I always wanted to have a cool room of my own as a kid, but I had to share my closet-like, wardrobe-filled pencilbox of a room with my sister. To be fair, later on my sister and I did have a better room with more space, although we still had to share. What are you gonna do, my parents made sure we had some semblance of a personal space and the Soviet military lifestyle is not exactly conducive to digging in and adding on.

So when we learned about our baby back in 2009, I decided that whether it’s a boy or a girl, the kid is going to have something nice to look at.

Many nights later …

The jungle mural in our baby's room

… there it is! Our baby’s very own jungle, complete with stuffed animals and mural animals to boot.

Our little boy gets so excited every time he looks at the baby monkeys on the walls — his little face lights up and I can’t be happier.  He also has giraffes and tigers in the room, so they all are perfect subjects for practicing where the nose is, where the mouth is, where the ear is in two languages.

How did I do it?

The idea is easy, but the implementation was tricky.  You’ll need:

• Graphite pencils
• Base primer/paint
• Mirrors
• Rope you can cut
• Duct tape (of course)
• Laptop
• Digital Projector
• Image editing/creation software like Photoshop, GIMP, etc
• PATIENCE, and lots of it

Start by googling a bunch of clipart images of your theme.  In my case, I found some monkeys, a giraffe, and some vines.  Don’t worry about the resolution, focus on finding a design you like with big features.  This means less complexity is better — don’t go for the images with lots of intricate details, shadows, 3D relief.

Look at your room and its unique architectural details.  Figure out where your images are going to go — vines above the window?  A rocket next to the door?  A monkey hanging off the tree in the corner?  This is important, so get it once, and get it right.

Prep the walls.  Put on primer/base coat.  Sand down texture if it’s too prominent.  I had high gloss everywhere, but it’s more difficult to draw on it.

Fire up the laptop with the projector and start moving your images in Photoshop according to where you need them on the wall.  I “rented” my projector, i.e. went to the local electronics store and inquired about their return policy, then bought whatever projector they suggested.

After placing the images, trace with graphite pencil.  This is the easiest part of the project.

Fill in the images with acrylic paint.  As they say, rinse, repeat.

It looks professional, even though I can’t draw a stick man to save my life.  Allocate 80-120 hours if you’re going slow … took me months of nightly work to get the whole room done.  Good luck!

Men’s Health recently published a list of “The Healthiest Cheap Food in America” featuring twelve food trade-offs based on the premise that a similar item with equal, almost equal, or better nutritional content (vitamins, minerals, grams of protein, etc.) should be eaten when it saves you money.  I wanted to share the article since I agree with more than half their suggestions.

Here are three I’ve already been doing:

1.  Eating Eggs for breakfast.  Very cheap protein source.  Also try buying whey protein powder in bulk to make smoothies by . . .

2. Using frozen Blueberries and  fresh Bananas.  These are some of the lower priced fruits year round.

3. Choosing chicken legs whenever chicken breasts aren’t priced low enough.  Nutritionally they are almost equal.  Help compensate for the higher fat content by removing the skin before cooking.

Two I’ve just started:

1. I’m using cabbage wherever possible.  (getting back to my Ukrainian roots with this one)  Using the nutritional info presented in this article, I could argue coleslaw is as healthier than a tossed salad. (providing I watch the quantity of sugar and fat in my dressing of course)  Chopped green cabbage, diced yellow onions and shredded carrots; I challenge you to find three cheaper vegetables.

2. I’m learning to like cauliflower.  By now you’ve all heard of using mashed cauliflower instead of potatoes to lower your carb count.  Here’s another even more unique way to enjoy cauliflower, courtesy of my mother-in-law, famous for her 3 ingredient meals:

Break apart a head of cauliflower.  Boil the cauliflower until it starts to soften but is not mushy.  Drain.

Whisk together a couple eggs, add some salt and pepper.

Preheat a skillet on medium, have some olive oil handy.

Soak the cauliflower pieces in the egg mixture (if you’re really fancy you can also roll them in breadcrumbs)

Fry the cauliflower in the olive oil, basting with any leftover egg mixture.

Surprisingly good!

Finally, there’s one item I really don’t agree with: substituting canola oil for olive oil.  Personally I’d rather buy decent (NOT high end, just decent) olive oil when it goes on sale and use it sparingly.  I just don’t think the flavor sacrifice is worth it and I think the jury’s still out on whether vegetable oils are actually any better for you than any other fat sources used to cook with.

All this talk of food is making me hungry; its time for lunch.