Personalized Playroom Decor

So my fertility story is a long one, as in will take many posts but in order for this particular post to make sense you must know that my husband and I welcomed twin baby boys into the world in September of 2013.  Unfortunately, one of our sons, Preston, was born with profound brain abnormalities that didn't support his ability to live.  We lost him 11 days after they were born at the Yale-New Haven NICU, here in Connecticut.  

I must say that despite this being the most devastating experience of my entire life the nurses and doctors at Yale were incredibly supportive. The day we took Preston off of the ventilators and brought him into a private family lounge to be with his brother, the nurses had a cute craft project for the family to do together.  They created adorable paintings with our handprints and the boys foot prints.  I had these paintings put away in our office for a while because I couldn't get myself to hang them up yet, it was just too emotional for me to look at. 

Time passed and I decided I wanted to hang them up, and good ol' Michael's Crafts was having a sale on frames so I bought some frames and went to work.  In the meantime our other set of twins were now both home from the NICU (another story), and our oldest son (Preston's twin) Greyson was about to turn two.  My mother was selling her house and getting rid of a lot of items.  She had these two large paintings of tulips that were in her kitchen.  She was going to bring the paintings to Goodwill, but I thought that the boards themselves were nice and I could paint over them and do something with it.  My husband doubted this and was annoyed that I was storing them in his beloved garage but now the time had come!  

I busted out some white paint from the basement and slapped on a few coats to cover up the tulips. I already had a bunch of craft paint and I purchased some letter stencils at the craft store for the lettering.  I did also do a quick Pinterest search for some inspiration. 

The final product is a little gallery wall of the prints of the people who mean the world and then some to me.  Although it is still hard to look up and see the tiny prints of my sweet angel it's an everyday reminder of how precious life is and how lucky and blessed I am to be in that room reading books, building forts and crashing monster trucks with the little loves of my life.