Playroom Progress

This weekend was the linky party for completed Picture Perfect rooms at Donna’s Funky Junk Interiors, and I’d hoped to have the playroom re-do completed for it. Alas, that did not happen, but she’s going to continue this challenge once a month, so I have a few more weeks to finish all those details that I think will make the room super-sweet!

Mostly what I’ve done so far is clear out the closet, rearrange toys and toy storage, spruce up the crib/daybed/reading area, and get hooks up for dress-up clothes. The small wall area that had magnet paint was covered over in chalkboard paint.

These are the Mary Englebreit posters that inspired the colors used in this room. The one on the left is the alphabet, then at the bottom says “put ‘em all together” and “read”. The one on the left is a favorite of mine, “Books fall open, you fall in”.

This small green shelf is actually a plate rack that Jess got at Goodwill a few years back. She’d painted it black and used it in her first real house of her own. Right now it holds a couple of my favorite Eric Carle books. The toys on the top of the bookshelves are all antiques, but the kids play with them and love them! The horse was apparently Greg’s when he was a little boy – no information on brand or year or anything. The wind-up radio and wind-up clock still play lovely music. No batteries needed!

 

I couldn’t bring myself to get rid of the vinyl skull and crossbones that were on the wall above where we had Bradley’s changing table when this room was his nursery, so when it peeled off the wall fairly nicely, I stuck it on the re-positioned full-length mirror.

 

These sweet little cupcake paper flowers were made by my nieces this past week. They were thrilled to help decorate the wall! Bradley and I will make more this week since I want to sweep them up towards the ceiling. The idea is in the current issue of Family Fun magazine.

The chalkboard, formerly magnet wall. Bradley insists on still putting his magnets here, even though I hung the magnetic whiteboard on the opposite wall. Trim will be added around the chalkboard paint to finish it up.

The dress-up hooks are screwed into a piece from Brad’s (now Silas’s) crib. When we first got the crib, one corner piece had no holed drilled into it for assembly. I called customer service immediately and they shipped a new one, but it took a couple of weeks. We didn’t want to wait, so Greg drilled holes in the original piece and assembled the crib. It works great, so we had the one they shipped, and no use for it.  It works great for hooks for dress-up clothes and hats. The wooden stars are for beads and bags – at least they were last week while my nieces were visiting. So handy to have a place where everything could be accessed easily and put away easily.

For the crib/day bed, I found a body pillow case that was priced at what that amount of fabric would cost me, or less even, so I ordered it online. It’s pretty plain, so embellishment will be added. I did get one pillow cover sewn (the polka dots), and found that flower-shaped pillow in the closet. The girls arranged the animals and dolls before they left, when we picked up the room yesterday. ☺

The quilt has been trimmed of six inches around the outside edge all the around. I will trim it with a bright-colored binding. But what I really like about this is the checkered bedskirt on the bottom.

While I love the quilt, I want a bit more brightness to this little reading area, so I started a small afghan throw to put on it. This may take awhile to be finished, but it’s pretty fun to work on, so I’ll keep plugging away.

Aren’t the colors wonderful? The pattern is called Granny Stripe, the directions from Attic 24. Her projects and home were also inspiration for this room. As much as I love my calm and very neutral house, I do enjoy her very colorful one.

Some of the details left to do: paint the back piece of the crib and install it, paint the bookshelf, arrange the art display area, trim the chalkboard, paint the doors, and put up a few more wall art pieces. I also found the white chain we hung from the ceiling for Jessica’s stuffed animals when this was her bedroom, so I’ll probably have Greg put it up again. I’d love to find a brightly colored rug to use in here, too. It’s currently carpeted, but we plan to change that next summer and lay some kind of laminate. A rug will be needed for sure then.

Okay, all of that can be finished before the last Saturday of February, right? Then I’ll have to decide which room will be next – den? or guest/craft room? or both?

Picture Perfect Room (the “before”)

During this first month of the new year, Donna from Funky Junk Interiors has issued a challenge: concentrate on one room in your house that you want to make “picture perfect” and then do it.

(click on the picture perfect button to read about the challenge)

This challenge would apply to every room in my house, but for the purposes of this project and in keeping my sanity, I chose to focus on the playroom.

The playroom started life as Jessica’s bedroom, then playroom, then Bradley’s nursery, and is now back to being the playroom. The original incarnation as a playroom was more of a small-scale preschool room with “centers”, thus the word labels on the walls. Those will be covered up since the room has evolved a bit.

