Nautical Playroom Reveal!

I am so happy today to finally be showing you our completed playroom!  When I began this, I had plans of pretty paint and wainscoting for the walls but when we thought we may be moving, those plans were put on hold.  We decided that we would be renting a house when we moved to Arizona so paint and wainscoting was no longer an option.  It can be hard to get the feeling you want in a house when you have to work around existing paint colors, but I am totally happy with how this room has come together!

Let's go back and remember where we started with the "before" pictures from our last house.

Pretty depressing, right?

The biggest challenge we had was with space. Specifically, the lack of space. This new loft playroom is  about 1/4 the size of our old basement playroom. A couple of the bigger toys, like my daughter's kitchen and my son's rocking airplane, had to be moved to the kids bedrooms.  This has worked out very well since their bedrooms are right next door to the playroom.

Okay, enough of this chitchat, lets get to the reveal!

Drumroll please......

    I have already blogged about using two Expedit shelving units from Ikea for our toy storage (You can read all about our toy storage here) and they have been absolutely perfect! Toys are always neat and easy to find.

I made the curtains, and all new pillow shams (except for the "map"one which is from Ikea) to give new life to our old sofa. I bought the fabric for the curtains and used what was leftover to make the pillow shams along with some other fabric I had on hand.

For the small pillow, I made the same kind of knot I used on the lampshade (You can find that tutorial here) and some burlap ribbon I found in the floral department. I just kind of made the shams up as I went along but they all totally work! Don't you love it when that happens?


    My son recently inherited a large Lego collection from my little brother. The Legos have been stored in this blue tub. The tub works well and fits perfectly in one of our cubbies, but I wanted to spruce it up a bit.  I spray painted the front with chalkboard paint and added a piece of rope for a handle.

    Ever since I first made these artwork display frames, I've wanted to label them somehow to make them specific to each child.  I ended up making these rope initials.

All I did was hot glue (you may have noticed by now that I am slightly obsessed with my glue gun and use it almost daily) rope to a piece of card stock in the shape of the letter, then cut it out with an X-acto knife.

    The lantern I got a Walmart for less than 4 bucks.  I thought it was cute black, but painting it white would help give the room the light airy feeling I was going for.

    The kids art caddy is from Target and I glued the little chalkboard label on the front. It is always stocked with Color Wonder mess free markers and paper. Our kids get into this daily and bring me new works of art to be displayed. I have a separate bin of "messy" art supplies that we get out and use together. My kids cannot be trusted to be alone with even a single crayon!

How many chalkboards can you fit in one playroom? 

The answer is...well... A LOT! 

This chalkboard was originally a magnetic bulletin board from Ikea that we had in our home office. We hadn't been using it since the move, so I gave it a few coats of chalkboard paint and hot glued rope around the edge for a little extra charm.  We had some old brightly colored magnet numbers that I decided to paint white and bring up to the playroom.  To hold chalk and an eraser, I used a small pale I got at Target for a buck.

Some (MAJOR) changes and a DIY nautical knot lampshade tutorial

First off, there have been some huge changes around here, the biggest being that we have MOVED! Yes, we put so much love and work into our last house but we always knew we would be leaving before long.  The Mr. got a new job in Phoenix, Arizona so we put up a For Sale sign and headed south.  We plan to be here for about 1-2 years so for the time being we are renting a house in an awesome neighborhood just outside of Phoenix.

Renting has presented a whole new set of storage/decorating/organizing challenges, and it seems I have been tackling them all at once! Back in Utah my biggest project was making our playroom pretty and organized (you can catch up on old posts about it here and here), so that is where I want to start.  We are still sticking with the nautical theme for the playroom and before I reveal the entire finished room I want to share this nautical knot lampshade I came up with today.

It was easy to make and I am totally in love with how it turned out. 

I bought the plain beige shade at Walmart along with the lamp that was a dark copper color until I gave it a few coats of white spray paint.  The rope is from the laundry isle (hangers, baskets, clothes pins, etc.) and is meant to be a clothes line. I am so glad I picked that up! I wasn't sure what I would use it for, but at less than $2 a package I couldn't lose.

I searched on Pinterest for a tutorial showing how to tie a nautical knot and found this one which is actually for a knot headband but there are good, easy to follow instructions for tying the knot.
                                                                 

  

             

      I was in love already!

                Hello gorgeous! Where have you been all my life?

After I got the knot nice and flat I hot glued it to the shade. 

  Then, zig zagged hot glue across a few inches of the rope and stuck it on the shade.  I just repeated that all the way around the shade with all four groups of rope strands. 

 And I was done! I told you it was easy!

Here is a sneak peak of the playroom with the lamp all finished!

Thanks for stopping by after all this time! I can't wait to share everything else I've been working on!

-Chloe