Another DIY Chalkboard, but in pink!

 

Jim and I made a bunch of diy chalkboards awhile back to create a gallery wall in our dining room. I put different quotes and illustrations on them depending on the holiday or time of year. It's one of my favorite projects that we've done and so simple! When I started working on the attic project at my mom's she asked me to make one for my niece. Right now the room is pretty much a playroom just for her, until other grandkids come along.

 

My niece wanted a pink and green room. Right now, the base of everything is green. We thought a green base would work better for a room that could work for boys and girls. The chalkboard was a perfect way to add some pink. 

She loves tea parties, so when we do the big reveal to my favorite four year old, we thought it would be fun to have the room set up like a tea party.

I'm so excited to show her the room!

Update: Nana's Playroom

 

 

 We've been pretty quiet on the blog lately, but I have a fun update to share! Most of this blog has shared our adventures in turning our first house into a home, but I recently shared that I was working on a playroom design in my mother's home. I'm pretty excited about it, so I thought I'd share that here, too. I shared the inspiration awhile back, but we've started to make actual progress. I didn't take a before picture, but the room was all dark wood. I kind of love that rustic look, but to make it more inviting for my niece and future grandkids, we decided to brighten it up by going with a bright white paint and a lime colored accent wall.

We finished the first layer recently, so I thought I'd share a sneak peak. I think it's looking pretty awesome. It was tax free weekend here in Massachusetts, so we bought a bunch of fun accessories to add, which we'll be adding in in a couple of weeks! So, that's my excitement for the weekend. How is yours going?



 

Nana's Playroom - Inspiration

This blog has been all about our home and projects, but my mom recently bought a beautiful old home and asked for some help with decorating, so I thought it would be fun to share some of the projects here. The first space I'm helping with is a really cool attic area. The house has plenty of storage so she decided to turn part of the attic into a playroom for her granddaughter, my niece, and future grandkids (not that she's hinting or anything) . She knows I love design, so she asked me to  take this project over while she works on the rest of her house.

The main goal of this area is to have a fun space for when my niece and future grandkids come to visit. Right now there aren't any age appropriate toys or things to do at nana's other than watching Disney movies or playing Dora on the computer. We do a lot of activities when my niece visits, but it would be nice to have a fun little space where she can do her own thing sometimes. Although that's probably not the right choice of words, since we all hang out with her as much as we can when she comes for visits, so I'm sure she'll have all of us playing up there with her!

We want the space to have three components.

• An imaginary play space, with a tea party theme.
• A reading nook.
• A creative space with art supplies.

I haven't spent a lot of time around kids other than her lately, so I turned to pinterest and blogs to get some inspiration on what to include. Here's what we're inspired by so far:

The photo above is from the Caitlin Wilson Design blog. The party was by Chrissi Shields of Styled Chaos, who threw her 2-year-old daughter a beautiful birthday party using pillows from Caitlin Wilson Textiles in the Fleur Chinoise III Collection. I was thinking of using these pillows in the design already and these photos just made me want to use them even more. You can check out the full set of photos on Chriss's blog, here.

I'm trying to keep it pretty budget friendly. To keep it within budget,  I'm loving ideas like the Crafted Sparrow's washi tape tin cans to hold arts supplies.

Since this room will most likely be used for both boys and girls in the future, we figured it couldn't be too girly, but my mom still wanted pink. So we decided to go more green with pink accents, but specifically love the color combo shown below from Horchow.

Now that we have color scheme and a general idea of the purpose of the space, it's time to work on the details. This project may take some time since the room needs to be painted in the spring, but I'm excited to get started on it. We already bought a rug and tea set. I'll share once we have some more details narrowed down. This is the first kid friendly room I'm working on, which is really fun. I hope my niece and future nieces and nephews love it.

If you have kids, what things do they like in a playroom?