Hung up on hanging wallpaper…

Do you ever come across something that you know just belongs in your life? Like you are out shopping for diapers and somehow a throw pillow ends up in your cart, (if you have been to Target you know what I’m saying here) because it just speaks to you from across the aisle? And if you don’t put it in your cart it will haunt you like the ghost of last season’s cute sandals you still dream about, but didn’t buy…

It doesn’t happen often and never has it ever, happened with wallpaper. Let’s just say “I had a bad experience”. The Mr. and I scraped and peeled wallpaper from our first fixer upper 1940’s home in the very first year of our marriage. Then after surviving all that scraping, we ruined the walls so bad, we attempted to cover it up with a textured wallpaper. Let’s just say the Mr. and I didn’t talk to each other  for 2 days after…

Needless to say wallpaper was not going to be in my design plans again anytime soon.

Until I was cruising Anthropologie and came across this paper and swoon I fell in love!

 

I took a screenshot and made it the background on my computer and tried to just quietly obsess about it there. Until my favorite girlie turned on my computer one day and said “oooohhhh! That’s so pretty!” and AHA, I just knew it belonged in her room.

So I pulled the trigger and splurged on one roll, just the one.

Then I immediately began to sweat and worry about it, how I was going to hang this stuff? What if I wrecked it? What if I didn’t have enough?

Well…I wish I could say this went smoothly and I’m ready to wallpaper my whole house. It did not, I had about two nervous breakdowns during the process and I may have messaged several blogger friends in a panic, who thankfully talked me down.

Here I’ll show you (crappy iPhone pics, sorry, but I was too busy freaking out to worry about getting my camera out).

I did my homework to start and watched 2 different tutorials for hanging wallpaper, I even had all the proper tools for once. (I mean I have been known to hang pictures with a spoon instead of a hammer).

I painstakingly measured everything 32 times, and cut all my pieces and came down to this.

Yup I was this short, panic mode. I may have cried…

If I would have just left a little less extra on each piece I would have been golden.

I decided to live in denial anyways, and started hanging it thinking maybe an extra piece would miraculously appear (denial is my happy place) and I have to say hanging it was going really smoothly. And I loved the way it was looking!

Until I got here, yup I was still going to be this short.

I may have cried, again, and pulled my ultimate nervous breakdown card and called my mom. Not that she was going to make a piece of paper miraculously appear either, but I just needed someone to share in the injustice of my mis-measuring.

After a good 10 minute woe as me pout fest, I decided it was time to kick some wallpaper booty…paste. I hung the piece that I had left and then took the leftover scrap and puzzled over it, spinning it around again and again trying to make it match somehow and cover up the 10 inch by 6 inch space that I was missing.

and well? Can you see it?

No, it doesn’t match perfect, if you look close there is an upside down grasshopper hanging onto a leaf for dear life. The flower is also totally wrong, but whatever people! It saved me from having to buy another pricey roll of paper. High fives all around!! I possibly jumped up and down, fists in the air, Rocky style, while Eye of the Tiger played in my head.

Biggest. Relief. Ever.

Enter my favorite girlie, (who never hesitates to speak her mind) she came home from school and I couldn’t wait to show her the finished wall. Imagine me being all – “cover your eyes”, and then swinging the door open, big reveal – TADA!

and…

“wow, huh, I dunno mom, it kind of makes me feel dizzy…”

WHAT???

I told her it’s a good thing she sleeps with her eyes closed then, because she will be living with this wallpaper til she is 18…when I kick her out and take over her room ;)

Now that she has lived with it a few days and knows all the other fun things going in her room, she loves it too! So stay tuned for more changes to come…

Oh and if you are new here you can check out her old room here, and my board and batten tips here.