Simple and Inexpensive Kids Monster Bathroom

Wow is my kids bathroom a difficult room to photograph!!!! (Maybe all bathrooms are tricky!!) It is a long bathroom with a pocket door between the sink area and the tub/toilet area. While I like this idea functionally, it makes photoing tricky. 

I spent a lot of time debating on if I should paint this room or not. I decided not to paint it and am very happy with my decision not to paint it. It just looks so bright and clean with the white painted walls!

I love the look of the bright and bold colored prints with the dark frames on the white walls. I love the little Monster artwork I purchased on Etsy!!! They turned out so cute and look awesome in the room! I got their initial letter hooks a year or so back and never had a place for them. So they work out great for hanging their towels!!

More monster artwork!

The inspiration on my monster themed bathroom! A Target shower curtain.

The best part of this bathroom is the extra storage!! There is enough room in the large bathroom vanity to hold all of their towels!! This was part of my spring organization on the 40 Bags in 40 Days!

Small Bathroom Reveal and Free Artwork

Wow it is hard to photograph a small bathroom!!! Especially with a dark wall and a bright window and a reflective mirror.... 

Immediately I knew that I had to paint our small main floor powder room. And it didn't take me long to make the bold move and paint the whole thing a dark navy! I am so glad I did, I love this room!!! (A side note, it too forever to paint this room navy, it took so many coats and with it being a small room with unmovable items in it, it just took a long time!!!)

I knew I would need some fabulous artwork in this room, I gave my kids paper and a couple colors of paint in the colors I wanted, and yeah instant FREE artwork!!!

Being a small powder room, there is not any storage, so I thought this Ikea shelf would not only complement the navy wall color but be a perfect small storage space!

I also didn't want a basic builder grade mirror in all of my bathrooms, so I found this pretty mirror which works perfectly with the dark navy walls!

I love my small little navy bathroom!

Industrial Laundry Room Make Over

I give you my new and fabulous Laundry Room!!! 

I am so excited about this room!!! First off, in my past two houses, our laundry room has always been way down in the unfinished part of the basement. I hated carrying big laundry baskets down two full flights of stairs just to do laundry. So when we built our house, I was so excited for our laundry room to be upstairs on the same floor as our bedrooms!!!! This has made my life so much easier!

I give you my before, this is what it looked like when we moved in. "Standard" according to the builder would have been a wire shelf across the wall, I asked the builder to not add that, which gave us a nice little credit and a blank space to work with.

 I thought and procrastinated about this space for a long time. Cabinets would have been nice, but cost money. As you may remember last year I made Industrial Shelves for our basement using galvanized pipes. I was not completely happy with how my shelves turned out, and we currently have an unfinished, chaotic basement. So I decided to tear apart my Industrial shelves and hang them up for FREE laundry room shelves!!!! (Free because I already had the stuff!!)

I was so NERVOUS about attempting this project. It would either turn out AMAZING or be a huge huge fail.

It was actually fairly simple project once I got the nerve to do it!!

I used

• 8 floor flanges which I had previously spray painted bronze
• 8 - 12 in pipes which I had previously spray painted bronze
• 6 foot board which I previously stained
• screw
• level
• drill and screw driver

Assembly is easy, find a stud (each floor flange has at least 2 screws into a stud) and attach the floor flange to the wall, and then screw in a pipe. Using a level repeat until you are done!!! See, so easy, why was I nervous about this project????

It is amazing how much different this room looks now!

I am so glad I tore apart my shelves that I wasn't feeling and created something I love and is VERY useful!!

 I love this photo! It was taken by my grandma :)

The laundry room is right between my kids bedrooms, so a lot of times they just throw their dirty laundry right into the washing machine!  And I love that I have a window!! It is such a fun place to do laundry, and so convenient that I do at least one load of laundry a day!!

