I’ve been doing a lot of Craigslist searching for a mirror, chair and bookcase for Alethea’s big girl room.  Today, I brought home what I think is a fantastic find.

What was simply listed as “Walnut Mirror 43 H x 24 W” …

Turned out to be a sweet white haired grandmother’s 100 year old beveled edge mirror with solid walnut frame and tons of wavy discolored glass character!

$30 later, Alethea and I had it loaded in the trunk and we were headed homeward.

The only problem is that it’s so cool, I’m half considering putting it somewhere else in the house.

I know I’ve been blogging a lot about Alethea’s big girl room lately, but I feel like I’m in this semi-frantic, must get the room done mode, because I’m terrified I’m going to end up on bed rest and not be able to get it done.   I’m not sure why I’m so convinced I’m going to end up on bed rest, we certainly had no issues with Alethea (a.k.a. Little Miss 2.5 Weeks Late) getting to full term!  Maybe it just seems like the hardest possible scenario given my piano teaching schedule and being home alone during the day with a toddler.  After all, I’ve never been accused of being an eternal optimist!

In any case, over these past few weeks I’ve been pretty much continually working on some part of Alethea’s room and so now it’s time for a little check up on what I’ve been doing.  Besides getting the room painted and picking out quilt fabrics, I’ve also made a directional change in what I want to do with the focal wall.  My original plan was to paint some large scale flowers on the east wall (opposite the closet).  Here is my computer rendering:

However, after further consideration I decided two things:

1) Given my artistic skills there was too great a chance it would look like a 6 year old did it

2) Even with best case scenario, the flowers would probably look more country-crafty than exotic-elegant

So new plan – I bought a stencil and supplies to create this pattern on the wall:

I’m going to do the pattern gray on gray and I think it will look better, be cheaper and maybe even not take quite as much time as the original flower idea, although I’m a bit sad to lose the flowers since it is one of Alethea’s favorite words.  I guess now I’ll have to teach her to say “lattice pattern”.

Next step: I need to get my sample paints out again to mix up a new shade of gray!

Here’s the current state of my continually evolving idea board for Alethea’s big girl room:

I was originally calling the room style ‘Moroccan Princess’, but then I realized that any true Moroccan Princess would have hand-carved teak furniture or some such thing and since my budget is way more Craigslist than hand-carved teak, I’ve shifted a bit and now I’m calling it ‘Shabby Moroccan Princess’.  I’d like to use jewel tones and slightly exotic patterns in the fabrics, but we’re definitely going to end up with some distressed painted pieces as well as some floral elements, which goes more toward the Shabby Chic look (but without the white painted furniture).

The find I’m most excited about is the lamp, with its chunky acrylic jewels, which I know I would have LOVED as a young girl.  As my sister put it, “Yeah, when I was about six I probably would only have stopped short at murder to own that lamp.”

I also adore the chair, but since the actual retail price of that particular chair is $899, I’ll be looking for something similar with a smaller price tag and may end up with something that looks nothing like it when all is said and done.  But hey, a girl can dream, right?

Today I went back and checked my measurements on the wall where Alethea’s dresser is supposed to go, hoping maybe I had an inch or two more than I thought.  Turns out I did measure wrong… I don’t have 27 inches, I have 25.  Sigh…

So rather than try to find a dresser that would work with such tiny space, I decided to move our 24 inch dresser out of the nursery into Alethea’s big girl room.  I hate to do it, it’s so cute in the nursery, but I figured it would be easier to find a new dresser for that more flexible space than another dresser smaller than 25 inches.

And sure enough, just a few hours after I made that decision, this dresser turned up on Craigslist:

We picked it up tonight and it’s way cuter in person.  The older gentleman who sold it to us was super nice and seemed happy that his wife’s childhood dresser was going to a ‘good home’.  And bonus, it’s actually more teal than green, so I think I may be able to stick it straight into the nursery with only a change of knobs.  Woo hoo!

After looking at roughly 400 dressers on Craigslist last night, I came up with exactly one dresser that is the correct size for the space in Alethea’s new room.

However, for some reason Peter didn’t feel it was appropriate for his daughter’s room despite its low $15 price tag.  I guess I’ll keep looking.