At our rental house in California, Abe slept on a twin size trundle bed, in a room down the hall from ours. One night he woke up and, when I went to get him, he told me didn’t want to come into bed with us, but wanted to stay in his own bed.

Well.

I decided it was time to move up the timeline on redoing Abe’s room to…..as soon as we got back to Georgia. I’m not squandering this opportunity.

In my moodboard for Abe’s National Parks/Western room, I included a Jenny Lind bed. But, what with this big boy bed excitement that could go away at any second and all, there was no TIME to wait for a well priced Jenny Lind bed to turn up on Craigslist. My friend Kristi commented on that original post and directed me to the adorable metal Novogratz Bright Pop bed at Wal-mart. It’s well priced, at $120, has pretty good reviews, and comes in several fun colors. Sold!

Despite the “Bright Pop” name and the fun color options, I went with….black. I’ll talk more about why in a minute here. And then, the day after I ordered it, Kristi send me a text telling me that the Habitat ReStore had TWO Jenny Lind beds for sale! Argh! I briefly considered returning the Novogratz bed and running over there, but they were charging $100 each for the Jenny Lind beds, so it wouldn’t have been much cheaper AND old beds can come with problems, like not going together right, or being super wobbly, or ending up needing a funny sized mattress or whatever. And also, I really love the Novogratz bed and could no longer decide which I’d prefer all things being equal.

I’m not sure I’ve ever seen Abe as excited about anything as he was about the imminent arrival of his big boy bed. He was very eager to help assemble it himself:

There were many pieces, but putting it together was pretty straightforward, and I’m impressed with how sturdy it feels (one of the reviews said it was wobbly, but I don’t know how that could be unless you haven’t tightened everything enough. I also like that it has two different height options. We have it on the lower one right now, and it’s so low to the ground that I don’t feel like we need to mess with a bed rail, but when he’s bigger we’ll add the leg extenders so it will look more like a normal bed (and have room for storage underneath). So a tentative thumbs up for the Novogratz bed!

It’s almost certainly going to end up rotated 90 degrees and going along the other wall eventually (as is there’s very little room between the footboard and the book ledges; I want to have room there for a reading nook). And the quilt is just one I had in a closet that I stuck on there for now.

We’ve got three big bed nights under our belts now, and it’s going….okay. It’s a still a little too much excitement for him, this whole business of being able to get out of bed anytime he wants. But I think it will settle down soon. And the crib is already gone! Listed and sold on Craigslist over the weekend. We sold it for $70, so it covered a nice chunk of the new bed.

We bought this Signature Sleep Mattress from Amazon (affiliate link). It’s one of those newfangled ones that comes in a box that looks much too small for a mattress and then magically becomes mattress sized when you unpack it. I found it by searching “organic twin mattress,” and sifting through a bunch of $600 mattresses. This one talks about no VOCs in the description and was only $107 (with free Prime shipping), so I bought it. I don’t know how “organic” it really is, but I was pleasantly surprised to find that it had no weird chemically smell at all when we unpacked it.

I also switched out the bird rug I moved up here awhile back for this brown one:

When I did the mood board, I linked to this kilim rug at West Elm:

I still love that one, but it looks like it’s no longer available in the bigger sizes….and it wasn’t at the thrift store for $7 like the one I actually have. New one is smaller than I’d like, so I might layer it with something else eventually.

So that’s where we are so far, and it’s making me very eager to do more. I know that I said that one of the advantages of going with the National Parks room for Abe was that I could keep the walls the color they are, but….I think we’re going to paint the walls. Maybe even this week, so I’ll leave you in suspense about the color choice for now.

Aside from that, though, my plans have stayed pretty stable and consistent with the moodboard. We’ll see what else changes as we go!