Guest Bedroom reveal

Merry Christmas everybody! We had a mini white one this year and then last night it started snowing and still hasn't stopped. We have about 8" I think right now.
This doesn't really have anything to do with the rest of the post but here's a picture:

Our driveway is gigantic and I shoveled it all by hand while Dan was at work. He has a thing against shoveling; last time it snowed 4" we had to go on a walk around our neighborhood to look at other people's driveways to convince Dan that shoveling was the thing to do (he didn't want to take my word for it). Where I come from, when there's snow on the driveway, you shovel it. I guess that's a foreign concept to city folk.

This doesn't have anything to do with the rest of the post either, but here are pictures of adorable and awkward Christmas cats:

We have a heated table -- it's called a "kotatsu" and has a heating unit attached to the underside of the table -- that the cats love, but sometimes they get too hot and have to stick out part of their bodies to cool down

Christmas attire

This one's the awkward one. His name is Pong.

I knew they'd love the new storm door

On with the post.
I had big plans for the guest bedroom. This one's our "steal" room, because we don't have to gut it, which means it'll be a fairly inexpensive makeover. After patching up some ceiling holes and installing a new light fixture, I wanted to add something fun to spice up this otherwise bland room. I looked into wallpaper - green, to go with our new light fixture -- but it's pretty expensive and I couldn't find exactly what I was looking for...and that's when I started researching cheaper alternatives - stenciling. After some browsing, I found the perfect design but it was a 6"x6" stencil, which means I'd be stuck stenciling WAY into next year. I thought about re-sizing it myself, printing it out and exact-o-knifing the design onto a piece of plastic, but Dan had doubts (I guess about my knifing skills...? Please.) so I called the company and found out they could custom re-size it for me (for 50$ including shipping), which I had them do into a 12"x12" design. Hurray!

I wanted to make it two tones of green, which meant that I couldn't just roller-paint it, unfortunately. So I handpainted each and every stencil with two sponge brushes and it took forever, but it looks pretty killer.

strike a pose

 side note: Dan wants to start a website www.catsonladders.com. He thinks it'll be a big hit.

Some touch-ups

 There is one huge, glaring mistake that immediately springs to my eye like a neon flashing sign whenever I look at this wall. Can you spot it? It doesn't bother me enough to compel me to re-paint it.

reflections

I like the color of the parlour walls as a backdrop to my stencil wall

Some readers may wonder why there are so many more pictures of Mango than there are of Pong; it's because Mango is always by my side when I'm reno-ing and he just happens to slip into pictures. He's like my sidekick.

close-up

I really love how this wall turned out, but next time I'm looking for a wall design and there's a wallpaper that's fairly close, I will definitely go with that.