Vintage Toy Guest Room

A couple weeks back, we got a chance to get up to this room that my oldest son moved out of earlier this year.

We (meaning my husband) got the room painted after I cleaned it out and got it ready to go. I was so happy I could finally begin to move some of the kids old toys into it and get the bed set up.

I went "attic shopping" for almost everything in the room. I only had to buy paint, everything else we already had stashed except for the mattress and the headboard/footboard.

click on any photo to enlarge

It's a tiny little room, tucked under the eaves of this old house, just at the top of the stairs.

It faces south, so it's a nice bright room when the sun shines. It's cozy.

The metal bed is a lucky, unintended find from our local antique mall and was $35 plus three cans of spray paint in pistachio by Krylon. It's plain Jane but I kind of like it.

The chenille bedspread is one I already had...queen size goes over the top and sides of an extra deep twin and hangs to the floor just like I like it!

My husband is the expert painter in the family and he did the honors on this beauty and I swear, you'd think it was done in a body shop! (Buy the trigger made just for spray paint cans, they're totally worth it and they last and last!)

And, I can't show you quite yet, but I happened to have a doll bed I bought for a few dollars at a garage sale that he painted the same color that I am currently making a bedding set for, it's a miniature of this bed!

It's so much fun to see things you never realized were just meant for each other!

Now this room isn't anything to write home about, no doubt some of ya'll have closets bigger than this room. Luckily, this room does have its own tiny little walk-in closet.

And I have plans for that, too.

That's where I am going to try to cram all of my sewing supplies so I can get them out of sight. Where they currently reside in my craft room, they're out there for the whole world to see and any of you that sew know how that can be....you look like a hoarder when you just collect just a little fabric here and there. (Ahem!)

Really, when people looking at my sewing and craft supplies, it is just red-face embarrassing for me.

It makes me s.w.e.a.t. So, I am going to do something about it!

The feeling I get when a guest looks at my stacks of "creative supplies" is similar to the feeling one would get if she found out her dress were tucked into her underwear and pantyhose while she walked up the main aisle of church during service, with all of the ushers lined up across the back of the auditorium, watching, along with the rest of the congregants in the back rows! (DON'T ask me who did this...hehe =)

It's been kind of fun to dig out the vintage items from the totes they were stored in and put them into the room.

Of course, this old vintage paint by number doggie painting had to make the cut, it's just darling and tiny, like this little room, plus it makes me smile.

There's a tiered bookshelf with glass doors that holds a bunch of my vintage children's books and I haven't got them all moved in yet. But this shelf happens to hold vintage Little Golden Books. I can't wait until my grandson chooses one with his chubby little hands and brings it to me with a smile, asking me to read to him!

This character in the tiny chair below belongs to my husband, but it has to be put away when someone sleeps in the room, I put him in the closet. And I turn his grinning face to the wall.

He'd give you the heebie jeebies if you looked over at him while trying to fall asleep. YIKES!

(I should tell you that anytime we SKYPE with my daughter and her husband and Levi, Mr. Howdy Doody sneaks out of his hiding place and always places his spooky self within range of the camera and he always startles my daughter, but good, each and every time! HA!)

(Why did anyone think this was a cool toy?!)

Most of the toys I saved were Fisher Price, there are a few Playskool in the mix. (Did you know that Amazon.com carries a line of new retro Fisher-Price toys? They're all classics and there's probably fifteen that they're replicating. Now our kids can have the good stuff we remember. Pretty smart of the manufacturer to go this route!0

I just love this old Fisher Price circus train...and of course the classic "Rock-a-Stack" baby toy.

Popcorn popper anyone?

This little red doll high chair was bought at a garage sale last summer for $2. Yes, really. Isn't it too cute? In the bag under the chair are doll clothes for the doll that sits in the high chair. I'm just beggin' kids to stay and play awhile!

Oh, look, it's a vintage ME! Circa 1960's.

I have a couple little girl's dresses from my own childhood era hanging in the room, they're too cute to hide, and I love this--I mean little ducks and the other tiny and sweet details? Too cute for words.

On the shelf above the bed I have a little section set aside for Raggedy Ann and some books that go with her. I spelled out RAGGEDY with vintage letter blocks. I couldn't find an "A" so the bunny is standing in for it.

I just picked some rick rack out of the basket and tacked it to the edge of the shelf, one clear tack at each end! It's perfect but temporary and can be changed if I want to change the "color scheme" of the room.

Once the bed was set up, I went diggin' in my stash of oh so cool to the touch, cotton vintage sheets and lookie, I found a whole matching set in yellow...so on they went!

I have a question.

Why is making a bed up with vintage sheets way more fun than making a bed up with new ones?

I also have a set of vintage Sesame Street sheets you can request, if you want to come spend the night...

The dresser in this room was in pieces in our first little house we bought and fixed up before we got married. My husband secretly put it back together and refinished it for a wedding gift for me! He surprised me with it on our wedding day! He had chosen heart-shaped drawer pulls to finish it off... how sweet is that?

It's been mine for almost thirty years now, and so has he!

I've tried to never change it for sentimental reasons. (If it weren't sentimental, I would paint it for this space.)

That's my youngest son's Tickle Me Elmo on the bed. It's the newest toy in the room and is about thirteen years old.

Remember when Tickle Me Elmo was the HAVE TO HAVE gift for Christmas? Ahh...the memories. Well, the tickling and giggling/singing got old after about two days and that was the end. So Elmo is really almost like new. (Battery toys, blah!)

I kind of want to curl up in the bed and read...or...

...sleep!

Nap time for me!

There's nothing like a midday nap...