Bedroom for Ezra

Ezra's room is one of the nearly finished rooms. The door was built last week by Carpenter and he will finish hanging it this coming week. For his decor, I started with 2 shadow boxes of maps & nautical miniatures. I've been saving these for about 8 years - all packed away - as they were given to us by someone wanting to redecorate who no longer wanted them.  We had them in his room when Pastor Tom was over cutting some lumber - he saw them and offered Ezra another large shadowbox that matched them he had owned for years with sailor knots and a map backing.  YAY! We are coming along.

  I choose this fabric for the window valance trying to bring in the water-blue aqua and keep in some of the black accents of the hardware and ceiling fan and also bring in some of the colors of the maps. 

I made the curtain from natural canvas twill and we used metal holdbacks.

I found the mattelasse fabric and it matched just right and so was able to

make him a wonderful spread for the bed.  Neighbors were discarding the

furniture for something new - so we were takers! It goes great in there.

Now we are finally finished and have rearranged the furniture a few times (a woman's perogative!)

 Curtains are finished - and I am making fabric blinds (his are hung and ready) for all the windows as I long ago decided 47$+ per window is too much for the budget since we have 40 windows! And I despise $3 mini blinds! Will post in another blog post on how to make them for under 5$ each!

 Time to rearrange - we like this set up better - it really isn't a big room so this suits better.

 He decided to display some primitve weapons my dad had given him from his years in Asia to complete is decor of "Old World Travels".

 Measuring for curtains and valances!

 We had a large map and didn't really have wall room to hang it so Ezra decoupauged it on his dresser top! Love it! The huge elephant is solid teak wood and was hand carved in Bangladesh and my dad gave it to us.

Time for Ezra to move in his own space!

Bedroom for Luke & SamAsher

We are moving in bit by bit - but as the days go by each room that gets attention gets looking more and more finished!  Here is a peek at the younger boy's bedroom.  I had a fiasco-of-fiascos making these window treatments.

I bought the fabric about 3 years ago at a close-out fabric sale - so I bought the whole bolt of homespun and it was just enough to make these curtains. Upon completion I decided to perk them up before hanging them with some "homemade spray starch" [3 cups warm water and 1/4 cup cornstarch mixed well] and a good steam pressing. The fiasco hit when I had a "haste makes waste" moment and put my homemade spray in a very clean & thoroughly rinsed out "Windex glass cleaner" bottle. What I hasted to do then was to NOT rinse out the mister I attached to it - which DID NOT come from a windex bottle but was from a cleaner bottle that apparently had some bleach in it but was affixed to the empty Windex bottle...oh yes...one nice squirt from my make-do bottle filled with homemade starch turned these curtains a ghastly sunflower yellow!!
After a few Indian style war hoops coming from me - I took a deep breath and realized it was only the top 13 or so inches...so that was choppped off - and some little remnants of same fabric pieced and put together to make another panel -- all of that is now hidden under the pretty valance of John Deere Patchwork - and no one will ever know but me and all my blog readers! Shhh!!! Do not tell!
Their room is filled with cute farming Tin Signs! Oh I love them!

 Their dirty clothes hampers are wicker bushel baskets lined with natural canvas liners I sewed.  I also made this canvas from using a picture from our family album of my husband with a bunch of the children on our old John Deere (circa 1980) and changing it to a sepia tone and then transferring it to the canvas with Epson Iron On Cool Peel Transfer paper.

As you can tell - they are already curling up in their room and mussing up their covers - I've been trying to teach them proper bed making techniques [almost hopeless with a boy of 12 years old?]

I showed Luke - the way to tuck sheet corners in neatly "Military style" - he was impressed - he says "Wow! Mom! How did you figure that out?" ;)