Renter Re-Vamp: Circus Nursery

     My husband's military career has caused us to move...a lot. A whole lot. As in, I've moved no less than ten times in the nine years we've been married. Eek! I thought that we would be staying in the house we're in now for the next few years until we PCS to somewhere else. (PCS stands for Permanent Change of Station. It means the military is moving you to a different duty station.) It doesn't look like that's going to be the case due to some issues we're having with our neighbors, but moving is nothing new to us.
     One of the challenges of moving, is decorating. Often times in rentals there's a lot of rules about what you can and cannot do to the house, and even if you are allowed to do something like paint, you typically have to paint it back before you move out. However, since we don't tend to stay in any place for more than a year, painting is something that just isn't worth it to us. Everything that we do in terms of decorating needs to be something that we can easily take down and move with us to the next space. So working within those parameters, we've been trying to spruce up the kids' rooms. I, in particular, have become a bit obsessed with Nicola's room.
     Way back when I was pregnant I decided I wanted a vintage circus type of theme. Originally I thought that Nicola and Hickory would be sharing a room, so I wanted something gender neutral. As it turned out, we ended up moving out of that house in Oklahoma and up to Idaho so Nic is in a small room of her own, but I loved the theme and colors so much I decided to keep it going anyway. It's still a work in progress, but so far it looks like this:

Ignore that bag of clothes in the corner. It has since been taken to the local Goodwill.

    The crib and dresser are both from Ikea and the bentwood rocking chair is the chair that my mom rocked my older brother and I in when we were babies. The caning on the seat has started to give way, but I keep going back and forth on whether I want to re-cane it, or if I want to put in upholstered pieces of wood for the seat and back instead. Do I want to keep the natural wood tones, or do I want to paint it a fun color? Draped across the ceiling you can see just a peak of a garland made of yarn pom poms. It's hard to tell in this picture, but the poms are in a gold, deep red, black, deep red, gold pattern. I made that at the end of my pregnancy after I just couldn't find a pennant bunting I liked and I didn't feel like going to through the trouble of finding the fabrics and cutting and sewing one myself. Who has the energy for that in the third trimester?
     On the wall above the crib, featured in the middle photo is sort of my inspiration for the room. It's a piece of vintage reproduction circus fabric and I love everything about it. It's blue with deep red and golden tones and I loved it so much I just couldn't bear the idea of cutting it into smaller pieces to make something, so I bought the biggest embroidery hoop my local craft store had and framed the fabric in the hoop. Originally I bought the fabric with the intention of making it into window valances, but when you move the windows are always different sizes, so I think this works out much better. The two picture frames in her room, the blue one on the wall and the black one on the dresser were both gifts from my lovely friend, Cortny, who threw me the most spectacular aqua and red baby shower ever. The blue frame is actually handcrafted by her dad. Inside the black frame is red polka dot scrapbook paper, and for inside the blue frame I printed off Proverbs 3:24 which says, "When you lie down you will not be afraid; when you lie down, your sleep will be sweet." in a circus font that I downloaded for free. The yellow N and the strongman were both Etsy finds, the sock monkey toy was a Christmas gift from her uncle, and the wooden horse used to sit on my dresser when I was little. I love that she has little things from my childhood in her room.

     Like I said, it's still a work in progress. She desperately needs some curtains for her windows. The poor things just look so naked. I'd also like to put her strongman in a shadow box and hang it on the wall by the rocking chair where the blue frame and her initial are. I think some more fabric is smaller embroidery hoops would be nice to compliment her big hoop, and I have ALWAYS wanted to paint the crib. Ideally, I'd like the paint the top, bottom, and corner pieces a light blue and the rungs gold, then add circular pieces to the legs so that it looks like a circus wagon. Maybe once it's consistently warm outside I can get cracking on that project. If/When she ever moves into a bigger room, I'd like to frame some vintage circus posters for her wall as well.

     Overall, I love it. It's whimsical without being babyish. Are you a renter, too?? How do you handle decorating a temporary space?

Anonymous Blessings and Truth in the Tinsel

Every year at Christmas time you hear on the news about people paying off layaway for others and people finding money on their doorstep or in their mailbox and this year it happened to me! Last Friday I received an envelope in the mail with no return address and inside their was only a small note that said, "Merry Christmas! May God bless you!" and $150 in cash! The envelope had my first and last name and my current Idaho address. Seeing as we've lived in Idaho for less than two months, I initially assumed it had to be someone who knew me. I have no idea how anyone else would get my address. Never the less, I wanted to make sure we did something meaningful with this blessing.
If you remember, I had posted a Jesse Tree reading plan using the Jesus Storybook Bible that I was intending on doing with the kids this year. Well, instead of doing that, I decided to use the mystery money to buy the necessary craft supplies to do Truth in the Tinsel with the kiddos instead. I'm not sure if I've mentioned this before, but we don't do Santa with our kids. Never have, and never will. I would write out all the reasons for that, but the lovely Jen Hatmaker already has a blog post the sums it up with much better writing skills than I posses, so I'll just link you to her thoughts. I'm sure most of you are familiar with the Elf on the Shelf unless you either don't have kids or live under a rock, and that was a big influence in us choosing to go with Truth in the Tinsel. I wanted something that created that same daily sense of anticipation and excitement for my children, but centered on Jesus instead. After all, isn't that what Advent is all about? I like the hands on nature and creative outlet that goes with Truth in the Tinsel, but knew we wouldn't be able to do it because I just don't have a ton of craft supplies on hand after moving. However, with the arrival of money we weren't expecting I suddenly DID have money to go out and get all the supplies!
Here is our first week of ornaments: