Our Train Table (and what we used to build one)

I wanted to pop in to share a quick post about how we built our train table.

To make this a little short, we basically followed these instructions here and made a few adjustments as needed.
This site was VERY helpful and even lists step-by-step instructions on how to make a train table. We found it very helpful, so I'm not going to type up every detail of how we made ours, but I will share our dimensions and some pictures. :)

My hubby did the big cuts while I used a jigsaw to shorten the legs of the table a bit. Our train table measures as follows:

50" long
38" wide
23" high


I still have to paint the shelf that my hubby added to it (it's great for extra storage) as well as the sides. But here are some pictures of the finished product!

This boy spends a lot of his waking hours playing with it...he is obsessed with trains! Like to the max! 
And he doesn't sing too much, but when he does, you can bet it's the Thomas theme song. :) over...and over...and over again. Sometime he asks us to sing it so he can loop his trains round and around the tracks. Ha!

The cost to make this came in at about $50. We didn't use the most expensive wood so that did help keep costs down, but you can use pretty much any good pine wood for this project and it does just fine. I did have to sand some areas because of this, but it was worth it!

Some Fun Changes in the Playroom

I'm always up for a good project! 
Once we got back from our Florida vacation, I was ready for the next update to make to our home and couldn't wait to start. 

Well....that part about not being able to wait to start the next project isn't exactly true...


Actually, we've been back for a couple of weeks now and I've only done one quick project. So it wasn't necessarily "full speed ahead" once we got back home, thankfully. I'm slowing things down a bit.

However, there is another project in the works- painting our kid's play space. There are still a couple rooms in our home that haven't been painted yet, and the playroom is one of those areas. 

And there's a good reason for that.

It's a fairly big room with high ceilings, so painting this space wasn't top priority and seemed a bit daunting.

Since we've lived in our home for a little over 3 years now, I figured it was time to update the space. The challenge was not only the size of this room, but the outdated, old blue carpet. The carpet in this space is about 25 years old and as you can imagine, is not in the best shape (Yikes! I know, right).  Unfortunately, we aren't replacing it anytime soon because of cost and time, so the new paint color will have to compliment (well, at least somewhat compliment) the floor. I've got my work cut out for me a bit with this one.

Before I ramble on about paint swatches and the like, I did want to share a quick and easy Lego table/area I made for our kids recently that you can make at home too. 

The materials used were two 4 foot long MDF boards from Lowe's. Each board was about $3.50/piece and I needed exactly 8 feet for this area. Super happy I didn't have to cut any boards (or at least ask hubby to do that part) ;)
We already had the L-brackets, screws, and anchors making this project well under $10 total.
The plastic 4-drawer container in the middle holds building tiles and wood blocks for building and also serves as a good divide between the boards while keeping things steady. We also already had that container, but they can be found at many big stores for pretty cheap. 
I'd also recommend putting some kind of tall storage container somewhere in the middle to help separate the table a little bit and add more support.

I purchased a bookshelf for $17 at Wal-Mart that holds all of our kid's Lego, but you can use pretty much any kind of storage container to hold all those Lego.

In the photo above, you can see some of the wallpaper left from the previous owners. That covers the whole room (but thankfully only as a border near the ceiling). But, we won't focus on that...just the cutie building some fun creations!

This girl loves to build things!

So focused. :)

Lego building/play has become a bigger deal in our household now that our girls are 6 and almost 5. Our youngest isn't into it too much.....yet. 

With that said, we do spend quite a bit of time here, especially during the winter months. I'm super thankful for this space and our kids are too, so it seems only fair to update it beginning with the wall color. 

I mentioned that we aren't changing out the blue carpet anytime soon, so I'm trying to work with what we have. Plus, I painted the hallway, (or the kid's "cafe") a bold but beautiful dark green (BM's Bunker Hill Green). I want each room to flow well together, so I had to think about that with the paint samples. 
Speaking of helping each room feel connected...if you want to see how this dark moody green looks on a door, check out this post here. I used it in our son's room as well. Love that color!

I started with 3 paint samples:

Top left: SW Aloof Gray
Middle: BM Gray Cashmere
Bottom right: SW Comfort Gray

Each paint sample was purchased at Lowe's and I've found that they do a good job matching paint colors.

This girl and her Doc McStuffins :)

Here are some more paint swatches I put up around the room (same ones as listed above).

To be completely honest, none of the colors jumped out to me as being "the one." I thought Aloof Gray had purple undertones, Gray Cashmere showed up more like a baby blue, and Comfort Gray was too dark.
Thankfully, samples are pretty cheap! So it's back to the drawing board.

However, I do want to say that the samples did help steer me in the right direction of what color family to go with- GREEN. 

