Children's Playroom

I would like to show you our playroom but it's still a (constant) work in progress. Instead, today I will share my favourite kids' playroom inspiration photos.

Vogue

I actually stole the idea to use painter's tape to hang a gallery wall of Georgina's art from this photo. I haven't looked at this photo in a long time but I see that G's art looks pretty much exactly like the art in this picture, making me a super copy cat.

Pencil Shaving Studios

I love the pastel primary colours in this room. We have the same bookcases running sideways along a wall just like in this room, and as mentioned, a gallery wall of Georgina's art above the bookcases. I've never heard of wide-format washi tape but I must look into this. I also like the graphic, colourful rug in this room. I'm never sure about laying a rug over carpet but it works here as much as it does in my front room.

Lay Baby Lay

Another ikea bookcase on its side. Our playroom shares a lot of the same elements as this one: a kids table for colouring or tea parties, a tipi (made by my uber talented sister, Morgan Ard), a plush toy basket, and art displayed on the walls.

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I love the beautiful wallpaper on an accent wall. Right now my walls are all white and I'm so undecided about colour - pink? yellow? black chalkboard? - that they remain white. The vintage toys and that doll house are so sweet!!! I really like the look of the bookcases standing tall like in this photo but this is more suited to older children, not my babes. How is Miriam supposed to pull all the toys off the shelves if she can't reach?? The fun lighting in this room is also something I want to do in ours. I've already updated the lighting in our playroom but with something pretty boring. Put it on the to-do list.

Brooklyn Limestone

This seems like a straightforward DIY. I'm in need of dress-up clothes. Georgina's getting to the age soon where she'll understand and love to play dress-up. It was one of my favourite games to play growing up and my mom gave us the best clothes to play with! This would create a fun and inviting little station to store them in.

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I love this! Creating a little store like this could keep an imaginative child busy for at least 10 minutes! Such a cute idea.

Our City Lights

Pink chalkboard paint! Who knew they made pink chalkboard paint???? This would be a good dipping-the-toe step for getting colour in the playroom. Or instead of painting the door I could do a pink chalkboard feature wall. Question: does chalkboard paint make that terrible nails-on-a-chalkboard sound like a normal chalkboard? If so, this may never be happening in my house *shudder*

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I would really love, love, love to have a slide/playground indoors. Especially here in Raincouver. There's been a few loooong rain spells where I've been holding the mouse over the purchase now button for a slide like this yellow one where I'm telling myself I'll figure out the logistics when the slide gets here. What stops me is knowing that a slide will arrive and sit in our garage indefinitely. Or worse: we somehow pull off an indoor playground like this one and it gets used for the first 15 minutes of its life never to be looked at again. I feel like this slide could change my life but I no longer keep us confined to the indoors on rainy days anymore and fresh air is better.

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My heart goes out to this talented parent when the little paws wiped it all away. This is how I love to romanticise a chalkboard painted room. I say romanticise because children would ruin everything want to scribble all over and wipe away and scribble some more. When Dave and I were first married, our basement suite had a huge chalkboard wall and it looked similar to this: colourful, well preserved doodles. I also really like this Ikea rug. I'm never sure about it but I see a lot of rooms that look great with it.

This post almost turned into a dumping ground of complaints about my children but I reigned it in. Honestly, I love decorating for them. It lets me get more creative and decorate with colours I would never want to live with in an adult room. It's fun!

How about you? Do you have a special room designated just for play? If you'd like to share it I'd love to see it!

DIY Art!

I am generally TERRIBLE at any and all Do It Yourself project. I don't have the patience. This includes cooking. BUT I draw great satisfaction from ever completing something myself. So I continue to attempt DIYs (or continue to plan to - thanks Pinterest).

One DIY that I am Constantly doing is ART!
Because there's no rules with art, it's all subjective, I don't need to be perfectionist. Not that it stops me.
I have invested quite a bit of money in professional art, within reason, thanks to my favorite online store in the world(!) 20X200

THIS JUST IN!! 20X200 IS BACK!!!!

I was just about to lament the loss of my favorite art source website which has been down since January 2013 and low and behold IT'S BACK!! well sort of... they're working on it.

aaaaaanywaaaaaaaaaaays......
yes, I love 20x200 but the costs can add up so it's nice to be able to get GREAT and LARGE art for very little cost. Here's some inspiration and examples of what I'm talking about.

This is using paint cards. So bright and colourful!

This one would be pretty straight forward and has a strong impact. I could write a whole post about
black and white abstract art

  Bright and colourful and again pretty straight forward. I can draw rectangles...

  Tongue in cheek. Word art and typography is very popular. I like how this makes fun of it

Now this is where it starts to get trickier. I'm too anal picky to make something this beautiful. I over think it. I've had better success handing the brush over to Georgina.



                           This is more like it. I can probably handle this one. And it can go with all different types of

                           decor depending on the colours you choose



                                     Georgina and I made something very similar to this. I let her have free reign on

                                     the background and I added the dots in gold afterward.

Who doesn't love a Pollock. Georgina and I are currently wrecking working on this right now for the dining room.

 

  This is a cell phone snap shot of my Elle Decor magazine. It's Courtney Cox's dining room. I've been psyching myself up
  to make this one for some time. Again, the black and white art has a big place in my heart

And finally, Andy Warhol's Rorschach art. I saw another talented blogger had done this herself. Check it out here. Definitely doing this one next. Also for the dining room. Maybe in gold or black or Hermes orange????

Now, I make absolutely NO CLAIMS to be half as talented as any of these artists. Well, maybe Andy. Jk. But in the name of saving Dave's sanity money, and since my decor style changes with the wind, some DIY art is just perfect.

Also, it's a great activity to do with your children! Georgina LOVES it. And is better at it than me. And allegedly children who get to use their creative skills are better at math and science. Maybe that's learning multiple languages.... but still.

I'll show you all our DIY art in another post, another time. And, I'll show you all my beautiful professional art later on as well. Off to drink coffee