An Ounce of Ambition

It all started with this:

A plain shelf, intended for Jennah's bedroom, left
by the wayside to collect dust and add to the pile
of crap amassed and unused.

This piece was my intended February challenge
project (as I'd mentioned in my previous blog post).

However, it sort of, well, expanded.

I'd forgotten that I'd slapped a quickie coat of white on the shelf a while ago. Rather than strip, sand and stain it, I decided to sand and distress it, to match the rest of the bedroom. (the location shown above is the spot that I marked out on the wall and hung it briefly for the shot)

Feeling the need to make the shelf match the rest of the room, my eye kept being drawn to this:



Jennah's room is painted in an ocean floorscape.
However, because it was the only room that I wanted to really finish in the six day painting spree that I was on between the day that we gained keys to the house and the day that we started moving in.
In short, I was rushed. And I've been unhappy with it ever since.

So, my shelf became a project to touch up Miss J's bedroom. Just add a bit of color, install a hook for her bathrobe on the back of her bedroom door, move some furniture around, throw away broken toys and general unnecessary crap, spruce up her window, show off the fabulous name frame that Misty made for her.. you know.. spruce! Clean!

Oh, and the shelf makeover. Can't forget that.

Furniture moved, crap discarded, everything dusted, washed and removed in a matter of a few hours. Piece of cake.
Painting even a four inch square area with three kids straing over my shoulder - not so much.

What I didn't finish on Sunday, I completed on Tuesday.

It started here:

The coat hook I purchased for Jennah's door. Half off at Hobby Lobby. Plain white and begging for some color and fun.

A good way to utilize some of the massive shell collection.

I'm pretty happy with this part of the project. It came out swell, if I do say so myself.

Next we have:

The INCREDIBLE name frame that Misty created. (you really need to click on the photo to enlarge it and see the detail - it's great!!)

Said name frame has a new home on the finished shelf.
I, however, did not take a picture of the shelf. A fact that I completely overlooked until just now. Oh well. Moving on...

After getting them all out, there were all of these shells everywhere, begging for usage.

Some of them are HUGE. Like bigger than my foot. Some of them are teeny. Most are inbetween, and the ledge above her window was an ideal spot for the 2"- 3.5" models.
A little bit of sticky putty to secure them and a lot of climbing up and down my stepstool, and this was what I came up with:

Jennah really likes the window swag look. Not my thing, really, but she digs it, so I brought it back (she'd had one before but it didn't mesh with the theme... still doesn't, really, but oh well. The kid's happy.)

For the smaller stuff that was worthy of showing off, I threw something together atop her dresser, and set a behemoth next to it. ( I don't have any pictures of her array of Lion's Paw shells. Those are her favorites. )

I added this photo only to show you how truly obsessed my kid is. That shell is HUGE. Anything larger has no business in a bedroom!

All of this done, and I still had that corner glaring at me.
I'd added small fish, seaweed and coral in other places. I put some additional color into the jellies, seahorse and Spongebob's house (remember, she was four when we moved in. In her mind, Spongebob was as much a part of undersea life as.. Nemo. Or Shamu. I asked if she wanted the pineapple painted over and heard a very firm "NO!" in reply), but that corner and its sorry, lopsided contents were still mocking me.

This momma is not an artist. I'm crafty, but I'm far from VanGogh. But I think that I made it work. I grabbedJennah's mongo book o' fish, and mixed a color that was as close to the rays in the book as I could muster.

And since rays are schooling fish, I made him a buddy.

I was torn between leaving them solid colored and adding blue spots (you know, for the blue speckled ray! Or whatever it's called. It's really cute, anyhow. Who knew that fish could be cute??), but decided to leave them be and let Jennah decide.

Her vote: perfect as is.

Prior to the weekend, Jennah spent very little time in her bedroom. The kid has more toys than an ailse of TRU can hold, but she preferred to play downstairs, with the contents of the craft cupboard, get online with her Webkinz, or bury her nose in her Nintendo DS.

Now, she doesn't want to do anything but hang out in her "super awesome" bedroom. I couldn't ask for higher praise.

There you have it. My shelf refurbishing project.

Made for one very hectic weekend when you try to maneuver this around auto servicing, birthday dinner for Chris and running errands in a nasty snowstorm, but worth every minute of it when I saw my kid's face. She didn't stop smiling for a full hour, and in spite of being sick and cranky today, I'm still the Best Mom Ever.

Yay me.