THE PLAYROOM: BEFORE AND AFTER

I'm finally posting photos of the playroom! So far I've shared the girls' bedroom, the master bedroom, and the kitchen, but it's been a while since we did anything to the house. We are still in the middle of some projects, but we put those to a halt while we enjoyed the summer. Now that we are getting to colder months and spending more time indoors, here's hoping that we get some of those done! 

Instead of having the girls each have a room, we chose for them to share a room and turn the other room into a playroom. It is really nice having a designated place for toys and books, and it's great to be able to send the kids in here even while the baby is napping in the bedroom. I really like that their bedroom is meant for sleeping and winding down, and the playroom is for playing and winding up. And because of their ages right now, this means that when Logan is having her afternoon nap, Sloane can be in here having her quiet time listening to an audio book and playing with her animals or drawing pictures. 

Before:  THE RED.... AHHH. 

Even though this doesn't look like much, this room is one of the first ones we unpacked, if you could even call it that. It's a valuable lesson I learned about moving with small children: unpack all of their toys and books first so that they can still have things to occupy them in the midst of the unpacking, organizing and renovating chaos! For a long while the playroom looked like this.

AFTER: Much better.  I really liked that black and white rug from Ikea, but it was a little too busy for all the other color we had going on in the room. Since all of the books, toys, and artwork are so colorful, I wanted to get everything else as neutral as possible. 

I found this shelf on craigslist and these versatile pieces are my favorite kind - it works great for the playroom now, but it can easily be used for any room of the house later down the line if need be. The large pink basket holds all of their stuffed animals, the smaller black and brown one holds small baby toys for Logan, and the two low baskets hold things that are best used for pretend play, like owl wings, mask, paper hats, wands, etc. 

I'm looking for a shelf, maybe a circle shelf (maybe this one?), for that space above the pink armchair.  

We took the doors off this closet for what I thought would be a perfect reading nook but then the play kitchen fit in here so perfectly and we usually read on the pink armchair anyways, I decided to keep the kitchen in here. When the girls are a little older and want a hideaway spot to retreat to when they read, I'll turn this into a reading nook.  The basket next to the kitchen holds all the kitchen toys, and I'm papering the inside of the closet with the girls' artwork.  The shelf up above holds toys, blocks, puzzles, and other things that we can take down one at a time. 

Instead of getting a desk, we installed a floating desk along one of the walls of the playroom. It's a space saver and also sometimes functions as a shelf. The Ikea cart holds all the art supplies and I love how its portable. I still need to figure out what to do with the walls here. Hopefully, I'll be able to frame two large pieces of art by Sloane and Logan and hang them up here.

These little lambs are from Ken's sister's Scentsy business and Ken's mom got the girls these little cards with their names and meanings on them!

We are constantly going through books and rummaging through them, so this stacking method works pretty well for now. I put the books that are currently heaviest in rotation upright so that we can easily see and access them. 

And the chalkboard! This is one of the first things we did to do this room and I love having yet another surface on which the kids can draw. It may be hard to tell, but the scene they have going on currently for October is some of their favorite things, which is dinosaurs and Alice in the Wonderland.