Its Play Time!

We recently moved into a new rental home that is big (great) and allows us to spread out (not so great - our junk is just spreading).  This is the first time Gracie has had a room that we have deemed her "play room".  I was SUPER excited about this room as she has a TON of toys.  While I try my best to keep them under control its a little tough as CJ and Gracie are not purgers.

In theory I was super excited about the Playroom so we could keep things a little more orderly and she'd have a nice place to play.  Unfortunately, my theory and dream of a nice play for her to play was just that - a theory.  We have a lot going on, are tight on time some days, are on a very tight budget and I'm generally absolutely exhausted at the end of every day - especially when we have Gracie as I try to give her everything I can when we are together.  And lets be honest, I'm either an all or nothing kind of girl who can either go all in with my vision or do nothing at all.  I was doing nothing at all since we didn't really have the budget to do much.  And my vision of course was grand as I always want the most amazing, best, and fun things for her.

Anyhow, since our budget was very small we spent some time acquiring things to organize the toys.  We finally got a decent bookcase (I'll post on that 'artful disaster' later, but lets just say I think I'm Martha Stewart, and I'm so not) and I was motivated to get the mess under control. Gracie wasn't playing with any of her toys in the room and certainly not enjoying the room as the toys were just dumped in there and it wasn't a nice play to play.

After two days of very hard work of sorting and organizing, I was able to get the room under control for very little money.  We are in a rental so options with altering the room too much are quite limited.  As mentioned above we got a free bookshelf and I was able to get two Circo Toy Organizers (including the bins) on sale.   I got fabric from Hobby Lobby on sale and with a coupon and tacked it to the wall to use as curtains as I needed to forgo a curtain rod.  I then took off two of her closet doors and am in the process of creating a reading nook in there.   We had to store some stuff on the shelf at the top of that closet so I used the left over fabric to create a curtain over the storage.

I have to say I'm really proud of myself with the final result and am even more elated that Gracie LOVES it!  Now, if I can just get the rest of our house together