Sara & Jason’s Terrific Toy-Tastic Home

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Name: Sara & Jason and 3 furry children: Ash, Ronin, and Kuma
Location: Kansas City, Missouri
Size: 1,700 square feet
Years lived in: 3 — owned

When it comes to displaying collections no one quite takes the job as seriously as the residents of this house. What started as a passion and a hobby of collecting vinyl toys and artwork from artists around the world has turned into a way of life for these folks in The Heartland. They say surround yourself with what you love and that’s exactly what they’ve done. Do you know what’s better than a color coded bookshelf? A wall of color coded vinyl toys — be still my obsessive heart!

(Image credit: Apartment Therapy)

In this home reside two artists who do a bang up job of properly presenting a large collection. Often times items can just look like “stuff on a shelf” but they give each piece in their home a proper place and purpose that pulls the whole look together. Many of the pieces in their home are their own, you can find more of Sara’s work over at her Etsy shop Multiple Personality. This home might be full of all sorts of fun things but it’s far from feeling cluttered thanks to the neutral colors and spacious floor plan. Ready to find out what they’re all about?

(Image credit: Apartment Therapy)

Apartment Therapy Survey:

Our Style: We are just really big kids. To be completely honest we buy and collect things we love and just hope that we can figure out a way to make them all work in our house. I’m not really sure if it always works but I don’t really care I just go with it! I don’t really feel like we have one style but for me I defiantly lean more towards modern when it comes to furniture and my dream home although I would live in some crazy castle or “Addams Family” type home with secret rooms in a heartbeat!

Inspiration: We are both children of the 80’s so a lot of our childhood and what we loved as children have stayed with us throughout the years with a little bit of “grownup” aspect added in. I have always wanted to live in a Tim Burton esque world and as a kid the movie Big really made me want to stay “kid-like” forever. Art, color, character design and graphic design have always played a large part in our lives since we art both artists — so that defiantly carries over to our home. We both have a lot of collections of things we love from toys and action figures (I’m to blame for the thousands that reside in our home, thankfully Jason puts up with it) art and prints, video game systems and video games, movies, books, comics and way to many other collections to list. I am also a huge research nerd and could spend all day looking for cool products, furniture, art, toys, etc. that inspire me.

Favorite Element: For the area we were looking at when buying a home, it was very hard to find something with more of an open floor plan because with as much as we collect it can become a little claustrophobic. I would definably love it to be even be more open but we were really happy with the layout of our home for the most part. I also really love our upstairs fireplace that takes up almost the entire wall.

Biggest Challenge: Our house was built in the 70’s so a lot of the sinks, cabinets, doors and fixtures were all original to when the house was built and none of them are in very good shape. We still have quite a lot of work to do but for now we will just have to live with our gold glittery fake marble sinks.

What Friends Say: “It’s like walking through an art/toy gallery in your house!”

Biggest Embarrassment: I’m not in love with some of the beige wall colors or that we have carpet throughout the house but when we bought the house it was all freshly painted with neutral colors and new carpet and I just didn’t have the energy to try and re paint them all…someday though! The steps down to our basement are very narrow and they were covered in carpet by the previous owner and have been a nice scratching post for one of our cats, they look lovely with bits of carpet missing!

Proudest DIY: I am always doing DIY projects because I usually cannot find or afford what I have in my head that I want. When we bought our house all of the wood trim, cabinets, and doors were original to when the house was built in the 70’s and were all in pretty bad shape. I spent a lot of night’s after work painting and fixing all the doors and trim before we moved in and replacing hardware and lights. Not the coolest DIY project but it made a world of difference to our house.

Biggest Indulgence: Our collections. They make me happy everyday!

Best Advice: Be creative and make your space represent who you are. You live there after all, so surround yourself with what you love!

Dream Sources: DWR, Hive Modern, Blu Dot, Herman Miller…I love a lot of things so this list would be a book long.

(Image credit: Apartment Therapy)

Resources of Note:

ENTRY/HALLWAY

Robert Abbey Anemone wall sconce

LIVING ROOM

have my own shop on Etsy

DINING ROOM

In Mod

Herman Miller (made from molded plastic)

Kenroy Lighted shelving

IKEA

West Elm

BACK ROOM/KITCHEN

BEDROOM

Le Klint Pendant lights

BATHROOM

GUEST ROOM

BASEMENT

(Image credit: Apartment Therapy)

Thanks, Sara & Jason!

Images: Sara Harvey

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