It’s taken nearly a year of living in our house, but the boys’ room has finally come together.
We tackled some basics first: repainting the interior white, replacing the carpet with flooring that matches our main floor, disassembling the crib that our third child never slept in (I know, I know, we’re terrible at sleep training).
What I’ve learned is that rooms (and dreams) come together in three parts: with vision, material objects, and people.
VISION
Before we even stepped foot in our current home, I pictured a mountains-to-beach room for our boys. Where we live in Southern California, it’s about an hour to the mountains and a fifteen-minute drive to the beach. We’ve never tried skiing and surfing in the same day, but I imagine with three boys, it will be a bucket list item someday.
You can start with an image, a Pinterest board, an idea. You can start with a few words that describe what you want the room to feel like once you’re living in it and how the space needs to function. Getting clear on exactly what you want is the first step.
OBJECTS
For the boys’ room, I gathered:
That owl lamp I bought on sale from the Anthropologie in Santa Monica a decade ago.
The truck piggy bank Noah painted when he turned two and the horse painted by Judah on his 2nd birthday (in a serious Spirit Riding Free phase).
The chalkboard Mumford & Sons lyric calligraphy piece I bought from a pop up market in my hometown the day I turned 28.
The Strands pennant and Swiss army box I bought and hoarded for over a year in a moving box.
The prints I bought before the All Good Things Collective closed up shop – Micah 6:8 for Micah, 2 Timothy 1:7 for Judah, I Peter 5:7 for Noah and Proverbs 17:17 for all three of them.
The thing about objects (and dreams): you have what you need to start.
You don’t need a trip to Home Goods or all the latest decor items from McGee & Co. When you begin to look around your house – or your life – you realize that you already have little gems scattered all around. They just need to be unearthed, repurposed, gathered.
PEOPLE
I love how the boys’ room turned out – it’s exactly what I wanted for them – but I especially love how they make it their own.
I’ve found them building train sets in the corner and sliding down into the reading nook floor cushions. At night, all three of them tuck themselves into the bottom bunk, and we read books pulled from the basket next to the bed.
The vision, the stuff – it was all for this, moments with my three sweet little people. In decorating and in life, what starts with vision, ends with people.