Art.Love.Miyazaki.

One of the beauties of buying your forever home is that you can take creative license with the design.  I joke about putting slides where there would be stairs, and painting whatever I want on the walls.  I'm lucky to have a husband and children who appreciate my art and were all for letting me do what I want in the "art on the walls" department.  (We are still in negotiation about these slides instead of stairs.)

All three of my kids can agree on one thing, they all love Hayao Miyazaki films.  When we first decorated the house, I had painted a giant robot on my son's door.  The 10 year old has been asking me to do some kind of mural on her wall or door as well.  It took me a while to figure out what would be just the perfect thing, when it hit me, TOTORO!!

So, when she was visiting her other house, I took to painting her door.  Needless to say, she was stoked.

This lead to my son asking me to paint something on his door.  I did not want to just paint any old trend of the moment.  I wanted it to be something that I knew we would all appreciate.  In the process of trying to decide what to paint in his room, I came across an image from Kiki's Delivery Service of JiJi on a broom and decided I wanted to paint that in the house.  My son liked it but not for his door.  I decided it would be perfect for the door of the kids bathroom in the basement.  We are eventually going to re-decorate that bathroom, but it is a ways off, so I thought a fun painting on the door would be a way to make it ours without too much work or expense for now.  So I did this:

As soon as I finished JiJi I made a joke that I was going to put No-Face from Spirited Away in a creepy unfinished corner of the storage room.  We all joked that would be both awesome and terrifying, so I went with it, and before I knew it, we had No-Face lurking in the basement:

Lurking in the shadows

No-Face with lights on for detail

And, since I was on a creative bender, I decided to add one more Miyazaki character.  We have a second fireplace in the playroom downstairs.  Given the fact it is the playroom, for safety, I did not want to use it for fire. Instead I put a mirror in the back and added battery operated candles.  I pulled out the mirror and painted a little  Calcifer from Howls Moving Castle:

Calcifer!!

I'm pretty sure Ponyo is next.  Just trying to figure out the perfect image and placement. Stay tuned!