Upstairs Playroom!

Now that Ella and the boys were settled into their rooms we got to work on the playroom. 

Here it is halfway taken apart. You know they say...it's gotta get worse before it gets better! So true!!!

In the midst of moving things around the play kitchen had to go somewhere. It used to be under the bunk bed, but now Owen was sleeping in the bed under the bunk bed so that wasn't going to work. It's funny how when you move a toy it suddenly becomes new. Zeke loved having the kitchen in our room. I think partially because when it was under the bunk bed it was so dark in there it was hard to play with.

Here was Ella's old closet...partially taken apart already.

I knew that the playroom couldn't be pink and brown. I wanted it to be a fresh and bright color that would work for boys and girls. This color is called Waterfall and I LOVE it. So refreshing!

And here is the playroom now when you first walk in. The kitchen has it's own special place. I brought the toy bins from downstairs up here so all the dishes, pots, pans and fake food would have a nice easy place to be stored. Off in the corner is the new use for my papasan cushion. I have since bought 5 small pillows from IKEA to give it a more cozy feel. I am eventually going to by fabric to recover it since I don't like the dull brown color for this room.

When you're over in the reading area you can see we have a bookshelf full of tons of books to take you to far off places. I have bought two IKEA shelves to put more books on and I'm going to make a big sign that says READ!

To the left of the kitchen is Ella's old closet that has now been reconfigured to better suit the needs of a playroom. Her big toy box fits in there nicely and it is now the home for all the guns! Oh how I have loathed those guns and now they can easily get tossed in and we can shut the lid!!! I love love the cute dress up clothes all hung up. These used to be shoved into one of those plastic drawer things and they were taking up 3 drawers of space. We also moved the all the kid games up here. Sheesh I didn't realize we had THAT many kids games! The shelf above the dress up clothes is still not really organized I haven't quite figured out what to do with that section yet.

The Christmas lights that are on top of the toy box will be getting used in this room soon. One of Owen's guns was too long to fit in the toy box so we just hammered in a nail and hung it up.

 Turning around from the closet you can see the other side of the room. Zeke was so happy to cheese for the camera!

This table is right across from the kitchen so it's the perfect place to have a tea party. I have had this old window for years...Michael's mom gave it to me. It used to have dried flowers in the window box, but they had seen better days! I yanked those all out and then stuck in some fake flowers that used to be in a vase in Ella's room.

And this is the LEGO corner! There are also bigger blocks in the bins next to the table. One is holding Duplos and the other is holding larger blocks like those big Mega Bloks, but an off brand. I'm super excited about this part. I searched Pinterest for LEGO storage ideas for days and finally decided this set up would work for our needs.

These are just bars and buckets that you can buy at IKEA. They hang up and come down so nicely for the kids. I had a blast...I know I'm weird....organizing all the LEGO's by color.

They weren't super cheap, but they weren't outrageous either. Each bin was 3.99. They are nice and sturdy and actually hold quite a bit of LEGO's. I did go ahead and buy the breakfast tray that's on the table so the kids have something they can dump out the buckets and look around for the piece they need. I has really helped keep them under control and not all over the floor. And so far....it's been about 2 weeks now...they have actually stayed organized!

As for the downstairs playroom it looks tons better too. Since I moved the multi-colored toy bins upstairs for the kitchen stuff I had a ton of little toys to go through. I really disliked having those bins down here because they just became a catch all. Everything got dumped in them when it was time to pick up. I love that they are not in this room anymore. Now everything is in a container in the cupboard or in one of those drawers. Each drawer has a specific purpose such as Star Wars, Tools or Cars. It's just so nice and easy for the kids to pick up now. And we have even had friends over 2 separate times and it's been so easy to pick up the mess. We also made the decision to use liquid nails and glue down the Cars track on the Cars table. It was always falling apart and and then the kids couldn't get it to go back together correctly. It's been so nice having it stay put! Since there was so much stuff moved out of this room we were able to push the Cars table deeper into the room so now the kids have all this carpeted area to pull stuff out and play with. I love making positive changes to our house that make such a big difference!