I have not picked up in there after Christmas yet, so here’s the view when you open the door:

Not horrible, but it doesn’t really invite play, does it? I feel like it more invites chaos – dumping and tossing and general mayhem. The reason I haven’t picked up yet is because:

a. Bradley pretty much just brings the toys to the living room to play unless there is someone in there to play with.

b. There was still some of Jessica’s stuff stored in here – her Little Tykes desk, the big keyboard, some big boxes of blocks, and a big Hot Wheels storage container full of tracks and accessories. (She and Scott and the boys have moved into a big house now, so that stuff is moved, too.)

c. I knew I wanted to re-work this room, and I was procrastinating…

True confession time over, lets go around the room and see what we want to do. First of all remember, this will be a “make do”/no-$pend makeover, with the exception of some paint and perhaps a rug. Also, this room will be gender-neutral, and baby-friendly as well as fun for toddlers and preschoolers (and who are we kidding – even my elementary-aged niece and nephews like to play in here).

1.) This photo is of the North wall, Northeast corner of the room. Right now there are stacked shelves for toy storage. I’m going to take at least the top set down and put it in the closet (now that there is room in the closet…). This gets rid of some of the cluttered look in the room and gives me a little more wall space to decorate. Totes and baskets will be labeled as well so everyone knows what toys go in which container.

The quilt will be altered to work as a bedcovering on the old iron crib. It was made by my great grandmother and is badly stained and worn around the edges. I’m just going to remove the outer section all the way around and bind it with a colorful trim. Yes, it’s an old quilt. Yes, I’m okay with altering it.

The M.E. poster is pretty much the color inspiration for the room. The walls will stay light blue, but the furniture is in brights, and the wall decor will be, too.

The side rail for the old crib needs to be painted cherry red to go along with the rest. I originally didn’t plan to use it, but Aunt Jan confirmed for me that it would look better to have a back rail on the bed. This will be a reading spot, so the body pillow will be covered and a couple more pillows added so it will be a snuggly place. It also will be a guest bed for little ones who come stay here, and I will use a safety rail for the open side of the crib when someone is sleeping in it.

I also have fabric to make a bed skirt since I will use the space under the crib for storage.

The Northwest corner: The closet door will be painted white.

The spot on the wall where I tried magnet paint will be covered over in chalk board paint. (That magnet paint was an expen$ive disappointment.) Above the light fixture I’ll hang a shelf to house some of the stuffed animals.

The small bookshelf will be painted – color yet to be decided – and the sweet little display shelf that is currently sitting on top will be hung above. I have some antique toys that will go there.

The Southeast corner: the valance is constructed of a cardboard box, covered in batting and a colorful plaid fabric. There is a plain white shade at the window. That will all stay. No curtains to entice little ones to wrap themselves up in or pull off the wall. I will install a hook for the shade pull. Right now I drape it on the hardware holding the valance.

Greg built that sweet little table last summer, and the chairs were $1 each at a garage sale. The chairs are a strong hardwood and I sanded and painted them that bright yellow, knowing I wanted to use that bright color scheme.

The vinyl skull and crossbones is on the wall above where we had Bradley’s changing table. I know a nursery doesn’t usually have such a motif, but Jess was going for kind of a “rocker” theme, and it worked for us. I guess it’s time to remove it, huh?

That full-length mirror is hung horizontally and has some peg hooks beneath it. I used those hooks for different hats for the kids to use for dress-up. I’ll re-hang the mirror vertically and I have something different for hooks.

As you can see, this corner is currently the “Art Display” area. That will stay, but will be better.

 

Okay, long post, lots of ideas, lots of work ahead. The Funky Junk challenge is to post the completed room (or progress if not finished) by the end of the month. I’d like to get the majority of it done this weekend since my little nieces are coming to stay the last week of January.

I guess I better get busy. Wish me luck!

The Boy with the Tail…

Everyone who knows Bradley or has read this blog, knows how much he enjoys dinosaurs. He’s recently realized that they have tails, as do the stuffed toy puppies and the real kitties, but alas, he does not. We made him a yarn tail one day, just taping it to the back of his pants. He showed the kitties and walked around with it for awhile. It was okay, but didn’t last long.

This morning I was searching the local “buy everything here” store for Halloween Peeps, when I came across an endcap full of masks and tails. No way! The dinosaur mask was ugly, but the tail, it was perfect. It has a little clip at the top to attach to his pants, yet will pull off easily if it gets caught in something (safety first!).

