Our Playroom

It has been over half a year now that we are in our new home, and I have put off posting any photos of our playroom until I felt like I really love how it is set up. Finally, we've reached a point where I feel like I want to share it.

We chose the room straight off of the kitchen and eating nook for our playroom. Since it is an open floor plan in that area of the home, I am able to see from the kitchen into the eating nook, and past that into our playroom. Part of living in a parish home though, is using what you've got and what they have provided you with and making it work for your family. We had an already-furnished room (which we are so grateful for!) but I did not want the entire room to be a sitting area, because the kids need a space of their own, too. Had we had no furniture in there, the room would have gotten set up completely differently. So after re-arranging the furniture a few times, we came up with the idea that we can divide the large room into two sections: the sitting area/family area, and the play area. To do this, we simply took our larger couch and put that one in the center of the room, and changed the love seat to be the one against the wall by the fireplace. This made a really big difference (I wish I had a "before" photo to show!). Now it almost felt like it is two separate rooms. You'll see what I mean in some photos below. Oh, there is a coffee table in the sitting area too. 

Just behind the couch

The area behind the couch took quite a bit of arranging and re-arranging before we made it perfect. For right now, I am very happy with this set-up. On the left wall, we put our ever-so-famous IKEA Expedit unit. This is my favorite piece of furniture ever, because it is so versatile! We used to have it in our son's room for his toys, but after moving a few times realized it functions best as a general home for all the toys. We have gone through several baskets in the past, but these IKEA wicker Bradas baskets are now the favorite (I think they are $12 a piece). They look a bit fancier than cloth baskets, and they have surprised me in being sturdier, too. The kids used to sit in the cloth bins (like the turquoise one that is left over), and stretch them out/de-form them, but these have not been tempting to them at all! We organize the baskets by type of toy. The first one contains farm animals (our Schleich collection) and the farm fence. The next basket is for dress-up clothes. The third basket is filled with all the babydoll and doll items like clothes and accessories, plus my daughter's famous purse collection (she plays with them ALL on a rotation every few days). Finally, the last basket contains a few race cars, trains and my son's miscellaneous small toys. The cloth bin happens to be kind of a miscellaneous bin right now which I need to go through and purge. 

About the books - every few weeks, my husband usually tells me to get rid of some of the books from the shelves so the kids stop making such a mess. However, I have taken books away and found myself adding them all over again a few days later because I see how much the kids love to read. All three of them look at all of the books. We do clean-up as a team, so I am hoping that they get better with time at putting back one book before taking a new one. We are working on it. But since they do most of the clean-up, I am not really too bothered by their mess-making. It is the one room in the house that is really 'theirs' to make a mess in and then clean up. 

The refrigerator from the play kitchen fit best in this nook too, and kind of makes it more fun for the kids too, because they feel like it's more realistic when they walk to the refrigerator from the other kitchen play area. 

The shelves above the Expedit unit are IKEA's picture ledges (RIBBA - the longer ones). I had seen many photos of these ledges used for books on Pinterest and just loved the idea of using colorful books as a decor for the room while at the same time keeping favorite books out of reach of children by keeping them high up. Ideally, I would have needed three of these shelves but I have other places in the house where I keep the other precious books that I do not want the kids touching. 

Behind the couch on the other side is our teepee, which I planned to be a reading nook. One day I will probably put a basket of books by the teepee or inside the teepee, but for now, there is a blanket in there which functions as a cushion, along with a few pillows. I plan to find some teepee lights for it one day, too. The kids absolutely love going in there! It was an Easter gift to them this year, and I love finding my girls in there with their dolls or someone reading in there (usually it's the littlest one!) My middle two take turns in there during quiet hour as well, and that has significantly reduced chatter and fighting during quiet hour (which was on the two couches before). In case anyone is wondering, the teepee is Kidkraft and it was from Walmart. It is the only teepee I ever found for less than $100 so I bought it right away. You can buy them on Amazon, too, or if you're more creative than I, you can make them (see Pinterest for a tutorial). 

The rug is from Costco and we bought it for $17 on a whim a few months ago. I love that it is educational, and it adds a bit of cozy-ness to the hardwood floor in there. I may move it into our classroom one day...

The play kitchen is Pottery Barn Kids found on Craigslist for a ridiculously cheap price when someone was moving and needed to get rid of it. I searched for months and months for a wooden play kitchen, both new and on Craigslist, and though I practically drooled over PBK's catalog play kitchens, I never expected to actually find one for a reasonable price! 

All in all, I love this room for now! I tried to not make this post confusing, but it probably was, so I'm sorry about that!