The Young Family: It's a Jungle Out There! Playroom Make Over with a Heart Attack!

The Playroom Got A Makeover!

It didn't take much since it was a clean slate to start. So maybe it was just made and not made over?

Either way you slice it, it's better than it was! :)

Here are some "before" pictures:

We put a play hut out for Ethan to crawl around in... otherwise, I used the room to work out.

(however many days that was in the past 2 years?!)

Lots of empty walls!

Lots of potential... maybe??

We found a freelance artist through one of Mark's dental buddies, Dr. Higgins.

Her name is Natalie and she used to be his dental assistant.

She also painted his kid waiting room at the office.

She came up with the sketch below based on the theme I wanted for the room: Jungle/Safari.

She "carved" Africa into the tree and put a heart where Ethiopia is per my request.

Ethiopia is kind of shaped like a heart anyway :)

Now before you are blown away by her mural, I wanted to introduce an equally talented artist in our family:

Ethan Mark Young

(never trust a clean artist)

Not only does he paint pictures, he is so talented... he colors hair too!

Trendy white and red streaks were added to his deep, dark, chestnut locks this afternoon.

Making valentines is a messy job...

With left over hearts, I wrote out what LOVE is.

We could all use the daily reminder in our house :)

So as part of the play room decor, we added a heart attack to our jungle!

The space where the heart attack took place is meant for a TV... we are thinking about putting a tension rod between the shelves and hanging up some dress-up clothes.

I went a bit crazy during the after Halloween sale :)

It's a playroom, not media room... although that's what the room was designed for supposedly.

Hey! What do you know?! The room is a makeover after all!! :D

Anyway, we bought all furniture from IKEA.

These are the "after" pictures:

An attempted 360 of the room starting from the door...

Unfortunately there weren't a ton of jungle themed playroom ideas that I liked out there in the world wide web.

I thought it was a pretty common theme, but turns out... no one had one that I liked exactly.

So I picked all my favorites and made my own (like mama always encouraged ;)... it's true!)

I loved the idea of a tree with shelves on a few branches.

I'd seen them in baby nurseries... so cute!... why not a playroom?

(Shelves from Target - picture frames came with the package... still haven't put our own pics in yet!)

We personalized the tree by adding Mommy and Daddy's initials to it.

M+A

I read somewhere that the best thing your can give your children is a strong marriage.

It makes them feel safe and loved.

I tend to agree with that statement and think it's healthy for them to see this and have it as part of their space... hopefully to help make it "safe and loving"...

that, and I was thinking of adding a mommy cam riiiight where the + is.

Mommy knows and sees all... :) j/k!

We extended the branches over the cubbies to connect the art to the other wall...

Sometimes, things need to flow, ya know? :)

When I taught Pre-K at Park Street Kids in Boston, one very talented teacher had a prayer area.

She made it very homey with a rug, comfy seating, a map...

I loved it!

The class prayed for children in Haiti and they put pictures up on the wall so the kids could see who they were praying for...

I wanted to do the same thing but make it a prayer corner.

The speech bubble is a chalkboard and the idea bubble is a whiteboard. This way we can write out our prayer requests.

Both bubbles are magnetic so we can post pictures of our World Vision kids (or whoever) so our kiddos can see who they are praying for...

I liked the idea of the big leaf (IKEA) because I want to make the space cozy and intimate.

We bought a comfy chair that flips out to a mat from Wal-Mart.

I thought about getting a kid couch but I wanted something big enough where adults could sit on it too!

Right now we just have a bible verse up...

I loved this idea (another one I stole!)

Stacked animals to make a height chart.

They sell a lot of them in vinyl sticker varieties on etsy... but knowing our boy, we didn't want anything that could possibly tear off!

So Natalie drew this up instead!

I saw something similar to these solid/print squares in someone else's playroom online... and it looked great!... but the colors were a little too muted for me. The whole playroom was more toned down, actually...

While I didn't want our playroom to scream at us from across the house, I wanted color... it's for kids!

So this is what we came up with...

The green and purple squares have magnetic cork board on them to post artwork.

The black square under the zebra print is chalkboard.

What looks like another black square next to the zebra print is actually a deep purple square with a black magnetic dry erase board on top.

I wanted this room to be functional!