The Map! and other playroom related things....

We love our kids' new playroom. However, it has a few "design challenges". First, the floor is linoleum. What? Not sure why the previous owners made their bonus room flooring laminate unless they were worried about big spills during excessive Wii playing!

Our kids mainly do art, play Wii, and play dress up in our playroom, so not too much mess to be had. It was feeling a tad cold and loud, so I added this 8x10 rug

(Please overlook this terrible picture.) Back to the map. This is a ha-uuuge map, 78"x56", from Ikea. It needed to fill quite a large wall that couldn't take any furniture. As you can see in this picture, we have a pull downstair case that accesses the attic. We need clear access to this, so furniture was not an option. Ikea had other large art work, but in the spirit of wanting my kids to know where the actual Madagascar was...not just the Chris Rock/Ben Stiller version! Ha! Move it move it!

You can see the depth of this map, and how it should work nicely to get the attic stairs down around it.

Secondly, since we needed seating and couldn't fit in a couch or other large chairs, I decided to go with these possible "poufs", or "poops", as my four year old says. Aren't they cute? I first saw them on an etsy site, and the gal wanted $175 a pouf! That just makes my money go "pouf"!

So, needless to say, I went this route. I really like bean bags for kids, but they always tend to get all lumpy, then totally deflated, and just a total mess. These are much firmer, kind of like little mini ottomans. I liked these, from Serena+Lily, too, but couldn't make the color scheme work as well. Aren't these cutie-patootie?

And, they are ergonomic...isn't that what every 8 year old needs while playing Mario Kart?

We have had these fun paper stars, and the fabric on the back of the desk "backsplash" is also a red/blood orange color, so the poufs worked well with all this scheme. I try to work in neutrals, and add in meaningful splashes of color. I usually, also, try to work in only 3 colors. In this case, its khaki/black/blood orange. Might seem odd, but with the linoluem (dark brown), new area rug (khaki/brown), and our desk (black), I had to lean into the splash of color being one that we'd already started. See our old playroom here to see the colors we "moved" with and what I'm working with.

Stay tuned for possible window treatments and painting update, for this room. Until then, thanks for checking out our playroom!