I had to put "finished" in quotes because really, what room is ever finished? I am sure Jake will get new toys and we will have to figure out something to do with them, but for right now, we are done with everything I was hoping to do in his upstairs playroom. I can't tell you what a blessing it is to have an extra room for Jake to have all of his toys. It is so helpful when I'm taking a shower and getting ready across the hall for him to have a place where he can dump out all of his balls and rip up all of the letters and basically just be a little boy :)
When we first moved in, I knew obviously that the purple would have to go (see below) and the chandelier. And after looking on Pinterest for weeks to steal the ideas that other creative moms used on their kids playrooms (that's really what Pinterest is for, right?), I decided that I really wanted the room just to be very bright. I wanted it to let in a lot of light and have a lot of bright colors. That's why we opted with the white walls so all the toys and letters on the floor would be the pop of color. A while back I turned the Ikea bookshelf into a bench and it is PERFECT. Almost all of Jake's toys are on his level so he's always taking books and toys out from under there. I wanted more shelving higher up because it would make the floor look less cluttered, but that was my personal preference, not necessarily what was best for Jake. I needed to constantly remind myself of that - after all, it's not my playroom :)
I painted the chalkboard / magnetic part on our wall a couple weekends ago. It wasn't difficult, but the magnets don't work super well. I am going to get some stronger magnets and see if they work better, but for now he uses the chalkboard :) I also may put a little wooden shelf on the bottom since the chalk shavings land on the ground when Jake is drawing which is a little messy.
And the other big thing I added was the picture collage! I really wanted some fun pictures of Jake playing (which was the one of Dan and him on the slide), I also wanted to put up a piece of artwork by Jake, and I LOVE that quote and book by Dr. Seuss so I searched Etsy for a cute picture to go with it. And then lastly I just love the picture of Jake and Dan in front of the Capitol Building in DC so I added that to the collage :)
Lastly, we put up darkening shades. The current blinds were yellow and dirty and didn't match well with the white. We thought about getting some more expensive shades but in the end, when we have friends that come to visit or potentially at some point a second baby, we would use it for a nursery so the darkening shades made sense and were inexpensive.
I hope you guys enjoy the changes! Hopefully next week I can show you our "non carpeted" 3rd floor bathroom!
{Before}
{Before}
{After- from here on down}
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| Our "shorter" lens currently isn't working on our camera so these first few pictures were taken with my phone so you can get a "big picture" shot of the playrooms :) |
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| I tried to put some cute, kid decorations on there to "cover up" all the seminary books that we have gathered over the years and have nowhere else to put ;) |
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| My mom and I found all these little wooden animals at Michaels for $10 and I LOVE them! They are so cute and colorful! |
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| Please ignore Jake's outfit. Let's just say he wasn't having the overalls that day so we opted for some comfy pants instead :) |
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| Also, we bought and I painted those little wooden crates (far left) earlier last summer and it was SUPER easy. I think they were each like $10 from Lowes or Home Depot and then I just painted on some dark stain. I love the look of them :) |
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| Every single child that comes in here LOVES these pandas. There is something about large stuffed animals that get kids excited. |
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| We bought 250 of these balls for Jake's 1st birthday part last year and put them in a swimming pool for kids to play in. It worked out really well and now we keep some of them in his playroom and the rest are stored up very very high out of his reach. Cleaning up 50 balls is hard enough let alone 250. |
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| Just one more picture because I love this collage so much :) |
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| I can't even tell you how much I love this light fixture. |
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| Just pretending that he's heading to the airport with his "bags" |
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| Just a small glimpse into some of the other things we purchased to go in our newly semi- renovated bathroom! |
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| little man :) |
Happy Thursday, friends!
Looks great! Two questions about the overhead light... is that the only overhead light in the room? And would you say it puts off enough light? We are looking into something similar for a section in our kitchen but it needs to be bright enough since that's the main light I rely on.
ReplyDeleteIt is the only light! Honestly I find it to gives off plenty of light. We do have two big windows in there but whenever we are in there when it's dark I find that it works really well, especially since you can angle the light bulbs in different directions you can direct the light where you would like! I hope that helps!
DeleteAwesome! Where did you get it? Or do you have a link to it?
DeleteI couldn't copy the link but we got it at Lowes and I believe it was this one: Style Selections 6-Light Brushed Nickel Fixed Track Light Kit for $69. Hope that helps!!
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