Three years in, Riles gets a "real" room

I'm not quite the pintrest type; and am thankful that we don't have a TV as everytime I watch one of those home-reno shows I make a hole in  a wall and never seem to get around to patching it back up.  However, I had three pregnant cousins this summer and watched their facebook pages light up with gorgeously decorated rooms for their soon to be born babies.

And all this time I'd been determined that Riles and Vani would share a room, which is a form of denial of what a bad sleeper she is.  SO: for the last year Vani slept in a pack and play in the spare bedroom closet.  It only kind of fits it we shove the doors open and have it half sticking out, its those old school 1960's closets.    The spare room is the dumping ground, had a horrific bright light and generally was a crappy space to be.

So in seeing my cousins decorating for their UNBORN children, I decided that at 15 months we could do better.  So we moved Riley into the spare room (easier to move the toddler bed than the crib through the doors), and started decorating.  Sorry Vani, maybe when you're three you'll get your own room decorated too.  Just don't visit your cousins, k?

And now comes the bragging.  Not that I'm great.  But that this is great for me. 

It had been an exhausting week. But I was sufficiently guilted to try to throw this together.  Simon was going to Tough Mudder, so I had the two kids by myself.  I got back from working on the island late friday, headed to Rona as it closed, bought their mis-tint tins (I seriously think someone was fired, normally there's just a few random shades of mud brown in mis-tints and I'm so cheap I can't pay full price... but this time there were 50 tins, all colour-coordinated already for me in these lovely matching themes, and I just had to pick up a few... throw in some extras 'cause they are $5 for the big tins and of course one day we'll paint Vanis room too...).  Yay! Emptied out the room,even put down newspaper.  I'm growing up with the newspaper thing.

THEN: Si left early, and by noon I had finished painting.  WITH TWO KIDS BY MYSELF.  And they were happy, if high as a kite.  I can't even remember what game we played but that it involved cheerios and tape and throwing a ball out the window and it was brilliant as it kept them happy for hours.  Riles helped me to paint the walls and himself very thoroughly.

Anyways, its (nearly) done.  Three months later its still (nearly), but I'll take it.

Breakfast while I painted.

 Done (nearly).  Still two beds until he's out of back-up-diapers at night (the green mattress isn't waterproof, plus I still hold hopes that Vani will move in, oh so nice to have a spare bedroom).  Oh, and Riles and I painted the green bed that day too.  And then we added a license plate (and will soon add headlights) to make it look like a jeep. And we put up an ikea shelf.  And they were happy. Seriously.  I know.  I'm amazing.  (just this one day)

BUT.... while I'm now clever enough to put down newspaper, I'm still a snob on painters tape (somewhere... I heard the pros don't really use it, its just a marketing gimmic).  Yeah no.  So after splotching blue paint all over what I had envisioned as a nice blue/white crease, I was in trouble. And Si is anal about this stuff, he'd never let me live it down.  

Hint: applying tape after the fact doesn't help.

Google wasn't useful, just telling me I should have put the bloody tape there in the first place.

And so I made up a solution ALL BY MYSELF. 

I borrowed our neighbours paint thinner, used a bunch of Q-tips, and rubbed them up and down the crease.  It removed the blotches and made a lovely straight line. 

SUCCESS!  There we go, fellow shortcut screwup painters.  Thank me next time.

I'm proud of me.  Might even get a pintrest account:)  Title the album "My one-and-only almost pintrest worthy day"