Well… it was bound to happen. And as “against” it as we were at first, we sure have embraced it now! It’s funny how our feelings about certain things change when we grow up have kids.

Our downstairs room used to be a rec room complete with a pool table, dart board, and bar stools. Now it’s the family/play room complete with a play kitchen, Nintendo, and pack-n-play. I wish I had “before” pictures to show the complete transformation, but that was a whole different phone camera ago! But here are the “after” pictures of one of the best most-utilized rooms in our house, our family/play room: 

Baby/toddler side on the left; Teen side on the right

Baby/toddler side with pack-n-play, chalkboard easel, play kitchen, and alphabet mat

Teen side with music corner, movie corner, game wall, and TV/DVD player

Seating area with safari-themed art wall behind it

One of my favorite parts of the room is our safari-themed wall, inspired by our map of the Animal Kingdom safari at Disney World:

But anyway… this post is not about our downstairs family/play room. It is about the newest change/update to our house in our living room. Our main living space. The first room you see when you walk in the front door and turn towards the open room on the left.

After we started the growing up phase sold the pool table and started transforming our downstairs room to a play room, there was still a part of me that didn’t want to get rid of our bar table and bar stools. They were a nice set, and I just thought we would make room for it somewhere. Well that “somewhere” has been in the front corner of our living room, and for the most part, it has gone unused – except on certain football Sundays when a lot of people gather at our house to watch the Seahawks and we need the few extra places to sit:

Besides those game days, the beloved bar table has mainly been used as a quick dumping space for mail or “things to take away from Zara so she can’t reach them”, and the bar stools have mainly been used as a comfy place for Phil to relax out of Zara’s reach. More than anything, it has been a wasted space that gets cluttered.

In the meantime, Zara has acquired some new “Zara-sized things”, and as much as we said we didn’t want our living room to become a play room, it has become clear that a kid corner is more important than an adult corner now. So now, the bar table and bar stools are gone, and we have replaced them with miniature table and chairs for the kids.

Here is Zara, sitting at her new Zara-sized craft and snack table…

And here is a close-up of the wall, complete with canvas prints of my Gavin maternity photos with Zara, and framed artwork made by Hayden and Zara:

And the new favorite furniture piece in our house is the multi-colored, striped, Zara-sized comfy chair that she is just ecstatic about:

It was this chair that prompted the need for a kid corner. Where was it supposed to go? Zara loves it, and she needed a better Zara-sized chair to sit in while we’re hanging out in the living room. She also had the white snack/craft table that needed a permanent home, that had otherwise been placed outside on the back deck for her summer play dates:

Yep, it’s inevitable… As Jeremy and I grow up, our world is being taken over by kids. They outnumber us now in our family. As much as we used to enjoy have room for a pool table and bar stools, we now need to make room for kid-sized things. And we couldn’t be happier about it. 🙂