A Tour of our Play Room

My friend Tara at Too Many Kids in the Bathtub recently shared her lovely family room with her blog friends and The Gap Girl showed us her little red kitchen. And I absolutely loved sneaking a peek inside homeschool headquarters at Raising Olives when Kimberly gave us a tour of her homeschool room. So in the spirit of these tours of homes, I decided to give you a more proper look at our upstairs addition play room. Remember, this was NOT here, AT ALL, when we bought this house almost 7 years ago. This was my husband's dreaming, planning, and doing. He had some help, but did LOTS of the work himself- even cutting the dormer, building the sub-floor, framing, heat and air, you name it. It took over 4 years to finish and there was a whole year that I had a big hole in my living room ceiling with no stairs and nothing at the top of them! But... it was all worth it!

Here you see the built-in shelves that Big D built for me. I wanted something that would grow with our family. Right now we need lots of toy space, but when our kids are older we could use the storage for books, multi-media, etc. Of course, I'm secretly hoping we never outgrow the need for toys:) I found the baskets at Hobby Lobby and the two sizes fit perfectly in the selves. Each basket holds toys in a particular category like action figures, matchbox cars, blocks, paper dolls, etc. This way it's easier to keep everything in its place. American Boy and I built some train track today, but he mostly loves playing Playmobile on his table. That antique toy drum belonged to my dad when he was a little boy. It's filled to the brim with legos.

OK, here's the familiar arts and crafts area. Twinkle Toes cleaned it up and got it all organized last night. She has the drawers looking so neat now. I think this is my favorite part of our house. I only have 2 stools at the counter, but it would fit lots more. When friends are over the girls pull over the chairs from the little table. Also notice the curvy laminate/carpet border that was Big D's idea.

You may notice we've moved some shelves around. I think I inherited the loves-to-move-furniture gene from my mom. When the girls played with Barbie they used that little house bookshelf as their Barbie mansion. Now we're using it for Fisher Price Little People. The girls have asked for doll houses for Christmas and I have no idea where we'll put those. I'm sure Twinkle Toes has it all planned out. The door to the left of the shelf is the bathroom I showed you all last week.

Let's sneak a peak inside the little playhouse. There's Baby Lu with baby in hand. She grabbed the baby off the changing station and started patting its back. It was really sweet.

Now I'm not proud of what you see in this picture, but I felt it would be misleading if I left it out. Our 10 year old son spends many happy hours on the weekend playing his Wii. We do have an unplugged rule during the school week, but he makes up for lost time on the weekend. The door to the left is Mr. Monk's bedroom and the closed door leads to the bathroom I showed you last week when it was clean.

This is another room upstairs. It will probably serve as American Boy's bedroom in the future, but for now he's happy downstairs with all the girls. The plan is for him to join his big brother upstairs in a couple of years. By the way, Big D designed and built those built-ins, too. I'll have to show you those in detail another time. He even decorated the top with Texas stars. A man after my own heart! (Big D wasn't born in Texas, but he's a Texan through and through now, except when he's dreaming of Indiana.)

Oh and don't forget to enter for your chance to win the $25 Lowe's gift card I'm giving away this Friday!!