Room Tour: Life Diary Play Room

Today’s room tour is from the supremely cool Heather from Quick Brown Fox of Dulwich who is sharing the play room of her two little foxlets. From the Mama-designed fabric to the family history there is a story woven into every piece in this room.

I subscribe entirely to the belief that your home should be a diary of your life. Of all the rooms in our house, it’s my girls’ playroom that best captures this philosophy. Although there is of course, a bit of randomly accumulated tut that inevitably finds its way into their play space (party bags….aaarrrgh!), there are so many objects in there that make me smile and also appeal into my sentimental self.

From the Banksy prints that the girls’ slightly eccentric Uncle Chucky has bought my elder daughter for her last two birthdays (what more could any pre-schooler want?) to the photograph on the mantle piece of my mum bringing home my sister from the hospital to the ugly duckling mahogany bookcase that Laura from Pistachio Giraffe made beautiful for us with a lick of paint and some cool Nordic papers.

I bought the IKEA toddler bed for a shoot and decided to keep it as it makes such a cute sofa. The cot bed cover is a sample in ‘goggle gingham’ print from our London Toile range and the cushions from various fabric off cuts (and one from ED in Northcross Rd).

The kitchen we bought second hand from a lady round the corner from us in East Dulwich. She insisted that we come round to collect it one Saturday morning while her daughter was at ballet so that she wasn’t traumatised by witnessing its ‘rehoming’. I remember instructing my husband and his friend to go and get it after their morning run and two sweaty men carried it through the streets of East Dulwich. It’s threatening to fall apart but we have had some serious mileage out of it – the cupboards are great for hiding mess in!

 

Loads of the girls’ toys are my old ones that my mother carefully preserved for us and have been halfway around the world and back again to get this green and pleasant land. The Fabuland Lego creatures were my absolute favourite possessions as a kid, and the yellow Fisher Price house has all the fun and charm it had 30 something years ago. (See Lucy’s guide to buying Vintage for Children if your Mother didn’t save your toys!)

I vividly remember buying the reconditioned red highchair from Too Much Too Young at the Kids Modern fair a year or so ago. I was hugely pregnant and accompanied by my daughter who for some reason thought it necessary to completely humiliate me with tantrum after tantrum. I couldn’t resist buying the highchair for her, but to make a point, I kept it in the boot of the car for a couple of days until she had redeemed herself!

 

I fell head over hills in love with the giant Lego storage boxes after seeing them on a BG post. We’ve positioned the enormous yellow Lego head in one of windows and apparently the local children are quite bemused by his cheeky face watching them as they walk past our house. We like being the people who live in the ‘Lego-head house’

I find myself spending more and more time with the girls in their playroom; it’s such a happy, vibrant space, especially on a dull winter’s day. And nothing makes me smile more than seeing my littlies tinkering with my treasured hand-me-down toys (oh and when they play nicely for more than 30 minutes together without resorting to mutual hair-pulling and I can have a nice cup of tea and read a magazine).

Get the look: Giant lego storage from Store, rug from Designers Guild (a lucky sale bargain), Love Mae wall stickers and cot bedding  from Quick Brown Fox of Dulwich, dotty wall hooks from GLTC, a similar kitchen is available at GLTC and Child’s bed used as a sofa from Ikea.

Thank you for sharing your gorgeous play room Foxy and the Foxlets, we definitely want to come over to play in the Lego Head House!

Tagged Banksy, Designers Guild, Fisher Price, Giant Lego Head, GLTC, Ikea, kids.modern, Lego Storage Boxes, Love Mae, Playroom Tour, Quick Brown Fox of Dulwich, Store, Too Much Too Young