Industrial Restoration Hardware Playroom

One of the things that made us fall in love with our house was the large open basement!! We loved that it was a huge open space for the kids to play and run around. When we moved in, I went to work to make it a fun playroom for our son, with lots of bright primary colors. See the before!!!!  While it was a great design for kids, trying to sell your house, maybe not so much??

So I give you my industrial playroom, inspired by everything Restoration Hardware!

I repainted our table and chairs white and black! The table top is technically chalk board paint, but I have not let the kids in on this secret! More on the toy storage in a bit! I painted my book ledges gray! And added some large initials of the kids with an awesome star I found at Pottery Barn Kids. Also I added my "when you wish upon a star" artwork!

One of the first things I did, and you might notice in the before is paint some walls!!! The wall to the left in the below picture used to be a red chalk board wall. Once coat of primer and one coat of the wall color, I had a nice and boring (white) wall! The wall to the right, used to be an adorable house wall I painted, but now its a nice and solid black chalk wall (so we still have some fun here!!!)

 Do you not love the red firetruck in the above picture? It completes the room!

I attempted to make some DIY Industrial shelves using pipes! While they are not exactly what I wanted them to look like, they did the trick and I am very proud I tackled this project!!! I broke my ankle (un-related to this project) mid-project, so I never really got any pictures of the during, even though the during was a big process!

These shelves are the perfect perfect size for a car garage for my sons many many big trucks!!!

 Some industrial accessories! The boat was a win at a White Elephant party one year and my son loves this boat.... so it might be here to stay!!!

 I made a matching taller industrial pipe shelf for the non-playroom portion of the room. This side is supposed to be the adult side with the TV and seating area.... though toys ALWAYS find their way over to this side!

 I made all of the below artwork! I love making state nail air! So easy but such a fabulous look!!

 More of the massive firetruck and chalk wall as seen from the "adult" side!

 I would have redo this shelf if I had not broken my ankle. The top and bottom shelf have too much space between the shelves. These were a real learning process and they were so SO expensive to make!!!!

And a wide shot from the back of the room! This room sure is a huge improvement over the mess it was before!!! 

Thanks again to First Moments Photography for these pictures!

Relaxing Master Bedroom Room Reveal

The master bedroom.... 

So the first thing I have to note, is our master bedroom NEVER EVER looks like this! This is how I wish it looked EVERYDAY! I can dream, right?

Well this is what our Master bedroom looked like one day! I do really like our room, it is very relaxing. 

Our very relaxing and comfy looking bed!! I love the look of all of these pillows, but I don't like them tossed onto the floor at the end of the day! I made both the front throw pillow and I made the Euro shams in the back row! And my pretty orchid (which I have since killed, I am NOT good at keeping these things alive!!!) I could not find a vase that would work for the orchid so as the photographer was ringing the door to take these pictures, I was hot gluing jute to the original purple orchid vase!! Hot glue can do it all!!!

 We got the black Pottery Barn sconces hanging over our bed for a wedding shower gift 10 years ago and I still love them! The silver mirrors are mirrors I got from Target and painted silver. Oddly, the lamps were from my mom, they are the perfect color for our room.  Our master bedroom will probably look a lot like this in our new house!

 Our gallery wall. Check out my original post on our gallery wall and all of the meaning behind it. I still love this wall!! This is a frame I spray painted and the background of this is a leather skirt I wore when my husband proposed!

Some more homemade artwork and pictures of my baby :) I love the look of mixing different meaningful items in a gallery wall!

Check out my Master Bedroom Dresser Re-do as well!

Thanks again to First Moments Photography for all of the fantastic pictures!!

Kitchen, Dinning Room and Family Room Reveal

Since I have showed pretty much every other room in our house, I should probably show you the living room, dinning room and kitchen combo in our house. 

It's not an all blogged out designed area. It is a practical (with two young children) space where we live. I do love this space. This is the first house we have had with this open concept and there is no going back from this. It's so awesome being in the kitchen and knowing what is going on in the living room! 

