Oh, how we spent the weekend of the 4th!

Matt and I got a wild hair (well, really Matt did) that we'd shake things up a bit in the Stine house. Ali Kate and Isabella have always shared a room since AK was born. Always. But lately they've been having MAJOR problems sharing a room because (imagine this) they keep each other awake laughing, playing dolls, talking....I mean big, serious offenses here!! (oh, so kidding) Oh, my goodness to be a little girl again. Anyway, it began to take a toll on them as they went week after week with no nap (and a toll on Mommy too who counts on nap time to be her productive time). So Matt suggested we move Abby and Isabella together. And while our new home is much larger than our old one, the kids' bedroooms are still not large enough to spaciously accomodate two preschoolers and all their stuff!

So we made the decision to give up having a playroom. Now I can already hear mamas near and far lamenting this. Oh, no, not the playroom. But seriously...my kids had one of the best playrooms ever and didn't really actually go play in it all that often. I had visions of me having to scrape them off the playroom floor to come down to dinner once we moved in our house...didn't happen. I sometimes actually begged them to go play in the playroom while I cooked or cleaned. Didn't happen. Only when I was up there engaging them would they play there....so we figured that giving it up wasn't really much of a sacrifice.

So July 3rd and 4th...we painted. Well, first we moved all of their belongings up their the week before (and casually made several playroom toys disappear into toy oblivion). We had to thin out lots of room. So many of our large items found their way into our (gasp here) garage. That's another blog entry for another day.

Anyway, the playroom was still this dark brown (not my favorite but very low on our list of rooms to repaint when we bought the house). So of course we had to change that IMMEDIATELY. We don't keep a house this messy I promise. I took this after we had moved all their stuff into the middle of the room to prep for painting.



And I have always wanted to paint a huge chalkboard wall for them. So here was my chance. My kids are allowed and ENCOURAGED to draw all over the wall. Since they already have shown interest in decorating our walls (see my main entrance hall where Ali Kate used a black Sharpee to draw Mommy a mural. We still can't find the exact shade the previous owners had this house painted after many, many phone calls. Here's Abby testing it out while it was still a work in progress.



After lots of painting during bedtimes, naptimes, and independent playtimes...we got the job finished. It was alot to paint since it was a big room and of course being dark brown meant that the whole thing had to be primed first (that equals painting twice). But we painted it together and knocked it out pretty fast!

And here's what it looked like once we got it all put back together!



Big thanks to Brian and Amanda Williams for giving us the color from Ella's room. We've had a couple of flops with doing an apple green, and I've just given up on apple green. But when I was at their house last, I fell in love with Ella's bedroom color and knew I would use it whenever we redid the girls' rooms. So Ella...thanks! We are loving this color!

And now my next project is to get their room super organized with cute labels on everything and then to paint their monograms above their headboards. And of course figure out what to do with their walls. I'm not 100% decided yet how I'm going to decorate (we eventually need to buy new comforters that match...these are the same color scheme but different designs...so I may wait a bit to decorate it all!).

And what do the girls think? They love it! It totally revitalized that space! They play in it tons every day and even let the babies play there too. We set up a grocery store in one area, a dollhouse in another, school in one...they love it!!