Decorating Babies' Bathroom

One delimma I faced when I was expecting my sons' was converting our guest bathroom into a bathroom for little boys. I had spent countless hours painting that bathroom one coat of grey primer and two coats of red so there was no way I was repainting it. My sons' bedroom is decorated in Alphabet Soup from Pottery Barn Kids, so I wanted the bathroom to coordinate. Unfortunately, that particular line of bedding only came with a bathmat and hand towel... no shower curtain (and no red in the bathmat either)! For the shower curtain, I bought a regular green gingham shower curtain from Pottery Barn Kids. I thought I would buy some extra window valances and put a valance over the shower curtain and get some red into the bathroom. But, of course, the window valances have every color in them other than red. My solution -- make a shower curtain valance using one of the crib sheets, line it with white fabric and trim it in red gingham. Actually, my mom did all of the sewing. I have aspirations of learning to sew but there are only so many hours in a day. For about $25 worth of fabric (most of that was the overpriced crib sheet), I had a shower curtain that I love.




To bring some more color (and red) into the room, I chose 4 of the animals that are on the quilts in my sons' bedroom and painted them on to artist canvases stretched over wood frames. The canvases and my acrylic paint set cost about $20 at my local craft store. I know they aren't perfect, but hey this is a kid's bathroom, not a museum. For my first attempt at painting, I'm pretty happy with them. And the most important thing is that I didn't have to repaint the whole bathroom...

Months of the Year Photo Frames

I can not take credit for any of this project. My mother-in-law and sister-in-law did all of the hard work.

When I was expecting my boys, I asked my mother-in-law if she could paint a picture frame for each month of the year. I wanted to hang them over the changing table and then put a picture in it each month that represented a special holiday or milestone that happened that month. The first four months of the year were pictures of me and my ever-expanding belly.

My mother-in-law is a fabulous artist and can paint anything so I bought wood frames for $1 each at the craft store and she did the rest. She painted each frame a base color, then painted items that are associated with each month and also painted a wood cut-out and glued it to the top center of each frame. My sister-in-law added the name of each month in the bottom center of each frame. The frames didn't come with glass so my mother-in-law put a piece of plastic sheeting into each frame. She also added a saw tooth hanger to the back of each frame.

Overall, I would say the project cost $20-25 dollars and I'm thrilled with the results. Everyone who sees my sons' rooms comments on the picture frames. I've seen these frames in catalogs for $320 for the set and I'm glad I got mine for a fraction of that cost!