The Hockey Mural

When we renovated our new house, we had some concerns about helping the kids feel settled and helping them feel involved in the process.  They had always shared a bedroom in our old house and over time it became a mish-mash of decorations and stuff.  Because my son loves playing mini stick hockey so much, it was important to me to set up his room in a way that he and his friends (or daddy) would be able to play hockey in there and I wanted to make hockey a part of the room overall, not just more stuff in the room.  I commissioned my brother (who also plays hockey) to paint a life-sized mural one wall.  

My son loves the Detroit Red Wings and is fascinated with goalies so they settled on a picture my brother found of Jimmy Howard.  The picture was printed out in black and white and my brother used a line grid over the picture and marked chalk lines on the wall to act as a guide.  The paint colors were all hand mixed by my brother and it took him many hours over a couple of weeks to complete.  

We love this mural and it has become a major talking point when we are giving the tour to those who visit.  My son loves to have his mini hockey goal parked in front of the mural and practice his hockey moves.  And he loves to look at it while he falls asleep at night.  We even reference the mural as "Jimmy" when we talk to each other about it lol.  My pictures definitely do not do it justice!