used to be mine growing up. I received it as a birthday gift on my 12th birthday. Jason painted it white for Joy. It does have a matching dresser, but she preferred to use her old dresser. I think she liked the shape of it better. However, Colt said he would like to use the dresser in his room (minus the mirror) because it's bigger than his old one, and Luke will get his old one (the one that was used for Colt & Joy as babies/toddlers).



Joy's old dresser was already painted white, but we wanted to give it a new look. Here scroll down a ways and you can see it behind the desk/chair as it was before. Here it is now:



Joy painted the drawer pulls pink. I painted the decorative indentions with the accent colors from her room.

Remember the old armoire from here?



What a difference the white paint made on it! It looks so fresh and crisp now! Joy is using it for all her dance clothes and gear. She loves this piece of furniture. (Maybe there's hope for one of my kids loving antiques yet)...



On top is a "Grandma's Flower Garden" quilt (quilted by Jason's grandma), and Joy's trophies. The stitchery was stiched by my friend, Betty. It's in a Goodwill makoever frame.



Jason made this desk and bulletin board for Joy awhile back. If you've read my blog for very long, you probably remember when he made this.



We added the gerber daisies and the little sign (that Joy loves by the way)..."Anything boys can do, girls can do better". (Gerber daisies and sign were both 50% off at Hobby Lobby).




However, it got a new coat of paint too. The white we used on all the trim and furniture in the room is called Mocha Cream. She's already loaded up the bulletin board with pictures.



One feature we knew we wanted for her room was a ballet barre and mirror. She's wanted this for awhile. She dances constantly! We bought a large dowel rod (4 ft.long) and painted it white and Jason mounted it. We had a mirror cut to fit and added the vinyl quote above, by Joy's request.



It would be very hard to pick a favorite thing in her room because I find myself going into her room and just standing there taking it all in, but the chandelier would definitely be among my favorites. I can't take the credit for the idea of this. Joy wanted to use her old chandelier, but it was very "girly" as in pink and minty green with rosettes on it. (I have a picture of it somewhere but I have looked and looked and can't locate it right now). I was thinking of brown ribbon tied around new white shades, or even different color ribbons tied around them. However, Colt's girlfriend, Amber (who is very creative), suggested painting each one of the shades on the chandelier one of the accent colors in her room. Joy loved the idea, so we went for it. I painted each shade with craft paint....one aqua, one pink, and one lime green.....then trimmed the top and bottom of each one with brown ribbon. And wow....I loved it....we all loved it!



We positioned Joy's bed on an angle, sort of in a corner. This allowed for better furniture placement in the room. It was fun decorating that corner behind the bed too.





Speaking of Amber, she's very talented with painting designs and she said she would paint Joy's letters for us. If you can't remember what they looked like before, you can see them here. And now they are perfect for her room! I just gave Amber a picture that came from the front of her bedding for inspiration and told her to do whatever she wanted to them that would coordinate. I knew whatever she did would be perfect, and it was! Thank you, Amber!!



The vinyl tree, flower, heart, and peace decorative stickers came with the bedding set (along with a canopy that we didn't use). Joy arranged those the way she wanted them. The tree reminds us of the tree down the road from our house that Colt named when he was little....Max PJ. I did a post on that once if you'd like to read it.....here.



Then that brought the inspiration for the next touch. After the letters and the tree vinyl stickers were up, the corner behind the back lacked something. It was really bugging me and that's one of the reasons I hadn't posted the pictures yet. I did a little brainstorming, thinking of adding some type of decorative stemmed twigs or something. I couldn't really find anything we liked, and definitely not at a price I liked. So in the end, Joy and I went out to the wooded area of my mom and dad's house next door and picked up twigs. We asked Jason to spray them with a coat of the same paint that was used on her furniture. That's just what it needed for that corner! I think a light shining on it from behind the bed would be great too....we're working on that.



The lime rag style rug came from Hobby Lobby - 50% off.



The lamp came from Gordman's - 20% off. That picture frame was a birthday gift to Joy from her friend, Molly Grace, at her last birthday party. That's her very first ballet picture in the frame. And the feathers and beads in the vase behind the picture frame were also purchased from Hobby Lobby at 50% off.



The table it's all on has been a little of everywhere in my house. You may remember seeing it most recently in my living room with the pump lamp on it. Jason gave it a coat of white paint too.

Over here between the dresser and the desk, there's a blank wall. Joy says it's the perfect spot for a flat screen TV. And I said, "Well you better get to saving your money." :) In the meanwhile, we're thinking of possibly putting up a framed poster, either dance related or maybe a guitar chord poster (that way she can sit on her bed and learn her guitar chords)!



The curtains are sheer panels purchased off of ebay. It seemed to need a pop of color over there, so I purchased ribbon by the roll from Hobby Lobby (also 50% off) and added streams of pink and lime ribbon to the curtains.



Joy and I came to an agreement....She can use her closet door for one poster at a time. My thinking was that she had her bulletin board, but I remember what is was like to want posters in my room growing up too.



We added a few flowers to the aqua bottle vase hanging on the doorknob of her closet.



We had lots of doors to paint in there! Besides the closet door, there were two more doors. One leads out of her room and the other is the attic/furnace room door.



I love Joy's new bedroom! I would have loved to have a bedroom like this at 11 years old! But now what I love even more is that we really repurposed lots of things in this room and didn't spend alot of money.



I've always enjoyed watching budget minded decorating shows the best, where they were given a budget and redid a room within that budget. So I decided to figure up what we did spend on her room. Here's the breakdown:

Bedding - $99 (this was a Christmas gift to Joy though, but I included it).
Paint & Primer - $96 (Walls,Furniture and Trim)
Mirror - $54
Ballet Barre & Hardware to Hang it - Can't remember but I think around $15
Vinyl Quote - $14
Curtains - $14
Rug - $12.50
Ribbon - $10
Lamp - $11
Craft Paint - $6
Flowers/Feathers/Beads/Mini Sign - $13.00

That's a total of $344.50 (and actually $99 of that was a Christmas gift). I think it's more gratifying (and challenging) to decorate a room with a conservative budget....and see what I can do with it. Actually I wouldn't know what it was like to spend whatever I wanted because I've never done that! I can't imagine some of these budgets I see on HGTV for rooms! Wow!

Two more last pics for you....just because I took so many! :)





Now it is on to Luke's room.....We've already picked out the color. I've removed the border and cleaned walls, and Jason took out the trim. Jason also repaired and sanded the walls (wow....lots of nail holes it there), applied the primer, and we just finished putting a coat of paint on it. We're hoping it might only take one coat! We have some busy weekends ahead and I'm feeling like we need to hurry and get this room ready, after all we received our LOA this weekend and God is really moving and opening doors to bring us to Luke quickly. I want to leave the few weeks before travel open to thinking clearly about packing and everything we will need to take with us. With that time frame, it is definitely motivation to finish his room!

Thanks for hanging with me and being interested in seeing the finished bedroom project and for waiting so long....hope you en"joy" the pictures of the new bedroom fit for our "tween"! :)