Playroom Reveal

The title is a little inside joke I have with myself....which I will now of course share. It just always makes me laugh when people blog about a room makeover and add "reveal" to the end of it (seen a lot on "link up parties" on those creative blogs). Like you were just waiting on pins and needles for me to reveal my playroom makeover.....the makeover you didn't even know was going on. I'm easily amused. Or maybe overly cynical. Moving on.

Tom and I have always disagreed a bit about what the function of the loft should be. While we will probably eventually turn it into another bedroom, I won out for the time being.

The Loft through the years (I feel like I need Babs' "The Way We Were" playing here)

It started out as Tom's ping pong table room

Wifey was mean and booted the ping pong table out the door once we started compiling too many toys. It looked super pretty. :( (The guest room mattress was also being stored in there once baby Claire came along.) And this was right after it was cleaned up nicely.

Okay, I will now end your suspense. The big REVEAL.....

I stole the overall idea of doing a scrabble wall from a model home I saw years ago. They painted the entire wall like a scrabble board though which I didn't love. I used a cricut to cut out the letters then mod-podged them onto these pre-cut boards I found. I wanted to cross the girls' names too, but the company discontinued the wood (I bought them like 3 years ago) and I can't find wood to cut that is even close to matching. I'm over it. I put scrapbook paper behind the letters to make it a bit cute-sier. That's a lot of information you probably didn't care about, but I've had a few people ask, so I figured I might as well share.

Oh how I love these Target bins! They are deceptively roomy! And while I once envisioned them being completely organized, I soon realized I would drive myself nuts trying to keep everything organized in a PLAYroom. So now HIDDEN is the name of the game.

This tv and table I found at a yard sale. I spray-painted the table and added scrapbook paper to the top. If you can't tell, mod-podge and scrapbook paper are two of my dearest friends.
I'm crazy, but I ended up re-doing this rule sign. I made it bigger and in the end neater. The original instructions kind of said to not worry about things being even. Turns out that uneven drives me nuts.
My favorite picture of the girls that Cynthia took blown up.

This last picture is of the unfinished area (the painting of the column and under the railing and some sort of decoration on the wall above the play kitchen), but I just wanted to show what I love most about the room....It's OPEN, but HIDDEN! I can be downstairs doing my own thing while the kids play, and still hear/kind of see them so I can run up to break up their fights. Yeah, the "rules" don't work. Maybe they need to learn to read first. The open-ness is also a large part of why we did the walls darker colors. Since it isn't its own closed off room, the colors needed to blend with the rest of my house (Decorating Duo, "Team Donohue" decided my paint colors). The chocolate color is on walls downstairs too (doesn't it sound sexier to call them "chocolate" instead of brown?).
My other favorite thing about the playroom is that it was done pretty cheaply with things I got from garage sales, craigslist, or donors who shall remain anonymous :) . I've definitely seen cuter playrooms, but I must say that even so, I absolutely love this room! It's our happy place!

Thanks for joining me for my big reveal.