Ryan's Big Kid Room

I loved decorating the nurseries for both of my kids.  It's a fun chance to flex my decorating skills with softer and cuter detail than I can use in the rest of the house (since I share the rest of the house with an adult man...)  But now that Ryan is 3, he has his own tastes, likes, and dislikes that he can clearly articulate.  So I was super excited to re-do his bedroom decor to make it his own.  You can see the original Nursery Design here.

First move was changing his crib into a full size bed with the conversion kit we had purchased with the crib.  Basically, you keep the long sides of the crib and use them as the head and foot boards and replace the short crib sides with rails.  We were lucky that he didn't start climbing out of his crib until he was much older, so the transition to a big kid bed and the freedom it allows was easier.  No issues with him leaving his room or hopping out of bed or typical toddler shenanigans.  He didn't even have issues falling out of the bed, thankfully :)  Some new sheets from Pottery Barn Kids courtesy of his Nana - one set of cars, one of assorted vehicles and one of alligators.

Next step was to take down all of the cute elephant and giraffe details I had put around the room.  Sad to see them go, but they were very babyish and not well suited for my big guy.  After that, I took his yarn-wrapped letters that spell his name and yanked all of the yarn off of them.  We painted them red - his favorite color - and stuck them right back up in their place, but they give it a totally different feel.

Audrey loves Ryan's new bed, too

Then we took down the alphabet art and replaced it with some fun vintage pictures of cars I found on Pinterest.  Got the frames at Hobby Lobby and just printed the car pictures at home.  For matting, I used construction paper that I already had at home, so a very affordable project.

Lastly, we took down the paintings that Kim and I had made and replaced it with a fun vehicle ABC array that I bought on Etsy.  There is a different car/truck/etc. for every letter of the alphabet, which is really helping him as he learns his letters and sounds better.  I got some mini clothespins on Amazon and Matt painted them the same red as the name letters.  Then he drilled some anchors into the wall and strung up thin rope to hang the letters on.  It ended up taking up much more of the wall than we anticipated, but it looks amazing.

Ryan loves his new room and I love that it is a place that reflects his tastes and the things that he loves.  It will be interesting to see how his style evolves over the years, but for now, we are all digging his red vehicle room!

Shout out to Aunt Jody for providing (literally) hundreds of big kid books for the new room!