Playroom

Welcome to our playroom!  Finally!

I had the hubs hang some roman shades on the insides of the doors for one purpose only-hiding the mess! :)  It works like a charm.  Until I open the door and nearly fall to my knees in horror at the mess, or a neighbor comes in and says, "Oh what lovely doors, may I open them?"  No.  No, you may not.

When the doors are opened, this is what you see.  Well, after I spend an hour cleaning up that is.

I painted the walls a nice light aqua blue.  I believe it is called Tropical Spray?  Or maybe Island Mist?? I've forgotten already, but it's a Valspar paint from Lowes. :)

In the corner tucked behind the doors to the left is their easel.  I hung the handprint canvas' we made at Audrey's 3rd birthday party.

In another corner we have the art table that came from Ben's grandparent's old house.  The benches open for storage of coloring books, paper, crayons, stickers, etc.  They love to color!

This is the little kitchen area.  The bins beside it hold the play food, dishes, and kitchen utensils.  They also love to cook! :)

I got some vinyl stick on letters at Target and made a cute little alphabet wall. 

These cubbies came from Target and house most of the small toys.  I mean, the quantity of toys in this household is just insane.  See the canvas bins?  Yea, they pretty much empty every single toy out of these.  

Ok, now prepare yourself for what you are about to see.  The sad part is, I can't even blame this on the kids.  This would be my mess.  Here we have my craft table I built with my dad, and some storage units.  This hot mess is a compilation of scrapbooking supplies, school supplies, sewing supplies, and pretty much all craft items I have.  Surprisingly, it is actually organized, it just looks messy because I have more stuff than I have room to store it.  So....it piles up. I'm working on this.  

You'll also notice our art wall.  I've always planned to have a place in my house where I display all my kid's artwork.  Well, not ALL of it, but the favorites that they are proudest of, or that mean the most to me.  

I still need to add one more frame in the upper left corner.

You may be noticing the clothespins.  I removed the glass from all the picture frames, and hot glued two clothespins to each frame.  I did this for two reasons.  

1.  Have you ever watched kids play with balls in the house?  If you have, then you've probably also witnessed them bouncing/throwing the ball way too hard, sending it flying to your picture wall and knocking the frame off the wall into a shattered mess on the floor.  I didn't quite think that was safe for the playroom.  So....no glass in these.

2.  If you have kids, you know the amount of art projects they make.  Both of my babies love to paint and color, so I wanted to be able to switch their masterpieces out quickly and easily.  Now I don't have to remove the back of the frame to switch a picture.  I don't even have to take the frame off the wall!  Just slip it in the pins!  It's working great and we all love seeing their precious masterpieces on the wall.

One little funny to add.  Here is a picture Audrey Grace did for her dad for father's day.  It is a picture of him.  See the 2 circles on each side of his head??  Those are ears.  And the one circle right below his chin?  That's his belly.  hahaha!!  I love little minds.

I was quite impressed with Audrey's version of Rapunzel.  She forgot arms, but she got the purple dress. :)

Our playroom also has the calendar and weather charts that I use with Audrey.  We don't do very much scheduled school work yet because she's still 3, but we do try to talk about the calendar and the weather each day.

So that's our playroom.  I'm still debating window treatments.  I love the natural light, but the windows do look bare to me.  I don't want blinds or anything hanging down that the kids can get ahold of, so I may do some sort of valance.  It's not a priority though.

This room does give me hives because of the constant mess and clutter, but I'm still really glad we did it.  They spend hours in there each day, and I like that it eliminates toys and clutter from spilling into other rooms of the house.  I'd rather have one crazy room than 4 rooms with toys and clutter in all of them.  I saw a quote somewhere that said, "Please excuse the mess, the children are making memories."  I'm thinking I may paint this above the doors outside the playroom.  Or come to think of it, maybe just outside my front door before people even enter my house. :)