Saturday, January 8, 2011

Handmade Home #4: Stuff for Jonah and Silas

Before the boys were born I worried that they wouldn't have very many books in English. Well that worrying was a complete waste of time, because my boys have so many books we can hardly find a place to store them all. Their grandmas bring them books, mail them books, send books down for them with other people... when teams come down they bring them books. We have tons of children's books. I am so thankful because Jonah and Silas love books!

Well this was driving me crazy...
This is an old picture. It was cute at first, but worrying about pages being torn, cleaning it up several hundred times and fighting to keep them away from the books wasn't fun. So we kept a couple board books in a basket on the floor where they can reach them, but we decided all the paper/nicer ones needed a better home.

Several months ago Jimmy bought me some old produce crates from the market for about 25 cents each. They are very crudely put together, but served their purpose of hauling produce to and from the market. These crates are all over our house now in various forms.
Jimmy tore a couple apart to build some hanging book shelves for the boys.
I love them! The wood looks nice and worn. The boys smiled when they saw all their books on the wall, I think they thought it was funny. It is very functional!
With all their birthday presents and then Christmas coming around the corner, I new I needed a plan so that we weren't swimming in toys. They don't have a ridiculous amount of toys, there are just *no closets in this house* to store them in! It is hard to make things not look cluttered when you have to store things out in the open. I had been storing all their toys here...
The new plan was to put these baskets under one of the cribs for larger toys and then make something new for the smaller toys that could be manhandled by 2 little toddlers and not end up in bits and pieces. And not plastic... we have a new rule in our house, we don't bring anything into our home that wouldn't look nice in the living room, that way everything can be moved around the house as our needs change. So I went with fabric... burlap actually. I need to stop with the burlap, but I just can't! I love fabric with texture!
I used a pattern purchased from maya*made. Her large was my small though, so I had to, in the words of my jr high geometry teacher, guesstimate the other 2. It is an excellent pattern, with tons of photos. It made it quick and easy.
These are perfect for Jonah and Silas right now because they are in the sorting stuff phase. They take stuff out of the bag and then put it back in. Right now that is more fun than the actual toy. I love watching them... seeing their little growing minds at work!

1 comment:

  1. What an awesome idea! I LOVE the shelves on the wall and the "gunny sacks" (farm terminology)...they look beautiful as well as being functional. You both are very creative...

    ReplyDelete

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