I’ve been MIA this week, hard at work trying to complete this room!
So, I’ve lived in my house for over a year now, and finally finally finally the first room is finished. Completo!
That’s what I love about having a blog- and contests like this- they motivate me to get my booty in gear and finally finish something!
One room down, 6 more to go? Yikes!
Anyway, so what I have to show you guys is the PLAYROOM….
Ta-da!!!
What do ya think???
This room is supposed to be the dining room. But at our phase in life, who needs a dining room? hehe
I chose the color orange because I read somewhere that it is conducive to creativity, and that’s exactly what this room is for. Play, sharing, using your imagination, being creative. It’s such a fun little place in our home. Our children spend hours in here, and since its right off the kitchen, I get to listen is as they play, and I love it!
There are a number of projects that went into this room. My kids helped me make most of the things in here, I’m very passionate about my kids helping me craft (that I way I don’t feel guilty ignoring them, and they are having fun and learning too)!
Here is the before:
And here’s the after:
So here’s how it all went down:
I started with painting the lower wall a soft orange.
Then we replaced the lighting fixture. Everyone kept hitting their head on the previous light.
I LOVE this light from IKEA, its the Maskros pendant light.
It’s so whimsical, and makes me smile.
It casts the coolest shadow on the walls and ceiling at night.
Then my kids helped me create a gallery wall where they could hang their pictures. They had a blast painting the clothes pins orange, while I painted the letters of IMAGINE.
Then I spray painted these picture frames orange, and created our kid’s portrait wall, which has become our Labor Day family tradition. You can read about it here.
Next, I made this simple window treatment. Even I though I love to sew, I decided that a no-sew curtain would be the perfect thing to cover up the blinds. I used a few tips from The Nester. Check out here philosophies on window “mistreatments” here.
Another view… basically I just cut and folded the fabric so no raw edges were showing, then tacked up with with these cheap upholstery nail heads.
Another fun project was making this ABC banner, with the help of my friend Margo and her Cricut. My kids and I used this as a Back to School Countdown. You can read about that here!
(I painted the picture of the sun and the solar system as my science project when i was in the 4th grade. I thought it would be perfect in our little playroom)!
I’d been toying around with this idea for a while…
I made a wreath out of some silly toys that always seemed to be in the way.
Instead of the garbage, now we get to display them on the wall. Hahaha! I think I’ll add to it gradually as we accumulate more junky toys!
I tried my hand at the crayon art that you’ve seen all over blogland. I spray painted a canvas, and I used hues of orange and a pop of white. My hair dryer is really spastic (like you feel like you’re in a tornado when you turn it on), and so it didn’t go quite according to plan, but here it is anyway! I might re-do this one at some point….
And here are the labels that I made to help the kids remember where all the toys belong. I just printed pictures from Google images. I was planning to laminate them, but then it dawned on me that if I took my own pictures of their toys on a white background, I could easily add text to them and print them off as images. So I think I will tackle that project sometime soon, and add more labels for all the other bins in our playroom.
Here’s where we keep a few art supplies. The rest (paint, playdough, etc) are in the unfinished basement where its ok to make a mess. But these we keep upstairs cuz the kids love to color at the kitchen table.
Here’s a few more views of the toys:
The shag rug is from Wal-Mart ($13).
The white table was on clearance at Target ($12).
The brown shelves are from Wal-Mart ($10).
The floating shelves are from Lowes (the biggest splurge).
The floating shelves are from Lowes (the biggest splurge).
The plastic drawers are from Target ($13ish).
I’d love to have the fancy, cute toy organizers from IKEA, but they were a little too pricey for us. Maybe in a few years! I had to save up just to buy these cheap white drawers from Wal-Mart! And that’s ok, its just a playroom!
By the way, I’m a big believer in “toy rotation.” So some of our toys I keep in the basement and rotate them around every few months. That way, our kids don’t get bored of the same old toys all the time!
That’s it! Thanks for looking into our playroom! 🙂
I’m entering this into the American Crafter competition. So if you’d like to see my entry, (its #82 found here)! And have a look at all the other amazing entries while you’re there!
UPDATE: I just found out that I won the CSI contest for this week! I was so surprised, and I feel so honored!
I’m linking this post up to the amazing blogs here.
Thanks for looking!!!!!!!!!
