Monday, January 9, 2012

Living Room Update

Even though I am supposed to be on bedrest, I still cannot control my nesting urge sometimes. Months ago, I bought enough materials for two toy shelfs for the living room, but only had energy to build one. But now I cannot stand the toy mess in the living room any more, I had to finish the second one. Since I cannot lift heavy stuffs, I just painted the boards in the basement, then brought them upstairs one by one, and finish building it right in the living room. Here is the before picture of the west wall of the living room. What a mess! When did I get all these toys for just one girl!
We don't have a family room or a separate room to set up as little caterpillar's playroom, so I have to make this small living room a multi-functional room. Here is the after picture, kind of. Well, it's not all done yet, but it does look more organized. Now everything has its own spot. The shelf on the left is the new one. Look closely, you can see it's not done yet. I need to trim the sides a little bit to make it even with the first shelf, paint the raw edges, and polyurethane it. Look at the height difference here, it doesn't bother Stubborn or little caterpillar, but it really bugs me! But I am exhausted, and it doesn't worth risking having my baby premature. So, it just have to stay this way until this baby is out.
Here is what the left side looks like now. I made that alphabet art a couple of nights ago. I found it online, and printed out the individual letters, cut them out, and taped them to a piece of white board. So easy! Cannot remmeber where I found it online though, it was months ago. Whoever created this art originally, THANK YOU! My girl loves it! The blue floral bins on the upper right shelf are so easy to make also. They were just these boxes from BJ's. I built these toy shelves 18" deep to accommodate her music table and some other big toys, and these free boxes are the perfect size. Some self-adhesive shelf lining paper and several minutes later, this is how it looks like! Much better! And each of these bins costs me about 50 cents! I just need to make some pretty labels for them. They each hold a different type of toys, like building blocks, musical toys, pulling toys, teaparty toys, etc.
This is the right shelf. As you can see, her favorite toys are on top of the shelf, so she can play with them anytime she likes, without digging or pulling them out of big boxes. And notice I removed the horse painting, and tied a piece of yarn to display her arts. Aren't they cute? Little caterpillar is very happy to see her masterpieces proudly displayed on the wall!

Before I show you the other side of the living room, I have to show you some of her toys! I just love wooden toys! Almost all those plastic toys came from friends! Look at these, my girl is more into cars, airplanes and dinosaurs than dolls!
She loves that cashier machine, and sings to that microphone all the time. And everytime she sees someone playing piano on the TV, she starts playing along on her little piano. So cute! We might need to get her a real piano in a couple of years.
These globes are my favorites. I can show her where grandparents and other relatives live. The big and midium ones are from thrift store, the tiny glass one was a party favor from a wedding.

OK, now the east side of the living room. This is how that tiny corner looked like during the holidays. I wanted to set up a painting table there, so I took down the xmas tree 2 days after. Moved the animal alphabet art up a little bit, so I could hang the little DIY blackboard and some buckets right under it. Now she can do coloring, finger printing, and draw with chalks on the blackboard, right at one table! The activity bag hanging on the wall holds her coloring books. All I need is a walllamp above it. It's kind of dark. I love this ikea lamp very much, but not enough to drive 1hr to get it. I will get it next time we go there for more stuffs.

There you have it, my living room is taken over by my girl! And I am happy about it and supporting it. This is the exact situation I said I won't allow before I had her. But you know what, my love to my baby totally won! I don't mind toys in the living room any more, just need to have them under control!

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