Echo's New Room

At long last Echo's big girl room is complete! This was one of the major things we had to do to get ready for the new baby and we have been planning and talking about it for so long that we are really excited to finally get it done. We plan to put the new baby in the nursery (Echo's old room) because it is right across the hall from us and has easy night time access for me. Echo has been sleeping really well lately making it less important for her to be right next to us so moving her to the other room just made sense. I didn't want them sharing a room at this point because I'm afraid the baby will wake Echo up and don't want to mess with her sleep.  

Before

The biggest thing we had to do in this room was get rid of the nasty carpet (as seen in the before picture). Eric's parents came down last weekend to help us work on it and they knocked the whole thing out in just two days! The new floor looks amazing, it really makes me want to do the rest of the rooms that haven't been done yet but it is a huge pain so who knows when that will happen.

My contribution to the room was a mural by Echo's floor bed. I originally really wanted to do this room in a nautical theme (mostly because I wanted to paint a nautical mural) but I could see that Echo really didn't care about under sea stuff as much as I do so in the end I tried to make it something she would enjoy more. She loves to help me in the garden and loves animals so I did some sunflowers and a rabbit for her. She is so proud of this mural and loves the rabbit in particular. She often goes up to it and pats it or gives it kisses, so cute!

This room feels so much more open and it has been fun watching her get used to it. She spent her first night in her new room last night and she slept great in spite of my worries about her adjusting to a new space.

I'm so happy to have her moved in because now she will have plenty of time to think of this as her room before the baby comes and takes over her old room! We still have a few of her things to move in and Eric is building some shelves in her closet but other than that the room is done. Yay!

Integrating Play Space In The Living Area

Anyone who follows me on Pinterest can see that I've developed a big interest in interior design geared towards children of late. There is something a bit more magical and fun about spaces designed with children in mind. Eric and I can't stop talking and making plans for the tree houses and play areas we want to design for our kids (Echo and her future siblings) and we don't want relegate their play areas to a separate part of the house. We want to the kids to feel that the house is theirs too, the whole house, not just their designated rooms. As full fledged members of the family they should be able to enjoy the living space as much as the adults.

The nice thing about owning your own home (soon to be paid off in full!) is that it gives you a lot of freedom to do whatever you want with the space, we can be as wacky as we want! And since we don't really view our home as an investment but as a place to live and raise our growing family we don't really need to be concerned with resale value when we make plans for building play areas in to our main living space.

I've been able to find some pretty excellent examples of children's play areas on pinterest, here are some of my favorites.

None of these are exactly what we want but we do plan to have some climbing space and a reading nook/hideout. We have some pretty exciting plans for all this but luckily we have some time since Echo won't be climbing for quite a while. Who knows what kind of cool designs we will come up with in the meantime?