An English Country Garden Inspired Mural For A Child's Bedroom

Welcome to any Findettes visiting this morning! I'm Alice, and I like sanding things with power tools and then painting them. My husband and I live in a leafy South Manchester suburb along with our toddler and baby daughters and two Jack Russells, where we've recently decided not to move to France after all and instead are busy DIY renovating our Victorian house. You can view our house tour here, check out our main before and after gallery here, and our plans for the house here.

It's done! Two weeks of hard work and Natalia has a magical English country garden on her wall, complete with rose-covered thatched cottage, duck pond and a unique apple tree bearing a couple of rogue strawberries, cherries and pears. After months of visualising it in my head, I'm so happy with how it's turned out.

I ended up replacing the second, smaller tree shown in the rough design with a large sun, moving several of the animals around, adding lots of extra flowers, and filling the sky with stars, birds and butterflies.

Now it's done, we've finally been able to move her out of the spare bedroom and install her cot under the watchful eyes of the nocturnal garden creatures - a badger, owl and bat (plus moon and stars).

Here's a close-up of the badger:

And the owl:

Eva loves the giant bunny perched on the cottage roof:

Two familiar Jack Russells also make an appearance, one with obligatory tennis ball:

And here's the mural in animated form, from the initial watering can to the final birds and chimney smoke.

You can view a larger image of the mural here, if you like.

Next on the list for Natalia's room - putting the final touches to her chair, making curtains, and buying some Annie Sloan paint to *finally* paint the wardrobe that's been languishing in pieces in the cellar for the past six months.