Tour: Guest Room

We are two days away from the arrival of our first exchange student. Marissa is from Niels' home country of the Netherlands. Niels and I both wanted to be exchange students when we were younger, but we unable to do so. We're getting our chance to be a host family instead! We are really happy that we are able to host someone from the Netherlands because we are very familiar with the language and culture. Hopefully that will make the transition a bit easier on all of us. From our emails and Facebook exchanges, our student seems like a lovely girl so we are beyond excited for her arrival. 

Sounds like a good time to tour the guest room before our teen girl takes over!

View from the window.

View from the headboard.

View from the foot of the bed.

It has a huge window, so we were able to put a darker color. It's Sherwin Williams' Dovetail. It looks really nice with green, black and white accents. We weren't originally sure what we were going to use this room for on a daily basis. It was always going to be our guest room for kids. (The in-law suite downstairs is the primary guest room). But we weren't sure if it was going to be a playroom, library, media room, or craft room. Ultimately, we knew pretty quickly that it would be Marissa's room. 

A few closer peeks:

I found this canvas art at HomeGoods last winter. I loved the sentiment, and now it's especially fitting. 

We found the super soft robe at Ikea and the hamper from Target. 

Lots of room in the closet, thought we are kicking ourselves for not putting more thought into the shelving. Someday we'll fix that. In the meantime, I put in this laundry sorter from Big Lots as a mini set of drawers. 

We had an extra Billy shelf from Ikea after putting together Niels' office.  I bought the bins at Big Lots. 

A few books for her library. 

D found this tennis photo holder. He knows that Marissa plays tennis so he said she needed it. How can I refuse a three-year-old thinking of someone else?

I bought the letters for Marissa's name at JoAnns. I covered them with some silver contact paper I picked up on clearance months ago. They sit on a Ribba picture ledge from Ikea.

D wanted to paint something for Marissa. 

I found the pair of mirrored pieces at Flower Factory. 

We bought the nightstand from Target. 

I found this fun blingy lamp at a church garage sale. It still had its Target tags on it. 

Every teen girl need a journal. Especially when she's have such an adventurous year. 

Because we are a full service host family, we also have a power converter.

After discovering that our bargain fan from Tuesday Morning was a lemon, we replaced it with this Harbor Breeze Melior fan from Lowe's.

This room has a really nice big window. We have 9' ceilings, which makes finding curtains a challenge, but these will work for now. I bought the curtains on Amazon.

Marissa's mom and I worked together to make this collage with photos of her friends and family, and us. 

Marissa's dad made a comment early on that the one of the hardest transitions for Marissa would be missing her keyboard. We've been looking around for months, and last week I found this nearly new Casio CTK-2100 keyboard and stand  at a garage sale for $15!

I love this fun dry erase clock from Lowes. 

We thought the Micke desk from Ikea was a fun addition for teen girl.

We added a few last minute touches this week.

Copies of Sunday's paper, both local editions. 

The users manual for the keyboard, which we found online, plus pens and pencils. 

Ohio travel information so she can suggest some day trips.

Notebooks for her first day of school. We'll do the rest of her school shopping once she has a better idea of what she needs.

And lastly, a copy of her school year schedule.

Thanks for touring with us. Hopefully I'll have another room to share soon!

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