Pendant Lamp | Table | Blanket | Bed | Rug
Here is a nice – but also slightly vexing – thing about my kids’ new bedrooms: They are huge. Like, twice the size of their last ones. (Thank you, Gods Of Real Estate That Isn’t Located In Silicon Valley.)
And like I said, that’s nice, and they love them, but those cavernous, popcorn-ceilinged (why) rooms presented a bit of a decorating conundrum…which was compounded by the fact that on moving day, I discovered that neither of their beds could be removed from their old bedrooms without being disassembled. And since both of those beds were from Ikea (his; hers) and thus required Herculean disassembly and reassembly abilities, and because the idea of having to do all that Herculean dis- and re-assembling on the exact same day in which I was upending my entire life was less-than-appealing, I just sort of…left them there. (Kendrick came and got them later; don’t worry, I didn’t bequeath The Ikea Problem to the new owners.)
The kids’ rooms are, at this point, about 3/4 done: Half is all cozy and pretty, 1/4 is semi-acceptable-albeit-bare, and 1/4 is decorated in a style that can be best described as “I just got divorced and moved to the other end of the state and also just spent the last week evacuated from a series of wildfires and then after that I got hit by a truck.” So that’s how those corners are going to stay for the time being.
Shall we discuss details?
THE BEDS
Both beds are from Delta Children – the Lindsey style (in grey) for my son, and the Princess Madeline (with crown detail, aw) for my daughter. The mattresses you can’t see, obviously, but I need to tell you about them because oh my goodness, they are comfortable (this one is on my son’s bed, and this one is on my daughter’s). We’re talking heaven-clouds. We’re also talking the creation of another problem wherein I fall asleep on these mattresses while putting them to bed at night.
The bedding in both rooms is from Ikea – this pattern in my son’s room (accessorized with a Camp Blanket, of course), and this monkey one in my daughter’s. Ikea may be the worst, but the bedding gets a pass for adorableness and affordability.
Table | Wall Hanging | Bed | Rug
THE RUGS
The rugs are from the brand that I rhapsodized about awhile back, Lorena Canals. As a recap: they are machine-washable. And that should really be all you need to know – because why have we gone this many years without papering our dog-and-children-containing households in all things machine-washable? – but they are also adorable. I went with the map one for my son’s room for obvious thematic reasons (how cool is that wall map?! it’s a permanent feature of the house, and I love that some previous tenant circled “Los Angeles” on it), and the black one was originally going to go in my room before I discovered how cute it looked in my daughter’s.
THE WALLS
The wall strategy for my kids’ rooms was, in a nutshell, “this is where all of the things that didn’t go anywhere else can go.” But what that means is that their walls are filled with pieces of art that I’ve held onto over the years because even if they don’t “work” in the living room or whatever…they matter to me. Both rooms also have tons of family shots – and especially tons of shots of the kids with their dad. In my son’s room, I also hung a bunch of his art (my favorite piece: that “STOP” picture, which he made for the second Women’s March).
One new addition: In each of their rooms, I hung a fabric growth chart. In our old house, we’d been marking our kids’ growth on the inside of a closet these past few years – and the idea of leaving that behind was so sad to me that I swear, I came close to asking the new owners if I could take the door frame with me. I remember the first day that we marked their heights, picking the right spot in the house to do it, and I remember how I thought to myself, “But what if we move?” And then I thought, you know, why would we?
There are many reasons why we did, and many reasons why we might again one day. So now our charts – like the rest of our lives – can come with us wherever we go.
