Home Tour - Kids' Rooms

Kelly is hosting a home tour each Friday.  This week, she asked us to show off our kids' rooms and nurseries.  My oldest daughter, Hannah, is 16, and her bedroom is one of my favorite rooms in the house.  She loves antiques and anything "old fashioned".  She also loves nature, so she wanted an old fashioned room with lots of natural elements.   It is a good sized room, with big windows that look out the front of the house, so the room gets lots of great light.  She chose a patchwork quilt with lots of blues and greens for her bed.  She has a ivory crocheted dust ruffle and ivory lace curtains.  I found a wispy floral garland to attach to the tops of the curtains to add a little color.  The room is painted a very tranquil shade of green.   We found a rod iron corner stand on sale at Hobby Lobby to hold her knick knacks.  We have to limit surface space in her bedroom because she'll fill every available inch with "stuff"!  :)  Her top shelf has some pressed magnolias from the tree in our yard and an old hankie that she bought at an antique shop with her very good friend.  She also has cats nestled everywhere in her room.  They are her most favorite thing!  She tried to add lots of greenery, rocks, and little birds to help "hide" some of the modern things like her ipod docking station!  We found a rod iron bucket on clearance to put on the bottom shelf that holds some of her favorite rock specimens.  She has collected rocks since she was a very little girl.

  



We bought the dresser from a neighbor, and it is very old.  There are no nails, and the wood is heavy and rough.  It is a lovely piece.  She has some sweet little displays on top.  The dolls were my mother's when she was little.  The plate belonged to my Grandma, and it looks nice paired with Hannah's locket collection and old perfume bottle.  Some of the old books were given to her by her Papa, and some are Lamplighter books.  

Hannah is an avid, avid reader, so there are stacks and baskets of books everywhere in her space.  She keeps her current reads in a basket by her wonderful reading chair.  This is the most comfortable place to sit in the entire house.  This chair is wide and soft and squishy.  It swallows you when you sit in it.  She spends hours and hours in this chair doing her homeschool work and reading good books.  This chair is the reason we have to call loudly and repeatedly sometimes when we need her to come downstairs!  The frames on the wall behind the chair actually look like weathered wood.  They are very rustic, and they frame some of her photos of birds and plants.  She has a great eye for photography, and is quite the shutterbug.  She changes the photos out from time to time.

She also has two old printer's trays hanging on her walls.  They hold a million little treasures, each with a sentimental tale.  She started with one tray and gradually filled it full, so her Daddy recently hung a second one for her.  The trays came from her Papa.

The bedside table was a clearance find at Marshall's.  She actually spent her own money to buy it, which meant she absolutely loved it, because she is a complete miser!  The wall hanging was a gift from her Opa.  The clock is rather clever...it opens and has secret drawers inside.  Very cool for storing treasures.  :)  The yellow duck is a Hagen Renaker figurine, which Hannah collects.  His name is Gilbert, after Gilbert Blythe in Anne of Green Gables.  Of course, she has a photo of her baby sister next to her bedside!  See the telephone cord peeking out from under the table?  She has an old phone in her room; the kind with the cord.  Since it doesn't match with the antique look she keeps it hidden away, which I think is funny because every time the phone rings it sounds like it is smothered.  

The hope chest at the foot of her bed came from my husband's aunt.  It serves as a little table for her laptop when she isn't using it.  One of the things that makes her room special is that so many of the things came from relatives and have a story behind them.  I love that she has an appreciation for older things, and I think she has done a great job of setting up a cozy space to showcase and enjoy them.  All of her grandparents have contribute things to the room, and that means a lot to her.

This is Nory, the lovebird.  Nory is named for one of Hannah's favorite books, Nory Ryan's Song.  You can't have a nature inspired room without a touch of wildlife, right?  This is the world's greatest bird.  She is incredibly loving and very entertaining.  Her cage sits on an old magazine rack that was my Grandmother's.  It holds all of Hannah's favorite field guides and more rock specimens.  She covers Nory's cage at night with Max's old baby quilt that was made by an elderly woman in our former church who Hannah just adored.

Other than buy the furniture and wave a paint brush, I did very little to contribute to Hannah's room.  She has a nesting knack, and knows how to civilize a space!  It is her little cocoon, and everything about the space reveals something special about her personality.  She keeps it neat as a pin, too, which is amazing to me.  I find it quaint and charming, like a country B&B.  I love going in there and plopping in her chair to talk, because it is a very relaxing space.  And here, by far, is the prettiest thing in the room....

You can go HERE to read a previous post about my BOYS' ROOM.  They have a fun, western themed room, and my favorite part is the painted ceiling.  I didn't take new pictures today because they were apparently hosting a lego-palooza in there.  :)

Finally, there is Emma's room.  Care to see??  Okay, take a peek.

What?  Looks like the corner of a master bedroom, you say?  You're quite the astute little home visitor, aren't you??  This is what happens when you are baby #4, and when your Mom and Dad waited eight years for you.  They get a little overly sentimental about kicking you out and setting you up in your own digs.  Yes, Emma does have her own room.  It is upstairs, with homemade curtains and cute Pottery Barn birds hanging from the ceiling.  I even moved her glider up there, thinking I was ready to relocate her.  Moving the glider proved to be too traumatic for us, and we needed the crib to stay in our room a little longer.  :)  With the glider gone, I got tired of not having a place to sit and nurse the baby, so I made hubs drag this armchair in for me.  As for her (not so) temporary nursery space, I didn't ever do much to decorate it.  I really have thought for 17 straight months that her stay would be brief and she'd be on to her own room soon, so I didn't hang things on the wall or make it look too permanent.

I really admire the Moms who can go all out on the decor for child #4.  Honestly, by the time Emma came, I was so busy and rushed with the older kids that I didn't do much decorating.  That being said, this is my very favorite accessory in my master/nursery.   I've developed quite an affection for the highly practical and find great beauty in things that promote peaceful, restful nights.   :)

Thanks for stopping by to take my tour!