We’ve been brainstorming décor in the new house and after taking an informal poll of what the boys wanted in their rooms (being sure to make no promises … just gleaning their ideas!), we’ve decided to decorate the boys’ rooms and bathrooms as follows:

1) The oldest’s room: space/Star Wars theme. Have you ever seen “chalkboard” paint? It’s so cool – it goes on like paint and dries as a chalkboard, so you can literally write on the walls. It’s black, so you wouldn’t want to do more than one wall or part of a wall, but we thought it’d be cool in a “space” room and provide the budding genius with ample space to brainstorm (or quantify string theory … whatever). We could put glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling, etc.
2) The two middle ones’ room: sports theme. The room is currently painted in bright orange/green layers. We could repaint it, but we thought the bold color scheme would lend itself well to a sports theme. I’ve seen some cool wire silhouette shapes of sports that would be neat up against the bright colors. We were even thinking of hanging old skateboards as shelves, etc. There is an abundance of sports-related décor out there.
3) The two littlest ones’ room: superheroes/comic book theme: We have some Spiderman wall border (Peel & stick! No glue!) that we originally bought for the bathroom at our current house but didn’t get around to hanging. Also, we have a pair of framed comic book stamp collections that the boys received from PawPaw and also a Spiderman rug. Again, there is a myriad of options with this theme.
4) Hall bath: jungle theme. We already have a framed giraffe print and a leopard print, as well as a wild cat hook rack that are currently in the shared bedroom. I thought it’d be a nice, neutral theme for the guest bath.
5) Shared bath (rooms 2&3): frogs theme. This is the décor that my nephews had in their bathroom back home with Daddy, and it’s still in great condition. We thought it’d be a nice familiar touch for them to have at their new home.
6) TV room: rock ‘n roll theme. We’re going to use the second living area as a tv room and leave the “nice” living room with just some comfy seating, fireplace and piano. Since the tv room doubles as the video game room – and we all LOVE Guitar Hero! – we thought it’d be perfect to decorate with music in mind.

Everyone is psyched about their new rooms, so I think we chose well. Our goal was to pick themes that would be: 1) relatively easy and inexpensive to pull off, and 2) able to “grow” with the boys over time.

As for the master bedroom and bath … well, we’re not sure yet. We definitely want it calming and soothing to the eye (polar opposite of the Mary Engelbreit-on-steroids wallpaper that the current residents have in the master bath). I still would like a place to display my porcelain doll collection (the poor girls have been in boxes for years!!), but I’m not sure where. Bless his heart, Lane said I can put them wherever I like, but I don’t want to just throw up some shelves and call it done. I’ll keep thinking about the perfect place.