Just call me Martha Stewart

Okay, not really. I'm a long shot from being anywhere near that crafty. But I am pretty happy with my handiwork. For the past few weeks, I've been converting our old guest room into Will's new "big boy" room. To avoid the cost of buying new furniture, I reused Ellis's old bed (that was in the attic) and my old white furniture (that I got in 7th grade). We repainted the walls in the guest room and I bought a few things from the furniture store and Lowe's to touch it up and ta-da:

BEFORE:

The picture below is of a different bed (project for another day) but is the only "before" picture I have of the nightstand.

AFTER:

The dresser and nightstand still aren't finished because I'm still looking for knobs and drawer pulls. The drawers are a funky size so its been hard finding what I want. I've also ordered a big upholstered toy box to go at the end of the bed.

We moved the rest of everything Will had in the nursery (that was age appropriate) into the big boy room. He gets dressed in there, plays, has story time, etc. But the going to sleep in there? Well, its been about as big a challenge as I suspected. He will not stay in bed at night to sleep in there - he has been in the crib the past 2 nights. But he did take a 2 hour nap in it yesterday, after much scolding and fussing because he wouldn't stay in it. Whew! Kind of exhausting. We're trying to let him go slowly - not pushing it until he really wants to.



But he does absolutely LOVE his big boy room. I'm so happy he does. When he came home Friday, it was all ready for the big "reveal." He'd been watching me paint the furniture, take the stuff out of the guest room, paint the walls, etc. So he'd been excited about it for some time. He played in it for a good 30-45 minutes Friday evening - taking all his books off the shelves and getting in his new bed to "read." He was absolutely ecstatic to show it to Bapa and Grandma last night. Here he is Friday night when he first saw it all together:

Update (7/13): Guess who slept in his big boy bed all night last night!? :-) After two long, successful naps over the weekend, he insisted to his Daddy last night that he stay in his big boy bed. It took a little while to get him to stay in there, but he eventually did and slept through the night. I heard him at 6am and got him to lay back down, laying with him for a short while. I don't think he went back to sleep, but he stayed in bed until his usual wake up time of 7am. Hooray, Will!!!