Room Makeover

When we moved into our house, Leah was three, and we had her room painted a similar shade of pale pink as her nursery in SC.  Over the past 7 years, her room has evolved slightly, but has mostly remained the same. 

We started with a rocking chair in the corner and read books out loud to our baby girl as she sat in our laps:

 The rocking chair was replaced by a bookshelf as Leah got bigger.

  

Pink room circa 2014:

Since then, bins of stuffed animals and toys have been placed into the closet...

...and there's no vanity stool anymore.

This pink PB Kids chair has been a constant since Leah was a baby, but is too small for our big girl now:

Leah's bed has on the low setting ever since she was a wiggly toddler who could roll out:

And the most precious pink wall art has hung in her hallway:

For the past year, Leah has been sleeping in a tent on top of her bed.  Starting in summer 2020, she has "camped out" every single night.  She bought this tent with her own money, and it's her favorite color.  We agreed that next year (before middle school), we would re-do her room to be more grown up and include turquoise:

In the meantime, our neighbor recently re-did her teenaged daughter's room and posted a cute chair for sale on our neighborhood website.  I thought this would be perfect for Leah's new room and planned to stash it away until next summer.  When I talked to my neighbor about our proposed new color scheme (gray and turquoise), we both practically squealed with glee, as those were the EXACT colors of her daughter's previous room.  She had an entire roomful of Pottery Barn teen bedding, window treatments, wall art, bins, and accessories to pass on to us, and we were SO excited to receive these gifts that we started Leah's room make over right away:

We painted the walls a light shade of gray and added the furnishings that we were given.  Our only other changes were to add nightstands, replace the window finials and have a new ceiling fan installed.  By a stroke of serendipity, our church consignment sale coincided with the timing of Leah's room makeover, so we were able to donate all of Leah's pink room decor to the church preschool.  It makes our hearts happy to think that another little girl will have so much pink joy in the future!

Here's the finished product:

Bed height raised.

The cute gray chair that started it all.

New nightstands.

We love the polka dot rug!

New hallway wall art.

One of my favorite touches is the unicorn canvas that Leah painted.  It's been on a shelf in her closet, but now has a prominent place on the wall:

We even inherited some cute bathroom accessories:

Leah absolutely loves her new room, and we are thrilled with the results:

One funny story about Leah's room.  We were given a square turquoise pillow that I had monogrammed for Leah's bed.  I asked the shop to embroider the initials 'LWG' onto the pillow.  This was how it turned out:

The first letter looked like a G to me (and every single other person who has seen the pillow!), but the store adamantly insisted that it is an L, and I was misinterpreting the initial due to the circular font.  It now makes us giggle every time we look at it, and it's a great lesson to learn on a $12 pillow vs. an expensive monogrammed gift in the years to come.  Clearly this is not going to be our monogram shop or font of choice in the future.  We are taking suggestions re: a new first name for Leah so that I don't have to throw the pillow away. We'll consider anything starting with a G.  Comment below...