DIY Corporate Mom: Pre-School Playroom

So just like that I bought new paint for Ladybug Girl's room. On a whim: her favorite color purple.

I'm not a big fan of purple, but anything is better than pink in my house. It's backlash from having pink shoved down my throat from the time I found out that my baby will be a girl.

So before the painters change everything next week, I thought I'd show a few photos of the room ~~in case I make a huge mistake~~ to fondly remember our progress from where we started.

Our baby crawl playground is also the most popular post on this blog, so it will be fun to share an update.

First big update is on the closets, which we had overhauled last January to modernize the old room a little. These were our closets before:

When it was a baby nursery, I had covered them with some cloth to create the room's color scheme : aqua and red.

Velcro strips were holding them up.

Now the closets are made to be kid-height to encourage independence.

Here they are! We converted the old dresser into a stage area.

The mirror was temporary while we ordered a custom size. We made the hanging center hearts here.

Ladybug Girl conducts her daddy's xylophone performance.

Love love love the closets lit up at night. (lights matter a lot to me obviously)

The second big update is the windows. I never realized how dated they made the whole house look until we replaced them (and every other window in the house).

Ladybug Girl's room in the jalousie era.

The new windows look wonderful but now the sad green-less state of my home is more obvious!
Project Green has not had much success lately.

We splurged and got these fancy window treatments for them.

They're the kind you can convert into partial translucence (see the one on the right?)

Our art gallery wall is so useful everyday.

Underneath the art gallery is a shelf for leave-behind activity favorites, and her cleaning supplies rack.

The large space in the middle is great for all sorts of floor time play.

Playing catch

Bowling

Building

And bringing out the "Montessori-mat" (which we keep rolled up on the side of the bookshelf) on things like sorting play here.

Her bed area on the opposite side has gone through a transition as well.

Used leftover decals as an accent.

It has the cheap "moon" light that she turns off by herself to go sleep.

The other end of the room opposite the closets is my clutter-problem area.

Honestly I fiddle with this every week but the piles just keep moving around.

But the open shelves below are always fairly neat and heavily used.

Art shelf

A second Leave-Behind Activities shelf

Those stripes worked when it was just her neat diaper changing area, but now it's overload.

I have plans for this. Don't hold your breath though.

What I like most about Ladybug Girl's room is that every bit of space is used.

Well, the scooter might have been pushing it!

I purposely didn't do much explaining of each area, because I don't have the ready pictures for them all. Please leave me a comment if you'd like more detail somewhere!

The aqua/red color scheme was really great, but inevitably the jumble of toys turns everything into a mismatched eyesore. I'm still pretty nervous because I just picked the least offensive to my eye of the purple colors on the swatches.