One of the first things we did when we moved in was hire an electricial and have them put in an electrical outlet above the fireplace, behind the TV and install an HDMI cable behind the wall. It was the best money spent and it was less than $150 dollars!!!

It took us almost 3 years in our house before we finally got a proper sectional in our house!!! Before we moved in this house we always had a sofa and love seat, so my husband and I could both lay and watch TV. When we moved in here we moved those to the basement and had a small sofa in here. I think everyone in the family was very excited when we replaced it with this sectional! SO much space for everyone!

Some of my artwork on our back wall. I love my University of Wisconsin Subway art and my artwork I made using my Silhoutte Cameo sketch pens on veneer! 

Something we never have in our house, fresh flowers! Fresh flowers and kids do not mix! Enough said!

I might have an issue sewing pillows.... though I did not make all of these.....

Then I give you the kitchen! It is a good layout and worked well! I have always had on my to-do list to paint the cabinets white, but never got around to it! (And oddly, with picking out things for our new house, I found out my husband really really wanted white cabinets, he didn't care about anything except having white cabinets!!!!!)

In the dinning room, I re-stained this table. And painted the chairs. And reupholstered those chairs two times (even though they could already use a third time!!! Kids are messy,,,, my kids are messy??)

And our "mudroom," Or where all of our stuff is tossed after we enter the house through the garage. This space needs to be a million times bigger and needs a door..... oh new house???

Blue and Orange Organized Science Playroom

When we originally bought this house, I struggled and I mean struggled with the front room of our house. It is the first room you see when you enter the house and it is directly attached to the family room. And we really didn't use it for the first year and a half we lived in our house. I blogged about this room in Fall of 2012 and you can see the before of this room we a pretty blank slate. 

Rewind a minute, when we moved into our house I decided that we would have a toy box in the family room and the rest of the toys would be in the basement. At the time my son was a little over a year and din't have all that many toys..... well fast forward 4 years and with a 5 year old boy and a 2 year old girl, my kids have WAY WAY WAY too many toys. Needless to say, the toys and kids have taken over the house..... So my naive thought on only having toys in the basement soon changed and over time, I am not sure how or when, but that front room slowly because a play room. About a year ago or so I finally embraced the fact that this room was indeed a play room and my life became much easier!  

So I give you our first floor play room, I wanted a somewhat simple and not so kid looking playroom, that is still fun for the kids! Since this is the first room when walking into the house, I didn't want it to scream playroom and I think I achieved that. 

A while back we got a new sectional for our family room, so I was able to move our little sofa into the play room, which is so nice to have in a playroom. The "coffee table" is actually our train table. This room has no over head lighting, so I added some fun orange hanging pendants and I started a globe collection! Simple Etsy artwork of constellations really complete the look of the room!

When you turn the corner into the play room is where you see the toys!

A play kitchen and some more shelves with bins easily hide the mess!

I love this view! I love the planets, since we made them, and I love the colors on my periodic table. I searched for a long time for the perfect periodic table and ended up finding this one from the Land of Nod. I love the colors with the pop of orange!

Some more Etsy artwork!

Do you not love these hanging lamps? I love the pop of orange! And of course my globe collection. One globe we "borrowed" from my parents, another from my husbands parents, one my sister gave us and the 4th was from Target.

This shelf and the matching self on the other side of the couch hide so many of their toys. A ton!

I knew I wanted to find some sort of science artwork for the room since I already had the periodic table and the plants, so I searched for a while and was finally really happy when I found these great prints on Etsy!

Don't you just want to grab a toy and play?? And yes, our toy room ALWAYS looks like this!! I have my kids so well trained they put their toys away immediately.... (ok, maybe we are still working on this....)

This orange gear was a great find from Pottery Barn Kids! I love it!

My son and I had a great time painting and hanging the planets. We used a simple kit I found on Amazon and these are my absolute favorite part of this room!!

So it took a while but I am finally very happy with this room. What have you done to embrace the toys in your life?