I get a pretty serious decorating bug about every year, and lately, I had been dreaming about doing something different in the kid's bathroom. I wanted it to be bright, colorful, suitable for a boy and a girl and NOT ocean or jungle themed. That doesn't leave a lot of choices, so when I saw the "Very Hungry Caterpillar" set on Pottery Barn recently, I fell head over heels in love with it. I love Pottery Barn designs, but the high PB prices, not so much. So, I have been biding my time, and looking around to see if I liked anything else better. I thought I might just splurge to buy the shower curtain at full PB price and try to accessorize with cheaper stuff.
The Tuesday after Christmas, something made me decide to pop in our local PB kids store, just to look. I had no idea the entire "Very Hungry Caterpillar" bath set would be on sale. So, I was thrilled able to get the shower curtain, rug, towels, and the toothbrush holder for a significant discount.
That empty week of after-Christmas vacation was suddenly filled with painting, dreaming, designing, and shopping to complete the "look." Despite not liking the first paint color and having serious nausea about buying and painting the final green color, I absolutely love the way it turned out. Whenever I walk up our stairs, I look directly at those bright colors and patterns and it makes me smile. I think I am even more thrilled about that bathroom than the kids are. Now if they would just stay little, so I can keep this theme for another 11 years...
Here are a few tidbits about how it all came together, if anyone cares for those details.
The shower curtain focal point. I decorated and painted while the kids were sleeping, so they were surprised when they woke up. Rylan isn't so crazy about change and his response was, "Mom, why are there so many caterpillars EVERYWHERE? When are we going to get our old bathroom back?"
A view from just outside the bathroom door so you can see the matching rug, too. P.S. The paint is Benjamin Moore's Potpourri Green. Pottery Barn uses Benjamin Moore paint in their designs and since there were a lot of different greens to choose from, I decided to go with some hues that had passed the expert designer test. The color from the bathroom on their website turned out to be way too light, so I chose a green a couple shades darker. I think green is becoming my color, with my bedroom and now two bathrooms in different shades of green.
Looking for an affordable way to incorporate some Eric Carle artwork, I bought a set of 4 Hungry Caterpillar puzzles at Target, assembled them and glued them onto matboard. Then I found some coordinating polka-dot ribbon to hang them on the wall.
The fourth picture, the butterfly, found a home by itself above the towel holder. I originally bought solid green hand towels, but didn't like them as well against the green wall. So I solved that problem by sewing matching ribbon to plain white hand towels. I bought a polka-dot soap dispenser from Etsy. Eventually, I would love to find a matching night light for this wall.
I finally convinced Caroline to let me use her stuffed animals as part of my decoration. They had to come down to play several times those first few days. I am thinking they will be terrible dust catchers, but right now they add some interest to the top of a plain white cabinet.
