A place of his own....

Eben's room is the room that I always dreamed for him.  A room all to himself except for when he comes to recruit me for snuggles in the middle of the night.

There is a double sided easel with oodles of art supplies given to him by his Poppy.

A little playroom closet off to the side to contain his toys.

A beautiful window staring right into the gardens with a view of Heaven Hill as a backdrop.

A big cozy bed to snuggle in.

A beautiful ceiling, painted for him when he was just a few months old by his father.

And the sweetest illustrations torn from story books.

Each page that I framed and put on his walls when he was a baby.

That all sounds really nice doesn't it?

You wouldn't mind living with me would you?

Hmmm?

Why then, with such a nice room does he continually leave it in a state of disarray.  Several times a week I return it to it's rightful state of order, only to have Eben and Sam make another mess of it.


I think that it has something to do with the Testosterone surging through their veins.

At any rate, I tell you...I was about at wits end.

 
In hopes of helping him to become a tidy little person, I set about my first project from Homemade Home.  (Thanks again Imene!)  The Art and Hooks Rack.

Amanda's instructions for the rack (and the jist behind the whole book in fact) is to use what you have in the house to make it.  I asked Fran, our resident carpenter if he had any supplies that we could use for what I had in mind.  He found me some old hooks, a smooth piece of leftover pine flooring from the renovation,  and a piece of barn board wood left over from a picture frame that he had built for our big vintage deer photo. 


PERFECT!

I still needed the art work though.

I was going to use a few drawings that Eben had made at school, but I don't own any Decoupage glue and I couldn't find it anywhere in town.  I was stumped and just about to staple the drawings onto the wood when Fran suggested drawing the artwork right onto the white pine.

Using some watercolor pencils, Eben and I decided on drawing some mountains on the wood since green is his favorite color.

I outlined the scene and he colored in the lines using every shade of green for the mountains and blues, pinks and purples for the water.

Once the coloring was completed I got out the sponges and let him wet down the drawing as he would on watercolor paper.

We let it dry by the window.

The next day after school Eben helped Fran and I to clean out the toy closet and get things together for donating.  Then we moved Eben's dresser into the closet to free up the wall in his actual bedroom where we planned to put the rack.
    

Fran screwed the hooks to the piece of barn board.

They then screwed both the barn board and the drawing onto the wall.

 And even though it's not exactly what Amanda had in mind, we all liked it very much.  A very fun project.  One that we can remove from the wall when Eben is grown and in a home of his own.  Maybe even to be used by his own little one.

After that we tackled the cleaning of his actual room.  While we were doing that, we talked about how lucky Eben is to have all of the things that he has.  And how that he should take care of the things that he has so that they will last.  We also talked about helping around the house.

In the end Eben seemed to grasp his part in taking responsibility...especially for his own things.

Excited to have a place of his own.