Sea of dreams

The declutter-a-thon continues … the latest room to get a joosh is the eldest’s under-the-sea themed bedroom.

The eldest takes after her mother and is a terrible horder. The bags of stuff I’ve secretly tossed from her room while she’s been on holidays with her dad … HUGE.

Inspiration for the bedroom came from a picture I spotted in a homemaker magazine, featuring a Hawaiian-print doona and with a hula skirt valance. I was entranced.

I ordered the bedspread from the US and trawled ebay for cheap hula skirts that I could cut up and staple to the mattress base.

Cool huh?

When we were living in New York I stumbled across a place that sold wall transfers that look like paintings. I ordered up big on fish and seaweed and sea horses. Then we lugged the unexpectedly heavy things all the way back to Sydney and spent a loooong, torturous day rubbing them onto the walls.

Plans to rub transfers of fairies and trees and butterflies all over the youngest’s walls immediately went by the wayside. Shudder. They’re still lying in a box in the attic.

A homewares store across the road from the kids’ school yielded these starfish door handles for the built-in wardrobe …

And this timber boat …

That’s a pic of the eldest in my arms just days after her birth. You’d never guess from my glowing smile that I’d be back in hospital the next day with a fever from a nasty internal infection … ah the wonders of a good make-up job …

My brother and sister-in-law had a mini-break with their kids at our house in Sydney once and bought us the wooden fishy (above) as a thank you present.

The eldest wants to stay in her under-the-sea bedroom forever, but I’m trying to soften the blow by offering her a jungle-themed bedroom next time around … African animal mural on one wall, animal print bedlinen (already waiting in the attic), green shaggy carpet as “grass” …

I know, I know, I’m slightly mad …

But I’ve made my peace with that.

Song of the day: Split Enz “Six Months In A Leaky Boat” (make that two years … maybe 10)