Train table/block table: Temporarily repurposing furniture for life with kids

Just thought I would share this cool idea I came up with a few years ago. I had this great glass-top coffee table from my past life that was packed away as soon as my kid started crawling and pulling up.

When she was about 2.5, an experienced walker who wouldn't bash her head on the corners, I decided to bring the table back into circulation—sans the still dangerous glass tops.






I cut out plywood the same size as the glass inserts and decorated them as aerial landscapes, with water, bushes, and such. Now she has a totally unique train and block table with room for storage below.



I like the table so much, it's found its way back into my living room, now as a block table. And when she trades in her blocks for bigger kid activities I can pop my glass tops back in, get my living room back and pine nostalgically for the little kid days.

New century eclectic boho kid's room

Style points:

• futon on floor
• mix of fabrics/prints
• bright wall
• corkboard of original art

It's true, I have my own highly unique style (wink wink). It is based in not having alot of money or alot of time to "decorate" but being sort of artsy. It is executed by using alot of what I happened to have around. (We bought the house with a red wall in this room and it just "worked" so we left it.)

The genius of a full-size futon on the floor for a child cannot be overstated. It allowed me to co-sleep until the child was old enough to sleep on her own, while allowing my husband to be undisturbed. It allows me now to cuddle up comfortably for stories and for those nights that I choose to "sleep over." I actually prefer the feel of the floor futon to my own real bed and love the ultra-dark room that we first created to help with baby sleep. Now the child sleeps through anything— til 630 or 7 am rolls around. But back to the fantastic decor...

The mix of bold colored stripes of various weights with the beloved "jaguar" (as in Baby Jaguar) print fuzzy blanket is kicky and fun. The green frog humidifier is a bold contrast to the reds, pinks and purples. The crisp white hand me down lamp from 3 boyfriends ago is clean and modern, placed behind an angular K-Mart night table/shelf for bedtime story books, inflatable frogs and more.

I stole these shelves from what was a sewing room when we moved into our house. They were situated on a table top, but now I use them alongside the futon for books, books, and thangs. You can also catch a glimpse here of my very unique window treatments (and effective room darkening shades). And just to the left is a framed rubbing of the pressed sidewalk of Barcelona's Passeig de Gracia, draped with Tibetan prayer flags and a Nataraja sculpture—I told you it was eclectic!

Other walls of the room have some original paintings (both framed and unframed) that I created when I was pregnant, and also after having my child. The very best part of the eclectic boho kid's room, though, is the original art, by the child herself, rotated on and off of the corkboard!