Is it a bed? Is it a fort?

This weekend I was supposed to be organizing my craft room...however Sierra has had a mischievious weekend and I didn't get much time in my room at all. We instead, went to IKEA. What did we buy?
Is it a bed?

Is it a fort?

Nope it was toy storage organization!

We have a little alcove in our kitchen which is the girls main play area. (We spend most of time in this one kitchen/living/play room. It's the hub of our home) I should have taken a before shot but really it was too embarrassing to. The wall where the storage unit is was littered with bins and bags of toys and then more loose toys scattered all over the floor. Nothing really worked but throwing toys in piles. I was tired of the mess and wanted a better way to promote clean up time effectively.

It's only day one but so far so good! Sierra enjoys looking for the bins to put the toys away properly. She has a bad habit of throwing toys and books so we are hoping this will help promote respect with how we treat our belongings!

I will be taking photos of groups of toys that belong in each bin too so they can see at a glance which toy belongs where without pulling out the bins. I'll try to remember to edit this to add in the completed look when I get the photos done :)

We have books in almost every room in our home. I tried to organize these ones in rainbow colours as seen here. I love the look of her bookshelf. Upon trying to do this myself I realized that most of our book spines are white, but we did manage to get a few lined up here.

Today we also went to the Richmond Nature Park since we were in the area after visiting IKEA. As mentioned earlier Sierra was not in the greatest of moods today and she didn't want to walk so her and Aayla stayed in the stroller. I also didn't have my good camera with me so we didn't get any pictures of the birds as they were too far away.

They both enjoyed the nature house at the park though. It's a neat little place with lots of information there. It's set up to learn through play there with live tanks with snakes, newts and frogs. (They do an animal exploration time, as well as guided tours at the park certain days.) Sierra and Aayla liked playing with the frog game which was set up as Tic Tac Toad! There were puzzles to do, microscopes to explore, bees to watch, stamps of animal tracks, games, fun facts everywhere, taxidermied animals, a mini movie and more!

A couple pics of them having fun at the nature house.



So if you live near us I recommend a trip the the Richmond Nature Park. It's a great stroller path however I would recommend an All Terrain Stroller trail as there are some bumps along the path. Don't forget to stop by the nature house too!