Hey! Long time.
Things have been happening on the home front I just haven't had a lot of time to sit down and write about it. Which...is kind of nice...for you. After all, now you get to see a month worth of work in one medium sized post.
October is always a crazy month for me. I normally am swamped with making masks, Laney's birthday, and trying to complete our own family costumes.
Now that October is over I feel like I can take a little rest, but only for a moment because family is coming into town for Thanksgiving and I would love to have some things checked off my to do list.
When I last blogged the toy room was getting a paint job.
I hadn't liked the color that I had originally purchased so I opted for a more bright saturated color. It was just what it needed. 
After painting the stripes, for what felt like the 90th time, I removed the tape.
I prefer them this color much more.
I then got to work on finishing the mushroom bottoms, priming the floor, and started taping off the pattern for the floor.
Painting a checkerboard on the floor seems to be second nature to me now. Blake was in charge of measuring out the spaces and I took care of the rest.
I used an oil based paint which I seem to like the most for painting floors. I didn't do a ton of prep work this time around. We knew that the floor is only a temporary fix until we carpet the room so we didn't want it to be too overly involved. There are cracks and divots in the floor that we just left there. I figured, if anything, it would just add character.
I painted the mushroom bottoms black, and added some grass for good measure. I left all of them stopping a few inches off the floor to account for baseboards.
When the white floor paint had dried, I pulled up all the tape then reapplied the tape so that I could start on the black squares.
When it had dried, I pulled off all the tape and Viola!
I knew we wanted a couch of some sort in the toy room. Ideally, It would have been a hide-a-bed, but I couldn't find one that I wouldn't mind if the kids trashed.
I ended up finding this couch frame on a local Facebook site.
I figured that I could make a new cushion for it, no problem. Problem? Foam for cushions is super expensive. So, I did what any normal person would do...I deconstructed our old couch in order to steal the cushions off of it. Now, I just need to make a cover for the cushions.
Surprisingly, with all the furniture that we had hoped to put in the room, and the walls and floor painted, it still felt a little empty (or undone, I can't decide which is a better description).
So...I figured that a tree would work to fill the space without taking up any floor space. I started by roughly drawing a tree on the wall closest to the door.
Then I used some black paint and a brush and got to work.
With most of the toy room done, I was anxious to get the kids toys back in the toy room and regain some semblance of cleanliness. I made a trip to Walmart and picked out some buckets so that I could sort the kids toys making it easier for them to find things but also easier for them to clean up. I jokingly told Blake that I wasn't sure if my stack of buckets was enough.
Surprisingly I was actually right on. I had exactly enough buckets, and not one extra.
I will go ahead and say this: Sorting kids toys sucks. You know that it will look so good when you are done, which makes it worth it. Then the kids come in, see that the buckets are all organized and they think that the only logical thing to do would be to pull out every single bucket and play with one toy out of each. Hence the "sucky" part.
Alas, with the toys put away and the furniture put into the room it was starting to come together. I found this cabinet at the DI for a few bucks so I painted it with chalkboard paint, thinking it would be the perfect little book cupboard. As soon as it was in the room and the books were put inside, I realized that the doors opened....it just took a lot of strength to do it. So, of course, I immediately started plotting how I could get rid of the book case and what I could replace it with. (More on that at another time.)
To make the room feel a little more cozy we added some fun touches:
These vintage chalkware birds are the bees knees. I love them so.
Blake, was able to put a door on.
While I don't have a picture of the door...it looks like this:
I love our new doors and can't wait till we can replace all the doors upstairs.
I found this rug for pretty inexpensive at Home Goods. The plushiness of it is great for the concrete floor. The plushiness of it is not great, because it hides legos in it, very easily. Just ask Blake who knelt on a Lego hidden in the carpet.
At an estate sale one weekend I picked up this Mid Century modern cabinet. It replaced the couple of suitcases that I was going to use to hold the dress up clothes.
The room also got some additional art work on the walls. The Cheshire cat was added for...well...for fun.
And, I also added a saying above the closet doors. I used a Sharpie Paint marker (which is cool by the way) and started writing out the words free hand. My problem is, I don't ever like how my writing looks. I know that having something drawn by hand makes for a more whimsical look, but I just couldn't handle it.
I painted over what I had written and then started again. I used a template for the letters and then painted over the top using the Sharpie Paint marker. I much prefer the letters looking like they are all the same.
I have since added a few more things to the toy room but that will have to be for another post, which will come sooner rather then later.
