When we moved here, I had been given advice, to help Jayden with the transition, of keeping his new room as close to his old room as possible, so at least he had something familiar. My parents had given me Jordan’s old bedroom set (thanks!), from long ago that had just been sitting in storage, for Jayden since we knew we were going to have to get Jayden new furniture soon after we got here. The toddler bed he’s been sleeping in is really just his converted crib, and we will need a crib again in a few months, and I had again been given advice to “hide” the crib for a little while before setting it up for the new baby, in hopes of Jayden not claiming it as his and feeling like the new baby was taking more of his things/space. So, this last weekend, since it was going to be in the 100’s outside, Royal and I decided we would fix up Jayden’s room. Jayden of course was real involved, as usual. Jayden had become real attached to some felted fish once we started moving, that I’d made him before he was born, so Royal and I decided since really the love of fish most likely is running through his veins, we were going to make his room fish themed, and help promote it a bit. So, we got a sweet fish comforter for his bed, picked out some paint colors, and I went to the yarn store to get matching yarn to make more felted fish.

We did some taping…

Then we started painting…

We ended up using Aura paint from Benjamin Moore, because of the low VOC levels with makes it better for the environment and WAY less toxic to humans, it hardly smelled at all - which translated into me not having to wear a mask to paint and Jayden being able to sleep in his room the same day we finished painting and me not worrying about all the horrible poisons he was breathing in. Another benefit was that it dried to the touch in 20 mins and we could paint on a second coat in an hour, which was great with a 2 year old running around wanting to check out what was going on in his room. We were able to get the majority of all the painting done while he was taking a nap and by the time Jayden woke up, the walls were dry. Fantastic! (I know it looks from the pictures that Royal was doing all the work, but in reality Royal never takes pictures, so that leaves it up to me. I don’t look like I’m hardly a part of this family if all you do is look at pictures, but I did lots of work too, just so you know)

Jayden wasn’t too sure at first he picked the right colors after seeing them on the wall. He was having second thoughts about it and thinking that maybe he was more like his dad and that he preferred white walls to any color. He came to his senses later when we were finished - not Royal though, Royal would rather just have white walls….boring….

I think it turned out pretty well and I pretty much just want to hang out in Jayden’s room now because I think it’s so cute. Jayden is loving his new bed, although he still falls asleep on the floor by the door every night. But what he loves more is the felted fish I made. We went and got googly eyes for them, so they could look at him (he wanted them to be able to see) and then put them on fishing line to hang them. It took me over a day to convince Jayden to let me hang them from his ceiling. He was walking around with his 7 felted fish on their “leashes” (the fishing line I was going to hang them with) making them jump on things and follow him around the house. The only way I finally got them away from him was that I told him he could pick one to keep and not hang up. He picked the green crazy looking fish (the one in the top pic), with the backwards dorsel fin that makes it look like it has a mohawk, and eyelash yarn that makes it look like it has fur. It’s cool, it now sleeps with him and Horsey and he calls it his Crazy Fishy.