Little Thompson's new bedroom furniture...

I'm editing this post to add a link to Miss Mustards' furniture feature friday...

So it was time to upgrade Lil D's room from baby to toddler.  Luckily, the only things I wanted to change were his bed and dresser.  He had been in the crib (now turned daybed since he was climbing out and hitting his chin) for long enough.  I decided I didn't want to spend money on a new bed for him, although buying a Pottery Barn bed would have been fun, I am pretty sure he would have trashed it...and $30 is much better then $400.  So on to craig's list we went and what we found was this (well, this is part of it).  It was a captain's bed, but the drawer part was pretty beat up and the drawers didn't work all that great...so we just decided to use the headboard/bookshelf portion.

I, of course, took no pictures of the during portion of the makeover...maybe next time.  I gave it a once over with some sandpaper.  This is NOT wood, I'm not even sure what it is...but a nice coat of primer and 2 coats of white paint (I LOVE avalanche white...Ralph Lauren...don't know why, but to my eye it is the purest white I can find) and who would have guessed it could look brand new.  I decided to break up the white and bring in the other colors of his room with some scrapbook paper modge podged to the back side of the book shelf portion.

For now it will house his little stuffed animals, as they can't be broken, but maybe in the future we can add some more fun things...

This boy LOVES cars, so I decided to add in a few car things here and there.  I still haven't found anything that I absolutely love to add to his decor, but my eyes are pealed.  For now...there are 4 white wooden frames backed with the same scrapbook paper as the headboard and then some prepainted green wooden cars in the frame (thank you joanns).  I also repainted the letters of his name to match the new colors in his big boy room.  I got the letters (and the wood frames) at a place called The Wood Connection...love that place too!

The room still needs a lot...but I just worry about putting anything in his reach.  He doesn't bug things too much, but I just don't want to chance it.

For his first 2 years of life, Lil D had a 6 drawer dresser that we also used as a changing table.  It matches the crib perfectly, so when the crib went, the dresser had to go to (not really go, just to another room in the hopes that another wee one can use it...someday).  My husband had a bedroom set that he bought from DI (Utah's version of Goodwill).  DI makes bedroom furniture and they sell it in their thrift stores.  Anyway, he had this 5 drawer dresser...in great shape, but totally pine and not my idea of a little boy's dresser. 

 So, some quick sanding, primer and paint and a white dresser we had (of course no "during the process" pics).  I wanted it to be more then a white dresser, so after taking a poll (on Lil Ds blog) I decided to go with this...

I knew I wanted to add green to the drawers, but I wasn't sure what else to do.  My good friend Karla, at It's the little things, suggested labeling the drawers with what is in them.  Not only as a design feature, but to help with letter recognition, etc. With her suggested paint pen and graphite paper in hand...I found a font I liked and away we went.  It was a lot easier then I thought, and my not-always-so-steady-hand did just fine! The top drawer has diapers (which he no longer needs) and a few misc. items so I put 2 cars on it to bring in the car theme again.  I really love how it turned out...thanks again for all the suggestions!

So now the baby blue and brown room with Monkeys is now a big boy blue, brown, lime green and orange room, with a few cars here and there.  But let's be honest, there are plenty of matchbox cars in this house to make every room have a "car" theme!