inspiration

Real Rooms

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I’m sure you’ve seen lots of amazingly decorated perfect rooms around the internet. I LOVE getting inspiration from pictures of kids’ rooms. However looking at those can sometimes make us think our rooms aren’t good enough or will never look that good. You know what? Who cares. We do what we can do and as long as our kids are happy what does it matter if their rooms aren’t fit for the cover of an interior design magazine?

Thinking about all of that got me to thinking maybe I’m the only one who thinks that? Maybe I’m the only one whose kids’ rooms aren’t what I had envisioned when I was little and planning my perfect life. So I asked a couple of my blogger friends to share their kids rooms, right now however they look.

The thing I love the most out of all of these rooms is that you can see personality of the parents and kids. You can tell each of these parents has a sense of design/art/style and yet there are actual kids living/playing/messing in these rooms. Some are clean, some aren’t so picked up and yet they are all so fun in their own ways!

Here are 2 rooms from my friends over at The Happy Family Movement. They actually blogged about their rooms on Monday

Kelly from Kelly Noel Photography has some sports loving boys – this room is SO perfect for them!

Jen from The Brothers Trimm shared these pictures with me of her colorful, adorable room.

Here are some pictures from Alison over at This Homemade Life – boys obviously live here 😉

and here are a few shots from Jen from Ambrosia Creative (love the poster) she posted about their rooms here

and probably way too many pictures of our rooms 😉 I obviously have 2 very different peronalities here!


Apparently we hang up markers with tape? Anyway there it is the boys’ rooms in all their lived in glory 🙂 

So what do you think? Are you still inspired even though we aren’t ready for a cover shoot? Did you like a peek into some bloggers’ real kids rooms? I was!

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Allison Waken is a wife, mom of boys and Phoenix, AZ native. She has been creating inspiring content for All for the Boys since 2011. Allison loves travel, movies and spending as much time as possible with her family while she can!

20 Comments

  1. I think it's great to see so much of the kids artwork being proudly displayed! Wonderful 'real' rooms.

  2. Bless you!
    Bless you!
    Bless you!

    Bless you… for doing a post on real rooms. I feel much better now!

  3. Thanks for an inspiring post! My kids rooms (age 2 and 4) are always messy, especially the 4-year-old's since she can change her own clothes. I was really inspired by the pictures of your boys' room, the black/grey/tan one. I might paint my son's room a greyish-tan, and I like how the black furniture looks against that colour.

  4. Since we know we're moving this year, I've been collecting ideas for my almost 7 yr old.
    Thank you so much for sharing some realness. I don't feel so pressured to make the perfect room now!

  5. This is a fantastic post. Thanks for reminding me that I'm normal. I recently posted a few photos from our messy bedroom…I know we'll never be featured in a design blog and I'm totally fine with that!

    Andrea

  6. Whew- I feel so much better!
    We sold our old house last year and had to maintain the "perfect kids rooms" for 2 months of showings.
    I vowed that when we moved into the new house we'd let the kids get their rooms back the way they like (aka: messy!)
    And now they certainly are- but at least I know I'm in good company ;o)
    Thanks!

  7. It is nice to see rooms that are lived in and not enormous. It's not always the decor of rooms on blogs that get me (a lot of which I think is for the parents, not the kid), it is also the size of the rooms. It seems like every child's room I see online is twice the size we have to work with.

  8. Love, love, love it. My son's room is upstairs, so we rarely play there since he is so young. However, I should take a photo of his room and share it because it is dark in there all the time. He has 7 windows (we live in an old bungalow) and was struggling to sleep, so we finally put dark paper over the windows (behind the blinds) to help his sleep. IT WORKED, so who knows when he will have natural light in his room

    BTW, love the flat baskets under your sons bed. Where did you get those??

  9. Awesome. So awesome. Makes me feel better about all the loose ends and unfinished projects in my boys' rooms. Deep breaths. It will get done, or it won't. Either way it's all good.

  10. aaaahhhh i love it! JUST today, my little man and i visited a neighbor friend, and i was bummed to see how COOL and organized her play room (and every bit of her house) is. thank you for posting this! i was glad to see a worn out toy bin with snags on it, and that i'm not the only one who puts up with the kids sticking posters and drawings on the wall. which i LOVE. i love hanging their artwork on the walls, just always so annoyed that i can't ever find the time to put up cool ways of displaying it like giant bulletin boards or magnet boards (my latest idea). one of these days. for now, our home functions just the way we need it to, and it's busting at the seams with love and laughter!

  11. Seriously, I could hug you for this post! This IS real. REALLY Real "real".

    I mean, don't get me wrong, it IS nice to see rooms all done up, organized, pretty, over-the-top "neat" but then I almost can’t even imagine someone REALLY living in them – especially a BOY! <gasp>

    I have three boys and when I see some of the things designers put out in the main living areas of homes in the magazines I cringe. Something on a coffee table? Are you KIDDING ME?! Yeah, it’d be in pieces, poured out or plucked in about 10 seconds flat!

    Real kids hang stuff from the wall. Not just pretty framed matted hand drawn images, but things they’ve ripped out of magazines or just a random Lego figure they built. They stick silly putty on the wall — just to see if it will stick… and then forget about it… and there… it sticks…for weeks. There is no organization method…it's play with this now…. drop it here… and now we'll play with THIS! (and drop it elsewhere to play with something ELSE!)

    Bless you for keepin’ it real!!!

  12. I will just echo everyone else and say YAY! This was really fun and good to see. Thanks moms for having fun and keeping things messy!

  13. Thank you so much for posting these! I just spent a couple of days cleaning up all the miscellaneousness in my boys room. I'm also in the process of trying to figure out a look for a 3rd baby boy we're expecting in May… so I've been living in between the magazine worthy pictures of beautiful nurseries and the reality of what his little bedroom will eventually look like. Thanks for helping me realize that we're totally normal 🙂

  14. So loved seeing this. I am always looking for design ideas and usually they look so great that I cannot figure how to make it work in my living room much less my children's bedroom. This was a realistic presentation of how children use their room and therefore how we need to design for them…even with a maid to clean up after them and no eating in the rooms. Thanks!

  15. Great! Finally some real rooms- that's how it looks at our home more or less too… it's nice to look at all those "perfect" kids rooms and dream- but reality looks like above and that's okay! Thanks.

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