Joyful Living: Trinity is 3...and has a Big Girl Room!

I cannot believe our daughter is 3 years old today! Time really does fly! She is such a joy to raise and we love her so much! It is so neat watching her turn into the little lady she is. She loves to draw and color, she plays with baby dolls and makes a great little mommy, and she is talking so clear now and cracks us up with funny things that just seem to pop out of nowhere.

One of her big birthday gifts was a new "big girl" room! We talked about it for a couple of weeks before the big renovation to build up her excitement. She spent 2 days and 1 night with her Grandma and Grandpa (thanks Kevin and Gina) and then came home to her new room!

Before she was born her room had been our spare bedroom and was painted blue. When we found out we were having a girl and started putting together a nursery, I begged Dan to paint her room pink. He refused and said that the room was a "sissy blue" so it would be just fine for our little girl. It's 3 years later and I still don't like it for her room! We were looking at paint samples and Dan was holding some purple samples in his hand as he asked Trinity what color she wanted her new room to be. I was so proud when she said "PINK!" He melted and caved in! He couldn't argue with her even if he wanted to...it is HER ROOM! :)

Here is our "big girl" room journey...with before and after pictures:

We did a lot of work in one day! I didn't capture pictures of everything, but it was sure an adventure!

To start with, Dan had to sand the walls and fill places with spackle before we could paint. It made a mess on the floor too...the first of many messes!

I rolled two coats of pink on the walls while Dan painted around the tricky parts the roller wouldn't reach. (He has a much more steady hand than I do.) He also painted a neat purple area at the top. This took us the majority of the day.

Once the paint was dry, I vacuumed and hung up the pictures. Dan painted a green strip in between the pink and purple...two more coats on that. While setting up the new room, we had some issues with the lighting as well! Why are these rooms so small and there is only 1 outlet that the light switch is hooked up to?

I finally went to pick up Nehemiah since he's not ready to spend the night away from home yet while Dan put together Trinity's new bookshelf and drilled it to the wall so no one would try to climb it and have it fall on them...just in case!

By this time, it was after midnight and we were just starting to put her big girl bed together. Her toddler bed converted to a full size. I was unaware that we HAD to put the foot board on it to keep the frame together so once it was up we discovered that we couldn't even walk around the room.

We had to rearrange everything!

Dan had to move the bookshelf too...which required him to undrill it from the wall and secure it to another wall. He also had to spackle the new hole he had put in the wall because of it. Fun, fun! We were both a little frustrated and tired at this point!

We finally got the room put together (well after 1am) and then I stayed up until almost 3am putting some finishing touches on it and cleaning things up. Talk about a long day...but well worth it!

The wall her bed was against BEFORE:

AFTER:

Wall with window BEFORE:

AFTER:

Wall with the closet BEFORE:

AFTER:

Entry way BEFORE:

AFTER:

Her reaction was priceless! Dan video taped it on our iPod but she was very quiet and just kept smiling so I didn't post it. He took pictures too but she was moving so much they came out really blurry. I did capture some after her bath as we were starting to settle down for bed though.