It has been so fun to update my daughter’s room. She turned 5 this year, and while we’d slowly converted her room from a nursery to a bigger girl room over the past years, it was time to make it fancy and match her big girl personality.
Her nursery was really adorable – with grey/purple walls, white and grey elephant decor. I hand-made several things, including her curtains (at 7 months pregnant), her elephant mobile (6 cute hand-made elephants on a ring), and her canvas art (both an elephant and letters for her name). I loved it, but wanted to brighten the room up this year. The funny thing about her room is that it’s pink now – and I picked it out. When I was pregnant, I didn’t love pink and wasn’t sure what color scheme to give her when I was planning her nursery. I very deliberately avoided pink in her room decor and baby clothes. What was wrong with me?!! Now I love pink for her. I must be cured!
Here is the final:
This room is a narrow room with some awkward walls. Her dresser used to be against the window and her crib and bed was on the wall where her Dollhouse bookcase is now. We changed up the layout to make it flow more.
We then began to brighten it up by painting the walls. I almost went with white, but we picked a very light pink (White Zinfandel from Benjamin Moore). The lighting shows it darker above, but it’s a very nice pale pink.
We want to replace the carpet this year upstairs. It would be nice to have wood floors upstairs, but we like the comfy of carpet to roll around and play on the floor. In the meantime while I find the lighter carpet I want, I found this fluffy 5×7 rug at Marshalls to soften her room. Here is a similar one: Similar White Rug. I also purchased this vintage pink rug from Amazon, but I liked the fluffy bright white one better and returned the pink one: Vintage pink rug:
Our daughter wanted rainbows and butterflies in her room (she’s so 5 years old!), and I found this Pottery Barn Kids butterfly light that really pulls the room together.
Unfortunately, it looks like this model is no longer being sold but there is an adorable new option:
I also found some adorable white and pink butterflies from Pottery Barn Kids. I used those on the sunset wood wall art we made, which we talk about here: Butterfly Wall Art and on our Vanity wall above her desk.
Ryan wanted to make a few pieces of furniture, and I thought a dollhouse bookcase would be the perfect update to what she had before (which was a simple white Kallax bookcase cube). The dollhouse bookcase came out so great! You can read how we DIY’d the bookcase here: Dollhouse Bookcase | Design | Style | Love. I added this self-adhesive wallpaper to dress up a few of the shelves. Here is the liner we used from Amazon: Liner.
We found bedding on Target that was inexpensive and white. You can find it here: Target bedding. The pinch pleat gives it texture. We rounded out the window wall with some plush white velvet curtains and a new gold curtain rod. You can find the curtains here: Curtains, and the gold rod here: Curtain Rod. I have this brand of curtain rod all across my house. They are inexpensive and sturdy.
I love baskets for storage. We have laundry baskets in both kids rooms and I found this basket to store all the stuffies. So many stuffies!
What I love most besides the light is the vanity Ryan built, which you can read about here: Vanity DIY. I had my eye on a Pottery Barn version of this vanity, but Ryan built it for about 1/3 of the cost and it’s so cute (and hand made for our little love). The Pottery Barn butterflies adorably float off this Studio McGee for Target mirror I found for a steal on clearance.
E’s room has so many weird angles (our entire house does – it makes things hard to work with sometimes!). For this little angled wall, I changed the configuration of her room to be more open and found an Ikea dresser that fit the width of this little nook. I updated the hardware with brass pulls to match the Vanity we built.
For art, almost all of her art is DIY’d. I found a cute rainbow print on Etsy. To pull it together, and because I had made so many things for E’s nursery), I made this rope wall art for her room with white and pink shades of yarn and cute fabric. Here’s a tutorial on how to make it: Rainbow art. I saw similar rainbows that were large like this on Etsy, but they were around $50-$70. I made this for under $20.
Her room is so fun and sweet now. I love that we’ve been able to make E so many things for her room – with love in every one of them.
