Christmas Aftermath....

Wow.  In the words of my mom, apparently "Santa hit the Nolan household and stalled".  Or at least that's what it looked like when we arrived to "Nonie and Grampy's" house on Christmas afternoon to a mountain of presents - mostly for Heidi and her cousin Connor, of course.  When we got back home and unpacked everything, I was left with the dilemma of where to put everything.  Not to mention the fact that Robb and I had given Heidi a beautiful wooden play kitchen for Christmas, which, while beautiful, also contributed to the massive amount of toys in the playroom/family room/sun room.  I knew that the storage that I had in place before Christmas wasn't going to be able to cut it for the aftermath of Christmas toys.  While Heidi did receive a beautiful toy box handcrafted by her great-grandfather, it wasn't the best solution for toy storage for all of her toys, since they all wouldn't fit in there, and she currently isn't tall enough to reach in to choose the toy she would like to play with.  Here's a couple "before" shots  - meaning before a storage solution, but "after" Santa's visit:

See how her toys are all just piled in the toy box?  I wanted to find something that would better display her toys so that she could choose the toy she wanted - instead of pulling me by the arm, and pointing and grunting until I correctly provide her with the toy she had been looking for (which was her chosen method when her toys were stored using the above method).  A friend of mine (thanks Emily!) clued me in to the IKEA Expedit series of products - specifically the 2 x 4 cube bookshelf, as pictured here:

image courtesy of IKEA

So, the day after Christmas, we made a family trek to IKEA to pick this up  - at $69, I considered it a bargain.  It was super easy to put together, albeit pretty heavy, and I think it looks great serving as our sofa console table/toy storage shelf - the dimensions were similar to the dimensions of our console table that was there previously (which I just sold on Craigslist, together with the matching coffee table, for $100!).  Here's how Heidi's play area looks now (when she's sleeping of course - when she's awake and playing , all bets are off!):

I'm currently searching for a nice, thick 5x7 rug to put in place of the rug/mat hodge podge that's going on there now, but for the moment, the rug/mat serves its purpose by creating a barrier between Heidi and the ceramic tile floor!

I know it's been awhile since my last post - in addition to spending time with my family, I've also been working on several additional projects concurrently, which I hope to unveil in the coming days, so stay tuned!