One of the best parts of Christmas is seeing how kids respond with joy to their surroundings. The lights, sounds, and smells have such an impact and create memories that last all year. This year we made our basement playroom look extra festive with a colorful Christmas tree and shelves filled with Christmas books just waiting to be read.
Last December our basement looked completely different. We had just moved in and the space was a complete disaster. It was the overflow area for boxes that hadn’t been unpacked, toys that no longer had a storage cabinet, and excess furniture. It was cozy, but definitely not organized.
I’ve been working hard to make our house feel like home by rearranging rooms and adding storage, like our new built in basement bookshelves for our toys, books, and games. But somewhere around November I decided to go a bit over the top and decorate the basement play room for Christmas to make it extra festive. Tis the season, right?
Let’s look at how it turned out!
The bookshelves really are the star of this corner of the basement. It’s taken me months to complete them with trim and paint, but the results are 100% worth it. I’ll share the full DIY tutorial soon, but for now, you can just enjoy them decked out for Christmas.
For the holiday season, I decided to display our collection of favorite Christmas books. I opened up the books so they would stand up on the shelves, similar to how they display books at our library. A few holiday toys like our Little People Nativity and toy drum were mixed in just for fun.
The lower cabinets are filled with toys organized in clear bins as well as plastic baskets for larger toys and collections like Duplo and board games in bags. Just looking at this picture reminds me that I need to go through our toys in January and re-label a few boxes that have changed contents as well as purge a few items that are no longer being played with.
And since the pink play kitchen is a prominent fixture of our basement play room, I figured it should get a bit of holiday decorating as well. It’s amazing how adding a bit of red can make anything looks festive.
I mostly used thing I found around the house, like the jar for cookie cutters and the dish towel. The candy cane sign was new this year but it just felt so fitting since my kids adore candy canes and would eat one every day if they could. Sadly the sign is already sold out! It was from Target and only $5.
This year I had really good luck finding some budget friendly and cute Christmas decor. Shopping early is key though! I really noticed the good stuff selling out before Thanksgiving. This set of 4 brightly colored nutcrackers was so fun and ended up being cheaper than DIYing a set.
Our white Christmas tree is super budget friendly and has been the very best first ‘fake’ tree for our family. It’s easy to set up and I’m relieved to not have to string Christmas lights on a tree this year.
To decorate, I used a set of colorful plastic balls and two strands of rainbow felt garland. This was the perfect backdrop for us to layer on our special kid friendly ornaments that we have collected over the years.
The way the light glows off the freshly painted bookshelf just makes me feel so happy.
I hope you have enjoyed taking a peek into our festive & colorful basement playroom corner! It sure is a bright spot in our house and such a fun way to celebrate the season with kids.
Later this week I’ll share pictures of our upstairs, which has a very different vibe than the basement. I like to think of it as business up top, party in the basement. 🙂
