Bears in the Night

I don't know about you but I had a pretty productive weekend! We went and spent the holiday weekend at the in-laws house, and I got a lot of painting done! A while ago we (meaning my mother in law Kathy and I) had the idea to turn one of the huge closets into a bedroom/playroom for the grand kids, and we decided to do a "Bears in the Night" theme. That book is a definite favorite in the family! It was Aaron's favorite when he was a kid, and we've read his old, well-loved (that is to say - battered) copy to Matthew nearly every night since he was a baby. It's been one of his favorites for a while now. For some to-die-for (I'm not biased or anything) cuteness, check out this video taken when he was about 11 months:

We thought this would make a good theme for the room (if anyone doesn't know this story, I found a video of it on You Tube) and so Memorial Day weekend was spent painting a mural! I actually had a lot of fun doing it, just like when I painted Matthew's airplane mural back when I was pregnant. This one was done in almost the same way. I used our thousand year old (ok ok... maybe 50?) projector to put the picture up on the wall and then I penciled in the drawing. This one was more difficult though because I was piecing together many pictures into one, and so a lot of things had to be free handed. Thank you mom for teaching me how to draw! The painting was all done in the style of the book, and I'm really pleased with how it came out! I wanted the room to tell the story of the book - starting with the bears sneaking out of their room at night and ending with them running home scared! The end product came out almost exactly how I envisioned it. I love when that happens!!

Here I am painting - this is pretty much what I looked like all weekend!

And here is the final product of the first wall - them hearing the owl and climbing out the window and down the tree. This is the first wall to your right just as you walk in the door.

Here is a closeup - I think these are two of my favorite bears that I painted in the room!

Here is the next wall, I tried to get the whole thing into one picture but it's just so big and there was no room to back up farther. Here they are going over the wall, under the bridge, around the lake, between the rocks, and through the woods. It's almost as if I have this thing memorized!

over the wall

between the rocks

through the woods

up spook hill.... WHOOOO! (Matthew's favorite part - naturally) This is definitely my favorite wall and the most fun to paint. I'm really pleased with how this one came out!

 running home scared

a closeup of them sneaking back in the window - and then back in bed

So what do you think? I still have a couple touch ups to do and I'm going to paint "Bears in the Night" up on the wall as well. We are also going to make a toddler bed and put in a toy chest and some shelves, and Kathy has this cool lantern light we are going to hang in there. Another possibility that we've talked about is painting the moon (not pictured here) and some stars on the ceiling in glow in the dark paint. I'll post pictures of the finished room once everything is done! I honestly had a lot of fun doing this. Kathy said I should start this up as a business and if I had any idea how to go about doing that - I think I would! So if you or anyone you know is looking for something like this... you know where to find me!

And do you want to know the most satisfying part of all this work? Having Matthew walk in, point to the owl, and say "WHOOOOOO!!"