Bradley was here for a short while this evening, and found the tail on the counter almost immediately. He was so excited! I clipped it on and he walked around the room, watching the tail drag behind him.

 

 

It’s just the simplest of things that delight a child. They don’t need to have lots of money spent on them to have fun. This tail was a couple of dollars – but I’ll be copying it to make a few more in different colors, so he can share when playing with a friend, and he can have one at home and one here.

I think I have just as much fun watching his enjoyment!

Making Some Fun

Today’s Make Do & Mend project is one from the garage. Well, kinda sorta. I’ve asked Greg to keep any large pieces of cardboard we can, and we have a small collection of big cardboard. Greg isn’t excited about keeping it, but he humors me. (I’m a lucky girl and I know it!)

Friday of last week was the first time for me to keep both grandboys here all day. I knew I’d need to keep Bradley busy while I tended to the baby, so before leaving to pick them up, I dragged out one of the smaller pieces of cardboard and put it on the back porch. Bradley saw it right away when we came up on the porch, and was excited when I brought it inside.

I drew a quick “map” using a black marker, putting Brad’s house in one top corner, and my house in the opposite bottom corner, then a maze of roads in between. Then came the fun part – a stop sign, a corn field, cows (his request), a pond with fish, trees, shrubs, a bird, and one of my kitties sitting in the window.

I labeled the drawings and Brad started coloring. I helped color a little bit, and I think we’ll be adding things and coloring them for awhile – sort of a continuous project.

Silas laid on the floor, contentedly watching the ceiling fan most of the time, but eventually did need some attention of his own, and some snuggling and rocking to sleep for a nap. To keep his big brother busy, I brought out the little cars and the box of dinosaurs. Brad thought it was great that he had roads to drive his cars, and his dinosaurs moved into my house immediately!

This project cost no money and only a few moments of time, yet we made tons of fun out of it!

 

Tammy

Hot Roddin’

A few weeks ago, when I first became a member at Pinterest, one of my first pins was a photo of a “pimped out” Little Tykes car. It was just a couple of days later that Greg and I were making the Saturday morning garage sale rounds and found an old Little Tykes car for $5. Jackpot!

Greg had chuckled at my excitement over the little car, yet as soon as we got home, he broke out the spray paint.

Yes, you can see he painted the front before he even washed it. He was pretty excited about this project.

So I left the color choices to Greg, I just said I’d like to put flames on the sides. He chose a black exterior and cherry red interior.  We considered painting the wheels with a shiny metallic silver spraypaint, but a couple of the inserts were cracked and broke when the wheels were disassembled for cleaning and painting. So the entirety of each was just sprayed black.

 

Nick came over one afternoon and drew the flame stencil, but there was not photography of that process allowed. He sprayed the driver’s side door, showing me how to shade the yellow, orange, and red paints. This morning I was able to get back out there and paint the flames on the other side.

Doesn’t that look spiffy? Jess likes it so much she’s asked if we want to overhaul the fairly new Little Tykes car that Brad has at their house. We’ll wait and see how the paint job fares on this one. It’s already scratched where the door opens and closes.

I do know that if we find another old one, we’ll bring it home – Greg wants to do a cherry red exterior and black interior version. I wonder if some pinstriping would be warranted on that one. (We did find another car at a garage sale a week ago, and Jess and I joked about running down the street to get it, but it had a sold sign on it already.)

We gave the car to Brad this afternoon and he couldn’t wait to get into it!

Paint details: black and cherry red Rustoleum for plastic. Flames were painted with regular Rustoleum spray paint. Flame stencil was hand drawn after consulting photos online.

I want to put a skull and crossbones on the back end, and now that I look at the photo, I’m thinking we need to add some headlights to the front. I guess our projects are never really all the way done…

Snow Play

Last Saturday we had the kids here all day to play. The weather was beautiful and they spent some time after lunch out in the yard, climbing the snow hills.

Each of them got a spray bottle filled with colored water to “decorate” the snow.

I purchased “ironing spray” bottles at “SprawlMart” – they cost a little more than the ones in Health and Beauty, but I figured the volume difference was worth it. We only refilled each bottle once and they played over an hour with them. Be prepared to use a lot of the liquid food coloring in each bottle so the color shows up on the snow. I purchased the store brand at a little over a dollar for the four colors.

This activity not only fosters creativity, but teaches cause and effect, and is a good one for small muscle control. We had a little lesson in social development also when they had to choose to settle a dispute without squirting each other with the colored water. :o)

I love my decorated snow spots around the front yard.