Baby Girl's Play Room

We have three upstairs bedrooms in our house: the master, the nursery and an "extra" room which was living up to its name perfectly. An extra room accumulating stuff I didn't feel like storing in my living room. Mostly, this included various baby gadgets like the bouncy seat, exercauser, Bumbo seat, activity mat and a lifetime supply of baby rattles.

(Alright, so you don't think I'm a complete slob, I should confess there isn't usually a random lamp and a ladder thrown into the mix. I asked Andi to snap a photo before we began to do a little re-decorating).

I decided to turn our extra room into a play room for Tory. Obviously, she doesn't do a lot of "playing" at 5 months of age but I wanted to create a comfortable space to spend time with her and also a place to store her growing pile of toys. The catch is, I didn't want to spend a lot of money (or put in a great deal of time) because this room will eventually become her future brother or sister's nursery and there's no sense in decorating a room only to re-decorate it in another year or two. So, a play room on the cheap. Challenge accepted!

I figured a vinyl wall sticker would be the fastest (and laziest) way to make a big impact in the room without changing the paint color so I searched Etsy and found this adorable animal-themed sticker for $129. Kind of a lot of money for a sticker, yes, but I figured it'd be the room's primary focal piece so I bought it. Andi lovingly volunteered to help me assemble it on the wall one evening this week after Tory went to bed (holy cow, I was so tired the next day, did I mention how silly it is to start home improvement projects at 9pm?).

The sticker was really easy to put up, actually. In my foggy no-sleep brain, I couldn't remember if I ordered it according to the size of our wall or not so we just winged its installation. The type-A, logical part of my brain thought we should have measured it out beforehand but the tired, "holy crap, I'm going to be up with Tory all night" part of me said screw it, let's just get it done. I think it turned out quite well, all things considered.

Next, I asked Andi to move the IKEA bookshelf from Tory's room into the new play room and added soft cubes from Target (on sale, $7.99 ea.) to store her toys and add a splash of color.

Andi hung the Wood From The Hood growth chart Tory received as a Christmas present on the wall. I added an animal lamp from Target ($29.99) which matches the characters on the wall almost perfectly.

Et voila! An easy-peasy play room space for Tory, all for around $200. Someday, I may add a bulletin board to the wall to hang her artwork but in the meantime, this space is perfect for us. We've already spent quite a few hours here reading books and playing toys on the floor.