Confession time: we’ve lived in this house for four years now and I still have a ton of unfinished spaces. Partially because of money, partially because of babies, partially because my motivation waxes and wanes unpredictably. Well, this is one of them.

In my life before twins, it was going to be a library/office for me. It’s rather large for that purpose, but I have rather large visions, and I was going to fill it with my computer and a sewing machine and craft tables and well. All that fell by the wayside once we had twins.

After twins I started to get the idea that I wanted to turn it into a play room. The kids could have their own TV in there, tables for blocks and Lego’s, boxes to put everything in, and we could reclaim the living room as an adult space. But it was back-burnered forever because of cost, because I didn’t know where to put the stuff that’s in there now, because I had three small kids and nap schedules to maintain and potty training and every other thing.

Well. Since lightening struck our house and killed our TV, we decided to get another one. It turned out we could repair the old one on the insurance’s dime so now we have a TV for that room. And minus the couch I want, that was by far the biggest expense.

Concurrently I decided to turn the fourth bedroom upstairs into an office. One day I want all my kids to have their own rooms but let’s face it, we’ll probably move to make that happen, and while they’re little there’s no reason they can’t share as they have been. But that solved my bookshelf problem and I’ve been setting the office up slowly but surely so I could move everything up there.

My end goal is to get a bunch of this IKEA kallax furniture for the far wall where the bookshelves rest now. I love the idea of having all their toys in boxes to fit in there. They can be themed or not but I can carry the brick box around the room picking up bricks (and I can also conveniently place some toys out of their sight/reach.)

I also found these matching activity tables, which rocks!! I really wanted a regular train table but I think two of these will suffice. They cost the same as a train table and honestly I’ve heard even the $250 ones don’t hold up that well, which is a bummer. But these match the look of the bookshelves and offer the same space so I’m pleased with this find.

I ultimately want a long sofa like the one pictured above but that’s also quite a bit of cash we don’t just have lying around so we’ll make do in the mean time.

Also I’ve got a whole movie poster theme going on that I think will be super cute and a great way to fill the space on those long long walls.

My dream is to set this all up Christmas Eve for the kids to come down to that morning because Izzy gets soooo excited about stuff like this but let’s face it, that would be a serious amount of work for a few hours at night and I might not have the money to acquire most of this stuff by then. So that’s probably not going to happen. But at least I can set up their play kitchen I got them for Christmas in there. 😉

So here’s hoping I maintain some motivation but I plan to clear out (and hopefully sell) those bookshelves this week…! *fingers crossed*