One Room Challenge Week One: Toddler Chic Bedroom

Twice a year I watch hundreds of bloggers take a room in their home and completely transform it from floor to ceiling in 6 weeks. The whole idea of it always intimidated me though. and I never had the courage to jump in…until now. With our new found style direction I just KNEW we had to participate this season.

If you haven’t heard of the One Room Challenge, I’ll give you a few details. Bloggers from all over the interwebs take 6 weeks to transform a room in their home and share progress posts each week. There are 20 featured designers selected by Calling It Home, the host and genius behind the One Room Challenge. Those 20 bloggers link up their progress posts on Wednesday and everyone else links up on Thursday. In the Spring, over 200 bloggers were involved and I loved seeing all the rooms made over. So much talent and so many creative ideas!

Well, I am so excited to be diving in head first this time around! So, are you ready to see what room we’re going to transform? Here we go…

This, my friends, is our guest room. Well, as you can see it’s not so guest friendly and I guess I should, more appropriately, say it WAS our guest room until I sold our guest bed to a lovely couple that now has an empty nest a few weeks ago.

When we bought our 5 bedroom house a year after graduating college and no kids on the horizon people thought we were crazy. But for us it was perfect!

I always planned on keeping the room closest to the master bedroom as the nursery and just funneling kiddos into this large bedroom as our family grew. Well, the time has come to start our kid shuffle. It’s time to say goodbye to our guest room and turn this room into a toddler bedroom.

This room is really great at its core it just needs some personality. The walls have zero holes in them and once all the clutter is gone we have a near perfect blank slate to work with. The weird thing about this room is the short, random walls that we have to work around, but I think it will actually work to our advantage as we create a Montessori-style toddler bedroom for Clara. More on that to come though…

I am so excited to transform this room into a big girl room for Clara that can be a space for just her. Once baby joins the family I’m sure my oldest child will need time to get away by herself. I have so many ideas for this room and am excited to share with you all of the plans over the next few weeks. As you can see, so far we just have a toddler bed frame and other than that we’re starting from scratch.

Each week I will share a progress update on how the room is coming along and be sure to follow along on Instagram for all sorts of updates and sneak peeks throughout the next few weeks!

Until then, I’ll leave you with this inspiration board I created using Olioboard. It’s my favorite resource when planning out a new room to see all my ideas put together. I love how the inspiration board turned out and can’t wait to turn it into a reality!

The plan is to take items we used in Clara’s purple giraffe nursery and class it up into a toddler chic bedroom that encourages play, learning, and independence.

But how do we do it in just 6 weeks and being in the third trimester pregnant? Am I crazy?! Probably! With a lot of prayer that baby doesn’t come early and organization I know it’s possible though!

Here’s my list so I can start checking things off as they get done. (Side note: this is just my blog to do list. My complete list is actually two pages long. Eek!) So here’s my list — which I’m sure will change throughout the next few weeks — but it will be fun to track progress so you can see where we’re at and where we’re headed.

Project List

• Clear out room
• Paint room including closet
• Create feature wall
• Makeover old dresser
• Build reading bench
• Make bench seat cushion
• Make rocking chair cushion
• Build bookshelves
• Make giraffe growth chart & paint
• Make “Clara’s Kitchen” sign
• Make above bed graphic art
• Build cornice board & install
• Paint gallery wall frames
• Buy chandelier & hang
• Buy easel & paint frame
• Hang window curtains
• Have Clara paint artwork
• Make fabric tassel garland & hang
• Buy coat hooks & install
• Create gallery wall
• Accessorize!

And a shout out to my fabulous sponsors! I am so excited to be partnering with Orchard Supply Hardware and Mpix for this project! You’ll be hearing much more about these sponsors throughout the One Room Challenge, but I want to take a moment today to thank each of them!

I am so excited to be working with Orchard Supply for many of the projects throughout the room and this transformation wouldn’t be possible without them! And thanks to Mpix for the providing some gorgeous artwork for her room. I can’t wait to see all the finishing details come together!