Well it feels like it took us months to do this, and in reality it took over a month simply because I’m impatient and started before I ‘should’ have. After much discussion we decided to change the playroom from the open plan living area ‘games room’ we had to the smallest bedroom in the house. So I lugged everything out of that room and started moving things in, 2 days before we were to fly out to see family. Needless to say, I didn’t get very much done and lost inspiration very quickly!

After returning home I decided to have a good think about what we wanted and needed from a playroom. I considered what worked and what didn’t in our previous playroom. I of course browsed Pinterest and found a lot of fabulous ideas, but I needed to be practical and budget conscious.

I made a list of what I wanted to incorporate into the Playroom:

  1. Great storage. We already had a 4×4 Ikea Expedit and a 2×4 Ikea Expedit for the kids toys and buying a whole new storage system was out of the question. I needed to work with these.
  2. A desk for the kids to use for crafts or playing on. But fitting a desk hutch with some storage meant losing the 2×4 Expedit in there, but for us and how we store toys the desk hutch storage really wasn’t ideal. Also all the desk hutches I liked were not very budget friendly!
  3. A way to display the kids art work.
  4. A reading nook.

After working out how to make things work for our space, it was all systems go. We spent 2 whole Sundays drilling holes, sewing cushions and curtains, painting and glueing.

So here it is :o} I am proud of our kids new playspace and they are loving it! I had intended to go with a vintage school theme but it’s not easy to source any of those things here in Australia (and shipping from Pottery Barn Kids is a bit much!!) and so the attention kind of navigated towards a little vintage school and lot of apples with hints of red and green :o}

This is what you see as you enter. The large frame is a project I am not finished with yet! Will share more on that when we are done.
The words “Read, Play, Create” are a take on “Eat, Pray, Love”. I wanted something that reminds my husband and I of what this room is all about, especially when we walk in there and it’s a bomb :o} But also for my  kids when they can read, to remind them of what good times are made of, reading, playing and creating {+ family, of course!} We can also display art work here which is a great way to fill up a pretty empty wall.
We store our toys in a mix of the baskets from Ikea {purchased pre-babies and probably aren’t the best for toy storage but I wanted to get my moneys worth out of them haha!} and in the Trofast buckets with lids.

What better way to spend some time but reading a book underneath the apple tree ?  I sewed my pants to that curtain. I am not very good at sewing!
I will be sharing a ton of details on how we did the desk with storage from an Ikea hack, the reading nook and the Daddy-built kitchen {which we finally finished!!} soon! :o}

a little delightful