Rooms that go Vroom Vroom

I'm happy to report that since we evicted Ethan (and his big boy racecar bed) from our room, he's done immaculately well in his newly transformed room! The crib is officially dismantled and tuck safely away and so help me, there is not a SINGLE trace of Winnie the Pooh in the room!!! YES!!!

Choosing the transportation theme was a breeze since I had already purchased the racecar bed. Although a sports fanatic by default (Ethan, not me), it didn't make sense for me to try to decorate balls around a car. But since we can't paint the walls, figuring out a way to "brighten" up the room (without giving Mike a heart attack) was a little trickier than I thought. Turns out that the only wall-friendly stick-ons they have are all Disney or Thomas and Friends or some other character that Ethan will probably get sick of in a month or so. I really wanted to keep it neutral -- I'm thinking... basic pallettes with cars, planes and trains that don't have eyes and ears. And this is what I came up with...

On one wall, I hung up three square canvas paintings. I had bought it a long, long time ago before I bought anything else, so it kind of became my starting point and my inspiration for the light blue border. I shied away from the checkered flag and instead went for a basic dusty blue removable border that I striped across the middle of the room to break up the boring eggshell white color. Then I used wall appliques of different types of cars and trucks that I found at Target to add some *pop* to the border. I bought the STOP and GO signs from a local teacher store (they have FABULOUS stuff for room decorations if anyone's in the market for it).

To try to alleviate our storage problem, we bought a cubical storage system and put canvas storage bins for half of it which actually worked out well. Small toys go in the bins, and I put the larger ones, including books (at least ones that he can't tear) in the open cubes. I put it right next to his toybox, so he knows that that's the side where we put away everything after we're done playing. Of course, there's the infamous city rug, although I haven't seen Ethan play pretend with his cars on it.

Above that are two shelves that we originally put for the nursery. I haven't gotten around to painting the actual shelves white to match the ones below. But I did put the caricature we had done of Ethan when we took a trip to the San Diego Zoo on there.

But his two most favorite spots in the room are his rocking chair and his foldout "couch". Just look at him lounge!

The room's not entirely done... there's a bare wall that I'm planning on hanging some photo collages on, and I'm still in search of some nice planes I could hang from the ceiling.

If skies were the limit, I would've painted a mural on the wall with roads and cars and planes flying overhead... but that might be another project down the road. For now, Ethan loves waking up in his racecar bed and sitting up to watch the cars and trucks along the wall (although when he says it, it sounds more like "cocks"). The best part of re-decorating the room is? I did it for under $200!!! hehe... my hubby is so proud....