DESIGNING FOR A TWEEN

Who knew designing a room for an eleven year old would be my biggest challenge to date. 

Fortunately, the eleven year old is my daughter and I can pull rank with her. 

Remember when I talked about making a few changes to her room here?

Let's just say we disagreed on the direction of the design and the whole thing came to a halt.

It went something like this:  

I brought this fabric home, she loved it and then she hated it.  

I brought home a different fabric and she hated it and then she loved it and then she hated it again.

I was trying really hard to let her make the decisions.

But then, we started the backyard project and we put her room on hold for a while.

Since her room had recently be re-decorated, I didn't want to spend much money on it.

And couple that with the fact that tweens change their minds daily.

On a whim one day after school, I walked into her room 

and asked her if she would like to rearrange her furniture.

She happily obliged. 

We ended up rearranging pretty much everything in the room.

We also removed a few things and added a few things we found around the house. 

I even squeezed in a DIY project while she was at school and surprised her when she got home.

I'll show you the rest of the room later this week, but here's a look at the super simple DIY project.

I started with this giant bulletin board I got at Goodwill about a year ago.  I paid $7.00 for it. 

Ugly, right?  It was covered in felt leaves and letters.  I did my best getting it cleaned off.

I bought 2.5 yard of this linen fabric from Hancock Fabrics.

I ironed it cut it just slightly larger than the bulletin board. 

I used spray adhesive to keep it in place.

Lastly, I used this paint trim thingy (the technical term eludes me) 

to press the fabric up underneath the frame.

After about 30 minutes of work, I had this.....

The perfect spot for my daughter to display whatever her little heart desires. 

 Not only does it add a nice place for her to display pictures and quotes, 

but it really helps warm up the room.

 Her design goal: to make her room less little girlish 

My design goal: to make her room warmer (and secretly keep some of the little girl elements).

Case in point....

Stay tuned to see how we came together to accomplish both of these goals.

Speaking of warming things up, I sure wasn't ready to pull out the fleece jackets, hats and gloves yet.

Looks like Fall has finally arrived. 

If you need me, I'll be hibernating until April.