Monthly Archives: October 2012

Designing Sean’s Playroom

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We moved into our house just over 4 years ago, and we knew we were not going to use the formal dining room for that specific purpose. We made the decision to make it a playroom for our son.

Slowly over time, as he has grown (Sean is now 5), we have added pieces to this room to make it as functional and clean as possible.

The first thing I did to make it look more age appropriate, I hand cut safari animals decor (hippo, giraffe, elephant and lions) out of a very large roll of vinyl. I placed all of these as a border around the mid section of the wall.

The light is our favorite thing in the room. This light (coral pendant) is from a great New Zealand based designer, David Trubridge, who is based in Hawkes Bay where my parents reside. While we purchased this in New Zealand, his designs are now available in the US.

By the time Sean was 3 we definitely needed storage – my husband wants to give Sean the PlayMobile toys he remembers as a kid; myself, its Lego sets, and then Sean has a collection of Thomas the tank engine and rubbish trucks (garbage trucks). To store all these, we bought great Lack hidden mount shelves from Ikea, and storage boxes that we arranged in a stair design. This way we can use the tops as additional shelving. The storage boxes are eco-friendly recycled fabrics from Way Basics.

We bought the colors palette together with the stripped rug, which again was bought from Ikea (however in Germany).

The room has a great bay window for natural light and we use the area for his desk. This desk is from Land of Nod and has three levels and grows with Sean – we recently raised this table to the next level. It has a cool paper roll feature on the side.

The two bean bags in the room made by Beanz (a New Zealand company), can be used for both inside and outside. We use these all the time on the deck, for watching movies/TV in the lounge and for reading or relaxing in Sean’s playroom.

We added some of Sean’s art work on the wall, in bright-colored frames and alternating but matching colors.

The last additions were his cool chairs from West Elm with the homemade chair bags featuring safari animals, which were needed when we raised his table.

The best thing about this room, is by having a dedicated play room, we seldomly have toys else where around the house. They stay contained in this one room 🙂

Homemade Granola Bars

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A friend of ours, introduced us to this cool website which focuses on a variety of nutrition areas for kids – www.weelicious.com. It has some great ideas.

The first recipe my son and I tried out was the chocolate chip granola bars. They are amazing and last for a couple of weeks – a great snack for track out camp.

Chocolate Chip Granola Bar Recipe Link

Here are photos of our success.

Before:

After:

  

G is for Giraffe

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Sean, my son, is tracked out (vacation) from school (kindergarden) for the next 3 weeks; and his teacher gave him a journal for him to keep track of his activities. To fill that book we are doing lots of different activities.

Our first track out art project was creating a giraffe from the Eco Crafts Kit by Alex.

It turned out great. We made some changes to the directions, mostly since the glue stick does not do a great job sticking the pieces together. The changes we made included my son coloring the legs instead of using paper to decorate, and also we used 2 pipe cleaners to hold the leg pieces and attach to the main body.

Sean enjoys taking his own photos, here is the one he took of his Giraffe.

In his track out journal he captured a drawing of his giraffe, and labelled it “Giraf” (with a post correction)…he did great sounding out all the letters.

He told me the cutest story about what he knows about Giraffes, we captured it also in his journal:

“Giraffes eat grass, trees and leaves. They use their necks to reach the high leaves.”

What can I say – very proud of my son, and love doing the crafty activities with him.