Building a Greater Los Angeles: Yo Gabba Gabba Room Reveal!

I am so excited to reveal the Yo Gabba Gabba kids room I created for Wildbrain and Habitat for Humanity of Greater Los Angeles. The contest winner was a single mom who has 3 kids - a boy age 11, a girl who is 7 and another who is 2. Up until a few months ago this entire family of 4 was sharing one bed in one room the mother rented in a house filled with lots of other people. The mother is a driven gal who worked really hard to get a Habitat for Humanity home for her family and did it!

I wanted to share some of the overall room photos with you in this post and then in the coming days I will be posting about each of the DIY projects separately so you can get the full download. And there were lots of them! Aside from the Yo Gabba Gabba toddler bedding, beds and the toys and books (available at your local Walmart store!), everything else in the room was a DIY project anyone can recreate in their own home.

The bedroom I made over is being shared by the two young girls. I was told by their mom that pink is their favorite color. I wanted to be sure to create something that lasted years for them and didn't feel in any way like a baby's room. After all, there is a 7 year old living in this room and she's almost a tween! So, I kept that goal in mind every single step of the way... from choosing the pattern we painted on the wall, creating the designs on the re-purposed vintage furniture, picking the fabric for the curtains and comforter on the twin bed and creating the groovy art adorning the walls.

Over the last month I have been working on all of the projects packed into this room. I painted the rug, painted and decoupaged several pieces of vintage furniture, created custom art, curtains, made throw pillows, pom poms, a comforter cover... My friend Alison helped with all of the sewn items in the room and I am so grateful for her as I could never have done it as quickly or as well on my own! And then this week I had a team of volunteers helping me paint the room, assemble the beds, and work on a couple of last minute projects. I couldn't have done it without their help and am so very grateful that all four of them arrived at the house with a positive attitude and a can do spirit that stuck with them throughout our 14 hour (yikes!!!) day! I had never met any of the volunteers before we worked on this project and just enjoyed every moment of working with them. All 4 of them work on the Yo Gabba Gabba show... three of them are stars/dancers/characters (David, Nicole and Anna) and one (Hanh) works in the paint/set department (and boy, was I grateful for her help during the whole painting process!!). We were given one day (I thought they were kidding when they cut my originally promised 2 days down to one!) to pull it all together and I am happy to say we did it!

It was a lot of work and a long day but seeing the big smiles on the kid's faces and tears of joy in their mom's eyes when we showed them what we did really made it all worthwhile. Because that is truly what this project was all about! Oh, and I received the ultimate compliment from her 11 year old son when he saw the decoupaged shelf unit I created. He said "man, that's tight!"

The next morning the mom told me that her girls were so excited to sleep in their new beds (a first for the 2 year old!) and the 7 year old even made both of their beds when they woke up! She loves it so much she wants to try to keep the room as it was and can't wait to invite friends over to see it. Oh, and their older brother, who once thought he was too cool for Yo Gabba Gabba? Well, he now has some of the cool gear in his room too!

A GREAT BIG THANK YOU to the folks that were so kind to donate their products for the creation of this room!

Behr Paint - How fab of a color is POETIC PRINCESS?! The girls love pink and this shade delivered!

Frog Tape - The ultimate tape for any DIYer if you want great results when painting a cool design on your wall!

Color Services Photo Lab - See those big Hipstamatic photos above each bed??? I emailed photos taken on my Iphone and these guys printed them to 30" x 30" and did an AMAZING job!

Blick Art Materials - The guys at the Beverly Blvd store were kind enough to dry-mount the wall photos for me! They rock and if you live in LA, I highly recommend you visit their store on Beverly Blvd!

Hoffman Fabrics- The curtains and twin bedding you see in the photos were made using fabric by Hoffman Fabrics. It is their Gabba pink design. Such a great pattern for a kid of any age!

Vecco - The makers of the round painted rug I created for the girls. It's a new painted rug kit. Who knew??

Celebrate Express and Amscan provided the hundreds of stickers used in my extreme decoupaging projects

Habitat for Humanity of Greater Los Angeles ReStore - They have all sorts of cool stuff in their stores and donated the cute wicker dresser I used in the room

And ANOTHER BIG THANK YOU to those that helped me so much in bringing this together!

My friend Alison was responsible for breaking out her machine and sewing the curtains, duvet and pillows with me and her daughter Maddy pitched in as well. Amy at Mod Podge Rocks was great about giving me technical directions on how to decoupage my furniture with stickers as I had never done it before! And Hanh, David, Nicole, and Anna, my new Yo Gabba Gabba family friends, who taped and painted and assembled furniture on installation day and did so much more working nonstop for hours and hours (14 to be exact!) with the best attitude and sense of fun! David provided the music for the day and he was a great deejay with his eclectic playlist which made time fly! And thank you to Sabrina, Kelly, Allie, and Erin and the other folks at Wildbrain for asking me to be involved in the first place and providing me with all the fabulous Yo Gabba Gabba products used to fill the room! And to Jo-An at Habitat for Humanity of Greater Los Angeles great big thanks for all your help in coordinating this with the winning family!

Stay tuned for the first round of Yo Gabba Gabba DIY instructions tomorrow!

For those of you just tuning in and wanting to know more about me you can by going here... and if you didn't already know... I created a facebook page... check it out and "like" it! and follow me on twitter and you can even follow my boards on pinterest too!