Mayah's Birthday Bedroom Makeover

We've been planning to makeover Mayah's room for some time now. We started collecting decorations and pieces of furniture that fit what we were looking for and had done a good job keeping it under Mayah's radar. Then one day, I asked her to go grab something out of the laundry in our basement. As she walked down the steps I remembered that we had stashed her new bed down there along with a few other decorations. After she came up, she casually mentioned to me that there was a cute pink headboard and footboard in the basement. I quickly looked for an excuse and told her it was for Ava. I wasn't sure if she bought it, but a few weeks later Clint went and got a twin bed for Ava which helped convince Mayah that maybe the stuff she saw was not for her afterall.

Over the past six months, we've fallen in love with this little boutique shop in Omaha's Old Market. It's called "You could, but wood ya?" and is run by this overly friendly (and talkative) lady, Linda. Linda is the owner, operator and artist all in one. She finds old pieces of quality furniture and then paints them to look sort of shabby chic...or antiqued. We bought a little rocking chair, a step stool and a dropleaf table from her a few months ago and told her to keep her eye out for a cute bed and dresser. It came down to the final week before Mayah's birthday, but she finally had all of the pieces we were looking for. My father-in-law was a little skeptical of the dresser when he helped me pick it up yesterday, because at first glance it looks pretty aged. He didn't know what theme we were going for... but when we got it home it fit in just perfectly...and added a lot of character.

I decided to go with black/white/pink and light green for colors, and collected all of the boutique-looking pieces I could find... from shelves to a mirror and picture frames. Grandma Brenda pitched in a really nice blanket, lamp and some silk flowers. We were a little uncertain how Mayah would actually like this new semi-grown up look... but the moment she walked in she absolutely loved it. Ava greeted her at the front door and said, "Mayah, Happy Burfeeday!" and then grabbed her by the hand and pulled her up to Mayah's room.

You can get the rest from the pictures... I don't think any other 8 year old girls will have a room quite like this...at least not with this much character. We sure love Mayah and hope she feels special in her new room!

Wicked

Mayah and I have been super excited to go see the musical play, Wicked, which my father-in-law was generous enough to buy us tickets for. All week Grandpa Rudy was talking to us asking if we were ready and excited to go see Wicked this last Saturday and getting us both pumped up about it. So Saturday afternoon Mayah and I got all dressed up and headed out to have sushi together at a fun little place in old market downtown called "Blue." We had so much fun laughing together trying to teach Mayah how to use the chopsticks and just talking about how much fun this place is going to be and spending time together!

As we got downtown, parked and headed into the Orpheum theater we were trying so hard to contain our excitement. The usher walked us down to our seats which were sixth row from the front smack dab in the center. Grandpa could not have gotten us better tickets! We had the perfect view of the whole stage. We couldn't stop giggling to each other about our seats. All of a sudden this group of about six people walk down our row and stop right at our seats and look at us with a confused look on their faces and said to me, "I think you may be in the wrong seats..." I looked at them with such confidence and flashed my tickets at them and said, "oh no, I think we're not." They then proceeded to tell us that their tickets were the same seat numbers. Mayah and I started locking our legs around the seats and thinking to ourselves, "We are not moving!". One of the ushers came down to assess the situation and as it turns out, our tickets are actually for May 16th (we had shown up a week early!!!). The confidence in me suddenly vanished as I shrunk in my seat and was too embarrassed to move. As fate would have it I am going to be out of town the weekend of the 16th and will not be able to see the play in those amazing seats! Clint also bought tickets for the two of us to go for a date night on the 23rd. So I will still get to see it, but it wont be with Mayah and it wont be in such primo seats. Mayah will see it with Grandma while Clint and I are in Kansas City. Mayah had to make sure that she laid down the law with Grandma ahead of time, saying, "Grandma is not allowed to talk and comment during the entire play!" She cracks me up! Even though we didn't end up seeing Wicked together, I still enjoyed the time we spent together. Mayah is so much fun to be around. I love her so much!!!