Decorating 2-Year-old's Bedroom!

My son is older but we recently started hitting resale shops looking for things to hang on his wall. I started noticing he was going for boats, ships and things like that. So we decided to do a nautical theme. I bought old maps and glued them to his headboard, bought some rope and hot glued it down for trim. Then I took pieces of maps and willy nilly put them on his blue dresser (water colored by accident? no, got it from the returned paints at Lowes for $1.75). Then I sealed with with a clear shiny acrylic. I bought two old home interior sailing ships at a resale shop for 25 cents each, found a lamp and did the same thing with the map and rope to the shade and base as I did to the dresser and headboard. Wrapped his entire footboard in rope, secured it with hot glue and viola! a nautical room. Total cost including the paint, blue sheets bought at resale, lamp at garage sale, acrylic under $20 and a few days of working on the decopage of the headboard, lamp and dresser. You can do that with old story books as well. I am doing one for my grand daughter now for christmas. She needed a new dresser and I took old story books I bought at resale shops and garage sales and cut the pictures out and decopaged them to the dresser. It is so cute and extremely unique.
Good luck
C.

Does she like Dora the Explorer? Dora's kind of tomboyish, and there are plenty of things for sale with her on them, from toddler bedding to lamps. A cheaper thing you can do is buy some fabric at Wal-mart. They have a lot of designs to choose from, and you could pick something neutral, such as puppies or teddy bears. It's really easy to make curtains and decorate a lampshade, even if you don't sew or have a lot of time. You can use craft glue or a hot glue gun (I found one at Dollartree). I would still suggest buying the sheets, but you can make a lot of things yourself. For pictures on the wall, you can cut out pictures from a calendar you like and put them in frames (you can also buy these things in a dollar store). I did this for my dining room when my son was a baby 10 years ago, and my mom did this with greeting cards for my room when I was a baby. It's really fun & easy!

Hello, I don't know if this is maybe to cheap for you but I bought calander's after the begining of the year when they are all 50% off of something my kids liked. They have 12 pictures usually with a border, they are all the same size and go the same way so are easy to hang. I bought some scrap book two sided, removable, reusabe sticky things and hung them around the kids rooms, they look really cute and no one can tell they are just calander pages and I spent a whole $6 on the set. Good luck snd just remember not even paint is permenent.

When I decorated my 18 month-old son's room, I borrowed a projector, traced images out of the book "Where the Wild things are", and then used chalk to outline the images on the walls of his room, then I painted them. I got my paints from Home Depot and Lowes; they usually have small cans of paint that were returned or mixed wrong, that they sell for really cheap (like 2 or 3 dollars). You could easily do any of her favorite book characters or t.v. characters. You don't even have to be really good at painting, as long as you stay in the lines, it looks pretty good. Plus, you'll really enjoy doing something creative for your child.

I Still have the same problem with my daughter and she is now about to be 5. Well, Here is what I do. I dont normally have a alot of money to spend so when she was about 2 what I did was. Take one wall in her room I brought bright colors of paint and I drew pictures on her wall (rainbow, sun, tree, ball, grass, etc.. I also Let her dip her hands in the paint and put her hand prints on the wall.. As far as furniture I got her different colors for stuff example: Her crib had a pink sheet and her pillow case was yellow, She had a chair that I wrapped in a fabric I got at walmart and well it all worked in together. I remember my husband telling me what mess are you doing? But when it was all said and done he loved it and so did she .. She actually spent alot more time in her room. Also If you cant paint the room fabric is also great or at the dollar tree stores they have these wall paper stickers that stick and come off really easy. .

I am not sure exactly what you consider cheap, but I am getting ready to redo my sons room in a sesame street theme. I added up the price of everything and it is going to cost about 300 or so. Which I considered cheap since we are getting him a new bed and dresser and bedding and all of that. but here is what im doing: on amazon you can search for elmo room in a box. (they have blue and yellow i think) seriously. its cool. it is toddler bed frame, a little table with some chairs, and a thing with like 9 storage compartments. it is about 80 dollars. If you just get some sesame street wall decals, which are also cheap on amazon, it goes nicely even on a plain white wall. and it does not mess up the paint. At walmart website you can order personalized sesame street pillow cases for 12 dollars and im sure you can find some cute bedding. also you can find a decent rug for cheap (we found one on amazon for 60 dollars. For his new dresser we are simply getting a white one and i plan to let him paint it how he wants it with some nice bright colors. and to keep the stuffed animals off the floor, a net, where he can still reach them. It is simple stuff, adn pretty cheap.
We spend a lot of money on amazon since we dolt live in the states right now. lol. I hope this gave you an idea or help or something. :)

R.

Hi,
Just read your email and we had a baby a year ago and decorated on a budget. As far as pictures go...don't go spending a lot of money b/c this is my 3rd child and from experience, their preferences change. Just a thought.... we went to Wal Mart and you can buy wood letters and paint them. I think they come white. We just stapled ribbon to the top of each one and tied it in a bow and then hung the bow on the wall with a nail and spelled her name out. It turned out soo cute and cost us all of 15$. It sounds like your daughter likes primary colors... so you could paint the letters blue and hang them with red ribbon. Get a bedspread first, if she is in a bed. Start from there. I would just get a primary solid color and go.... Good luck.

I have a 5 month old daughter and we did her room in a tropical fish theme and my 2 year old Neice LOVED it. I went to our local dollar stores and found very vibrant tropical fish cut them out and framed them with dollar store frames. I also found ceramic fish you can paint them and put glitter on them. I did that with some and put them on a shelf. As far as the paint in the room if you go to Home Depot or Lowes they have a section I call it OOPS paint but you can get paint that they messed up on for a fraction of the price(you just have to watch for a color that you need). I hope this helps I have found that Big Lots has some really neat things too that you can improvise with. Take Care and Good Luck

J.,
When my daughter was the same age, I wallpapered 3 walls with a plaid pattern (bright green, pink, lt. blue & white) 3/4 of the way up the wall, with another wallpaper on top - pink background with white clouds.

On the fourth wall, I painted (or you can stencil) Winnie the Pooh characters dancing under a rainbow with umbrellas in their hands. It took up the entire wall. About 2 ft up, I nailed onto the wall (under their feet) a white plastic "picket fence" border that I bought in a garden shop, one you would stick in the ground around a flower bed. Then I painted flowers coming up along the bottom over the picket fence.
Meanwhile, I was able to find plaid curtains that matched the wallpaper at Wal-mart or J C Penney's.

If you are not one to paint or wallpaper, when my son was small, I was renting a townhouse that I couldn't do too much with, so I used thumbtacks to put up sheets as "wallpaper" on the wall next to his bed in a pattern that matched his comforter. It was black cats that were wearing red high-top tennis shoes. He loved it! Then I also used sheets to make matching curtains.

Often you can buy pillows or throw rugs that are in cute shapes or bright colors to brighten things up without too much cost. My daughter is in middle school now. She has dresser knobs that match her light switch plates, that match her wallpaper border - hearts and flowers in pink and purple. Above the border, the wall is lavender. Below the border, hot pink. (the border is along the middle of her walls half-way). We also painted her dresser drawers alternating colors: hot pink and purple, of course! She has a huge pink chair, hot pink throw rugs and pink and purple design comforters and pillows.

Another idea, no matter what your color scheme or theme - put artificial flowers at the ends of her curtain rods, twisted in the curtain tops. Good luck!