So I'll be searching for a green(ish), possibly minty, paint color for this room. I'm hoping to get my girls to help me with that part. After all, this is their space. ;)

Some More Organizing (in the playroom)

It's part of my personality to organize and clean. It probably stems from my childhood. My sister and I had to do daily chores around the house and this is something that stuck with me as I grew. 
True story: At church one morning, I was cleaning up the room where my husband and I volunteer and a lady was coming in to take the next shift. She was quietly watching me pick up toys and clean the tables and politely said, "That's enough, Stephanie. You don't have to do all that. Really, just stop." She was being kind about it, but definitely had this look of 'your being a little obsessive.' I looked at her and had to laugh. All I said back was, "You don't understand. This is just part of my personality. I actually enjoy doing this." I'm sure she thought I was being a little nutty, but it's true. I do enjoy it!

Bathing suit attire is a common sight around our house- even in the winter months

The same is true in my own home. One area that I feel I am constantly thinking of ways to clean and organize is my kid's playroom (the fact that we even have a "playroom" does seem a bit excessive and it's one of the many, many reasons why we want to adopt. We have the space and feel we need to share that with others- besides neighbors and friends).

Our playroom does change quite a bit- and what I've found is that my kids actually enjoy the changes. It's almost like Christmas to them all over again because they begin playing with things they may have forgotten about or taken a break from. 

Bins and storage containers have been essential in keeping this place organized. The plastic container in the photo below and above holds Lego's and plastic building supplies. The shoe bins hold all of our plastic and felt food items for the kids to play "kitchen." And most of the items in our playroom we've either had  
1. for many years, 
2. have been gifted to us, or 
3. have been handed down to us by wonderful friends.

Another clever way to display things is by uisng rain gutters. I know I've posted about these many a times before, but they are great for book storage! 
And hooks that otherwise would just sit in our garage without any purpose now are used to hang various hats for dress up.

My mother-in-law bought these alphabet cards years ago for the kids and now they hang on one of the play room walls. The kids still occasionally look at them and point out letters, sounds, and words.
The bookshelf was handed down to me from a friend in college years and years ago. I just held onto it and have used it for a variety of things over the years- even to hold shoes at one point! Now we use it to store the girl's dress up clothes using an IKEA metal rack. 

So you can see that there are many ways to keep a place organized for the kids to have easy access to their toys. I've found that thrift store dressers and nightstands, shoe bins, plastic bins, bookshelves and even a $5 wall hutch are great for storage. You really don't have to buy new or spend a fortune on storage furniture. Shop your house first and then look at thrift stores for these items that are cheap and can be re-purposed. 

Our wall hutch we found at a local thrift store for $5 and I just painted it white. We made the 4 cubed stand for it and painted it to match the hutch so it looks like one large piece that was meant to be together. The nightstand next to the hutch is also a thrift store find. I think it was about $15.
The circular table was $8 and the chairs were $5 a piece. Why would I want to pay any more than that on something that will be painted, colored, stained, etc. on? Plus, when this happens (as it often does in a kids space) I don't mind at all because it was very inexpensive to begin with and we made it work!

I'd love to hear any other thrifty ways you use storage in your home! I'm sure there are tons.

What to Do with Your Kids Artwork...

If you are like me, you find it a little hard to part with your child's artwork. 
I wouldn't say I am a hoarder by any means, but when it comes to something that my kids create, it can be hard to let go...even if it is just a scribble on a piece of paper. (anyone else relate to that?) 
If they are excited about it, I want to keep it!

However, I do not keep all of their artwork...I have learned over the years to let go of some of it. The rest of it gets displayed around the house or placed in a folder. What I have recently started doing is organizing their artwork. I have a pre-school folder where a lot of it is kept, and then the remaining art has been placed in frames that I have had for a while and displayed all around the house in places like the playroom, the kitchen, and even the girl's bedroom.

We are fortunate enough to have a set of separate stairs leading to our kid's playroom and I thought that would be the perfect spot to display their art- gallery wall style.
Here are some photos of that:

My oldest did this "abstact" (if you will) black and orange art at school not too long ago and was so proud of it that we had to display it. :)

I also like to put the dates on the back of my kid's art projects just so they can keep a record of when they completed something. I figured they could look back on that in the future and have an idea of how old they were when they did something. Does anybody else do that?? Please tell me I'm not the only one. 

How do you display your child's arts/crafts? Do you have a hard time letting go of some of it?

Parts of Our Playroom

I rarely show pictures of our playroom for obvious reasons....and that is mainly because there is a lot to update.

We have very, very outdated blue carpet that has been worn down past the cushions by the previous owners, parts of walls that were left unpainted by the original owners, wallpaper that still hasn't been taken down, and I could go on and on. At some point, it will be nice to do a complete renovation of the space and update it, but that is just not in the budget for us anytime soon so we need to work with what we have.
I did use a lot of colorful rugs and added a chalkboard wall to create some sense of design and decor but overall, the space just isn't quite there yet.

Even though the space is not that pleasant to look at, there are great perks about it. Our girls could really care less about the blue carpet, outdated wallpaper, mismatched furniture, the unfinished paint job on the walls, etc. They just really love playing here in this space and they love inviting their friends over to play and show them their toys. It's a great place for them to use their imagination. Plus, once a week, we always have kids over to play in the afternoons and this is the spot they always come to. So I decided to share our play space with you all- unfinished and everything.

