The Safari Playroom

The Safari Playroom is finally post-ready. I've been working on this for a while now, but it's just about all together.

We decided to turn our 4th bedroom into a playroom to have another place for the kiddos to play that's not right smack dab in the main living area of our house. So, if we have people over, eventually we can say, "Go play in the playroom". Ahh. That will be nice. For now, we are still spending a lot of family time in there, so it's been fun for all of us!

I decided on a safari theme since 1) Ollie loves animals, 2) I AM a confessed Pottery Barn stalker and 3) I lurve a theme- and this one seemed easy.

This was the room before (as a spare bedroom and where my personal computer was): And this is what it looks like NOW:

Don't you love a before and after shot? I am a sucker for those!

Here is the wall to the left of the sofa:

And this is the wall to the right of the sofa:So, here's how it got there and where I got the goods:

As you can tell, the walls were already green. The color is Sherwin Williams Artichoke and I used a tinted primer underneath because the walls were white. Decorator's tip here: be sure to ask for a tinted primer at the paint store if you are using a dark color. They can do it in any color and not just pink for red, etc (gray works better for red, anyway). Usually they combine your paint color with the white primer.

The sofa (pull out sleeper sofa), pillows, palm leaves on the wall and rug all came from Pier 1.

The beanbags, curtains and silhouettes for the animals all came from Pottery Barn Kids (not just a stalker- I'm an actual customer, too!).

The toy cube storage unit and baskets are from Target (and I already had that in Ollie's room- just moved it and got green and beige baskets).

The prints of the elephant and giraffe on either side of the window are from World Market (also have cool zebra mask in the entranceway from there not shown).

The bulletin board is from a teacher store in town and its 3' x 4' (actually pretty big, but you can't tell from this picture). I glued jute rope around the edged because it was framed in aluminum and looks better in person than you can tell from this picture. I can't wait to get the kids artwork up there, but this was the last piece to be added. My pointer finger is still sore from our dinky little glue gun (there's a Christmas present hint!) and all that jute.

How did I get the animals on the wall, you ask? I painted them myself! I used an old trick my mom often did for her bulletin boards at school. I got some clear sheets and some vis-a-vis markers (Mr. Jenne style if any high school homies are reading) and asked Jason to "borrow" an overhead projector from his office. (It has been returned, you'll be happy to know.) Then, I traced the silhouttes from the giraffe and the elephant from the curtains and got the monkey picture from online. I put them onto the clear paper with the vis-a-vis markers and projected them on the wall to draw in pencil. Here's how that looks when you're doing it:

It's actually pretty easy and I got all 3 of them done- drawing and initial painting- in a couple of hours. I used Delta Dreamcoat Light Foliage Green paint for the animals- yes- just the cheap 98 cent paint in the hobby store. It works fine! I did use a primer first and then painted over with the lighter green. Then I went back and outlined in black to cover mistakes. Ollie got to my paint brush that day and decided to add his personal touch to the room:

Inspired, don't you think?

If you want to get technical, the room is a neutral plus a color color scheme- my favorite in design school because it was the easiest to do- so that's why I stuck with green on the walls for the animals. Alright, I think that's it! Let me know if I left anything out.

If I was being completely honest, I'd show you a picture of what it looks like right now... trains and tracks everywhere, quilt on the floor because the rug hurts Henry's knees (I think- he doesn't complain), toys sprawled all over the place and Diego coming from the TV. If you have kids, you can most definitely imagine. Good thing is I can just close the door. Ahhh. Gotta love a playroom!