Digs

Hi! We redecorated Dash's room! Because he's a big boy now and the old room was all dark and dreary and stuffed to the rafters with crap.

The first thing we did, after getting rid of nearly everything that was hanging on his walls, was paint over the dreary putty colored walls with a nice bright, creamy white.

And then the fun began in earnest. Dash and I worked closely--with each other and with Pinterest--on selecting every last detail. It's still not completely finished, but it's close enough for now.

I couldn't find a black & white duvet or comforter I liked, so when I spotted this fabric and Dash signed off on it, I was pretty thrilled. I ordered some nice, thin cotton batting and a simple gray & white backing fabric and sewed his new blanket in less than an hour.

The inflatable tiger head is HUGE and hangs directly over his head while he sleeps. A normal child would be disturbed by this, but Dash is weird, so he's cool with it.

He thinks that log pillow is the most hilarious thing he's ever seen and never tires of announcing to guests that he sleeps on a log.

He had so much crap hanging on his walls before that it was starting to feel slightly claustrophobic in his room. I'm all for bright and cheerful, but I think we crossed a line at some point into chaotic. So when it came time to select which art pieces we'd be keeping, I was pretty ruthless. We kept the Berkley Illustration tiger he's had since he was a baby, plus I commissioned Josh & Dash to create a couple of originals for the room. More on that in a minute. 

I had been seeing these funny pom pom banners all around the interwebs, but they said things like "loser" and "bitch, please" and while hilarious, they were a little much for a seven-year-old's room. So I ordered a huge bag of pom poms from Amazon, cut some letters out of cardboard and broke out the glue gun.

My favorite part is that when he acts like a poop, I can switch it around to express my feelings.

Dash was an able, if easily-distracted, assistant on the project.

Here's his funny little reading nook. The chair is made of bungee cords, the orange poof is filled with his old stuffed animals, and his lamp is a giant ice cream cone. Because of course it is.

The lamp doesn't really give off much light, so we have it set on a timer to serve as a nightlight. Because I defy you to find a more comforting sight in the middle of the night than a giant illuminated ice cream cone.

Here's Dash's "bookcase," which is 30% books and 60% trophies and medals. The last 10% is Darth Vader alarm clock. Natch.

We bought him this bookcase years ago from Ikea. It's covered in graffiti that is actually Shakespeare quotes. So it's highfalutin' and totally rebellious at the same time.

The desk still needs a tray of some sort, along with a bowl for his tchotchkes. I was planning to cover a bunch of cans in fun paper to hold his pens and such, but when I happened upon this utensil caddy I decided it would be perfect and called it done.

He's got these horrible sliding closet doors that are the bane of my existence (first world problems, yo), so I tried to distract from them by adding simple graphic decals. I just ordered up some chalkboard contact paper, cut it into trophy & lightning bolt shapes and slapped 'em up.

I got Dash a chalk marker to keep the chalk dust to a minimum. (I don't think we're going to be having any self-esteem issues with him anytime soon.)

Here's one of the pictures I commissioned. It's Jake & Finn chilling with the Cali bear. Like they do.

The artist at work.

And here's the piece I commissioned from Josh. The man is obsessed with space in general, and the moon in particular, so when I happened upon the printable from Mr. Printables, I knew what I had to do. You can't tell much from this picture, but the moon is framed in a shadow box, with the UFO & rover mounted on little foam tabs to make them 3-d.

The mile marker is my favorite thing.

Here's the artist ...

And his beautiful but slow-witted assistant.