You can go here to read about our DIY lemonade stand.

My main goals for this space were to create 4-5 play/educational stations or areas to section off the room so it had a purpose. I knew that we could have a handful of areas for this and so I began with creating the kitchen area. Next came the lounge/reading area, the craft area, and the dress-up area. I also plan on adding a lego table to the back wall where the letters "PLAY" are hanging and building the table myself, but it might be a little while until that happens. Until then, it is just an open play space.

My girls absolutely love it when I change things up in here. And I am not kidding, either. 
Every time I move something around, they seem to find a new toy or something to play with that they didn't notice before and they get SUPER excited about it! It makes it hard to give things away that they don't play with anymore, but we have slowly been doing that because honestly, each toy we get adds to the space and we begin to have less room for everything else. Plus, it is good for my kids to help me with the process of learning that it is good to give things away we don't have use for anymore. They are slowly coming around to the idea.
But I don't like clutter. 
I like organization and for everything to have a purpose, and we are slowly moving towards that with this room. Just taking it one step and day at a time.

The L-shaped table use to be in our kitchen nook at the last house and served us well. We moved it up to the playroom the day we moved into this house and it definitely serves its purpose. The girls and their friends love to color, paint, and make necklaces here. They never tire of creating things! 
And we love being able to sit at that table and look out the window of the backyard...it's so pretty and nice to have a large window there that lets in a lot of natural light.

So even though the room is outdated and doesn't necessarily go with the rest of the house yet, it is functional and it's a great place for our girls to play with their friends and use their imagination. I have even come to enjoy my time up here now that it serves a purpose instead of housing just a bunch of random toys and knick-knacks.

And there you have it, a little tour of our playroom. 
Thanks for reading and following along!!

Source list:
Green rug- a hand-me down from a friend
Floral rug- Office Depot
Lemonade stand- DIY- read about here 
White bins- Target
Kitchen set- gift from family
Curtains- IKEA
Wall rack for dress-up clothes- IKEA
Dresser for crafts- thrift store
China hutch on top of dresser- thrift store (will be painted sometime in the future to match dresser)
Chalkboard paint- Home Depot
Kids small art table- IKEA
Hanging wall mirrors- Target 

DIY Cafe/Multipurpose Stand

I have enjoyed creating projects for my girls...some they really love and others they quickly lose interest in. This is one of those projects that has given them hours of fun and when their friends come over, they can't get enough of it. 
What is also so great about this project, is that it is multi-functional. It can be a cafe, a puppet theatre, a lemonade stand, a snack stand, etc. Whatever their little minds want it to be. I wish I could say this was an original idea of mine, but it is not. Dear Lillie shared this on her blog and so I gave it a try.

Here is what you will need:

1 piece of wood approximate 4' by 4'

2 pieces of wood approximately 2' by 4'

4 small hinges

a few nails or screws

paint or paint pens to write with

cardboard for signs

some long skinny boards for making signs (and for the little brackets)

fabric for curtains (optional)

2 hooks (optional)

1 tension rod (optional)

 a jigsaw or access to one 

Step One: Get your 3 boards. I purchased mine at Home Depot and had them cut some to size. I kept the leftover wood to make the ledge which you will see later on in this post.

Step 2: Paint each board. I painted them with SW Mindful Gray...this wouldn't be my first choice, but it is what I had on hand.  If you have little helpers, this would be a great time to let them help with the painting process. My little girls loved this part.

Step 3: This is where you will want to use your jigsaw. I just traced out where I wanted the center cut to be made and cut away. 

 This is what it will look like.

Step 4: Use your jigsaw and extra wood to cut a ledge for your center rectangle. 

Step 5: Add some support with some little wood wedges. We had these on hand from a project we completed a year ago so saving pieces like that can sometimes come in handy.
I used a few screws we also had on hand to keep the wedges in place.

 Step 6: Now it is time to add the hinges. I should've only bought one pack, so I ended up returning one since these packs come with 2 hinges already. These are about 1 inch thick which you really want because if you get ones any bigger, you could go through the wood pieces.

I put each one about  one foot down from the top and the bottom.

 Here is how this was looking after these parts were complete.

You could stop here and just leave your "cafe" like so, but I wanted to add more detail and character to it.

 Step 7: I decided to add some feet to the front of the cafe so that it didn't tip. Before I put these in, my youngest actually managed to knock to board forward when she was standing behind it...so it was time to add these. I also used some left over scrap wood for the feet.

Step 8: Add some curtains and a tension rod if you would like. I also created some signs for the girls that they love. I used chalkboard paint so they can easily be changed up for whenever the girls want to play something new. For now, they are loving the cafe. It's their personal restaurant, as they like to say.  :)

I also added some cardboard boxes to the other side of the cafe for extra storage.

And one other thing I love about this project is that because of the hinges, it can be easily transported to places when we travel and want to bring it with us so the girls can use it. We haven't done that yet, but I like that this is an option.

Thanks for stopping by and if you make one of these, let me know what you and your kiddos think of it!!