Our bathroom may be unusable, but at least it's pretty!

Our bathrooms here have been seriously depressing me... SERIOUSLY.  So I spent a few hours the other day attempting to clean ours, which was very difficult considering I can hardly even get back into the corner where the toilet is.  To remind you, this is what that corner looks like:

It's so bad.  Cleaning back in that corner was not fun!  Anyway, so I spent a good deal of time cleaning all the dirt, dust, and other crap left over from the construction workers who never clean up after themselves, and then I got the bathroom set up!  I had to buy a cabinet that sits on the floor to give us at least somewhere to put our stuff, since there isn't a single cupboard or shelf in the entire room. I wish I could have done something a little cheaper, but it was really my only option as a renter.  I couldn't get anything that you have to actually install & screw into the walls.  I'm still amazed that I found a cabinet small enough that it wouldn't be too much in the way.  It was a miracle.  I spent probably 3 hours looking around online to find something, anything that could work!

Here's the bathroom before I cleaned it up & beautified it:

And after:

At least it's pretty now, right?  I bought a super cheap mirror & hung it behind the sink so that we can use the sink the right way and still be able to see in the mirror.

 I love our shower curtain.  We've had an ugly, dark, plain brown shower curtain for the past 4 years.  Our bathroom was always so dark.  I wanted a brighter, happier shower curtain and brighter colored rugs this time.  I love the bright green!

And that's our tiny little cabinet!  It's super tiny, but it holds what I need it to hold.  And somehow, it's actually not too much in our way!  That wedding picture won't be staying there for very long.  I just wanted something on that side of the cabinet for now, but it will be replaced soon, probably by hairspray or something like that.

They finished painting our house!

They finally finished painting the outside of our house.  I definitely wouldn't have chosen these colors, but anything is better than the way it used to look.  Here is the before & after:

Before--Super ugly.

After--Not as bad!

The Playroom is Finished!! (Almost)

We still have a million things to do to get our house in order, and our bedroom is full of boxes that need unpacking, but I spent most of the day and all night finishing the playroom instead!  Because that's way more fun.

There are a few things that I'd like to do before I'd call the playroom 100% finished, but most of those things won't happen for a long time, if ever.  For example, in my dream world, I'd love to have a giant bean bag chair, like a lovesac, as part of the reading nook.  But that will probably never happen, because those things are freakin' expensive!  I also want to hang a few more pictures above the dress-up center.  I have some cute photos of the girls in their dress-up clothes that I want to put in some 4x6 frames and hang up.  So I'll do that someday.  And I have an AWESOME poster print that I want to hang up above the bookshelf.  It's in a frame, but the frame is cheap and won't work, so I have to wait until I can find a better frame.  Anyway, it's a poster print of the mural on the wall of the children's section of the BYU library.  I love that mural.  It's got characters from nursery rhymes and lots of children's stories incorporated into it.  I got the print as a gift when I was in college, and I've been planning on hanging it in a reading nook for my children ever since.  So now that I have kids and a playroom with a reading area, I am going to hang it up!  And it's going to be awesome.

That's my big poster print... I don't know if you can actually see any of the details, but it's awesome.  Just take my word for it. :)  Some of the stories that are in the mural are The Chronicles of Narnia, Shiloh, Aesop's Fables (You can see the Tortoise & the Hare)... those are just a few.

I had to order a toy organizer thing for our toys, because they looked something like this:

It was ridiculous.  But now they look like this:

So pretty!  So organized!  I love it.  I maybe was super ridiculously excited to get that organizer.  I knew it was coming today, because I was tracking it online, so I was waiting for the FedEx guy all day.  Naomi & I put it together as soon as it got here, and she actually helped me clean up and organize all the toys!  It took almost an hour, too, and she didn't stop helping until we were done.  She is a pretty great helper!

Here are some more pretty pictures!  I organized our playroom into sections.

Reading Area... in my dream world, if I had a giant bean bag chair, it would go right under the window.  Lots of natural light for reading!  But for now, they use their animal pillows that they got from Aunt Rebekah for Christmas!  Also someday I'd like to put up some fun curtains.

Because I'm a perfectionist, I had to organize the books all pretty before I could take pictures.  It took me about 45 minutes.  And by 10:00 tomorrow morning, they'll probably all be on the floor.  But it looks pretty for now!

Kitchen Area:

Dress-up Center:

When I was teaching, one of my students gave me this framed thing as a gift after I had Naomi.  Her mom made it for me.  I thought the saying fit in pretty well with the dress-up center.

There's a lot of empty space on the wall above the dress-up center, so I want to hang some cute pictures of the girls in their dress-up clothes.  Here are some photos I took just a couple days ago.  My mom sent the girls little tiaras in the mail, so we had fun dressing up and playing with them!

Ridiculously cute, I know. :)

Ok, Art Area:

In the magazine holder above the table, I have coloring books & paper.  In the 3 little buckets above the easel, I have markers, crayons, and chalk.  And the chalkboard eraser is beside the chalk bucket.  And it looks like the buckets are kinda crooked, so I will have to fix that!  You can't see it, but the side of the easel facing the table is a chalkboard.

The art supplies are super high on the wall, but I had to put them high enough that Naomi and Aleta can't reach them even when standing on the table or the easel.  They are both climbers now, and I don't want them to be able to dump all the art supplies on the floor.  Eventually, I will start hanging some of their artwork on the wall there, too.

The last wall is all the rest of the toys.  Someday I'd like a cuter way to store the stuffed animals, which are just in that big plastic bin right now.  I saw a cute swing idea on pinterest, where the animals are all sitting on little pieces of wood that hang down from the ceiling like a swing.  But that's not really practical for our house right now! 

I love the playroom so much!  Having all of this space for the girls to play and keep their toys has made life SO much easier.  It's so nice for them to have their own space.  And they have been playing with their toys so much more now that they're organized and in a room of their own.

So, who wants to come play with us?