Ella's Big Girl Room

I've been busy this week trying to finish up Ella's new Big Girl Room. Obviously, the bed and the desk are the big changes but once they were in place, I realized that are are lots of little things that need tweaking to make the new room work. Of course, the girls already LOVE it- Ella spends hours sitting at her desk drawing and even Georgia has decided that she prefers playing in there to anywhere else in the house.

The things that I would still like to do are find a new chair that is a bit curvy and reuphulster it with the green fabric that I used on the window seat. I also need to paint the little set of drawers on the desk and do something with the cork frame before hanging it. In these pictures, you can't really see that the bit of wall at the end of Ella's bed is a blank space. Before I had a set of 9 framed Chinese flower prints (the crib bedding was an Asian flower design which I really liked and used as the theme in her nursery) hanging there. I am thinking that instead of hanging them back up, I would like to get a giant wall decal of a tree with birds, something like this. I have seen a few that I like and I think that they are adorable.

I love the raspberry linen duvet from Caravane. It cost a fortune but it is so soft and cuddly and the color! I knew that it would match the red in the green flower print on the window seat pillows. The big pillow that used to be in the rocker doesn't really work on the bed but I can't get rid of it! That print is what pulls everything together. i think that I might end up taking it apart and sewing some smaller throw pillows for the bed. Like I said, this is still a work in progress so I am still waiting for inspiration to strike.

On Ella's desk I got rid of the giant flower pot that I used to collect all her markers and crayons and scissors and bits and pieces and instead sorted them in three tea containers covered in origami paper that I found at Palace des Thes. I think that they are adorable and actually its been working great for keeping things organized. Rather than having to empty that giant pot to find something, ella just takes one of the containers at a time- markers or crayons or colored pencils.


The big vase of peonies looks so perfect sitting there that I wish I could have them all year round. I LOVE peonies. At my grandfather's hotel, there was an old, abandoned garden under some pine trees that no one took care of. The only thing that still grew was an old peony plant. Every spring, for a few weeks, it would be covered in giant white blossoms that smelled so strongly that I knew that plant was in blossom the moment I opened the car door. I used to fill the house with vases of those flowers- no one else seemed to notice them much at all, which I could never understand. I waited all year for those flowers. I have spent years trying to convince my mother to plant some in her garden and she refuses. She thinks that the plants are messy, since they end up all flopped over when the blooms get too heavy. I dream of the day when I have an actual yard of my own that I can fill with peonies. Until then, I guess I'll have to make do with bouquets like this one.


Like I said, Georgia has decided that she would rather play in this room than her own, which is such a bother because that means making an inspection every morning to make sure that the room has been baby-proofed. But the real issue is why won't Georgia play in her own room? Personally, I think it is because of the orange colored walls. Its a perfectly nice color and it feels so warm in there in the wintertime especially, but it just doesn't work for a child's room. I put my foot down the other day and said to B that the wallpaper has got to go. He can choose whether he wants to replace it with another wallpaper or with paint but the decision to change the color has been made. Of course he refused to answer, as he thinks that it is a stupid project and he doesn't want to change anything. I don't care anymore. I like it best when we agree but in this case, I've made a real effort to make it work and it doesn't. Now it has to go; the only thing is, I'm not sure I am quite capable of doing it all on my own and if he gets stubborn about this, I won't have any choice. Yikes. Do I dare?