Weekend Projects.

Books. We haz them.

… and this photo is 7 months old. Since then, he’s acquired even more … and while his bookshelf is WAY cool (kuddos to my uncle who made it for me based off a Pottery Barn design), and even though I’ve moved a lot of the ‘baby’ books into the Froggy’s room … we’re starting to run out of space.

Not that I mind … there is no such thing as ‘too many books’ in my mind. I would much rather him have the problem of ‘where to put all of these books’ instead of ‘I wish we had more books’ … know what I mean? The Mouse LOVES to be read to, and he loves ‘reading’ to himself. When he around 18 months old, I’d have to leave several books in the crib with him at night. When it got to be too dark in his room for him to see the pictures, he’d push the button on his crib soother so that it would light up and he could ‘read’ to himself. I wish I had caught a picture of it. SO CUTE.

I was thinking we’d break down and get a ‘traditional’ bookshelf for him … something that would hold at least the overflow of books he doesn’t read all the time … and then I saw this idea on Pinterest:

Those are Ikea wooden spice racks … and yes, you read that price tag correctly … they’re $3.99 each. THREE NINTY NINE. Um, yes please, I’ll take a dozen.

Okay, I only took three:

By the way, Click, Clack, Moo is the funniest book EVER.

Cool, huh? So, for about $10, the Mouse has some seriously cute new bookshelves. I like that they’re totally inexpensive, and I like that they can be hung anywhere. I’ve hung them right over his bed, so he can get to them easily by himself if he wants to read in bed in the morning or something.

They’re not HUGE … so if you have a lot of books, and want to use this as the main way to store them, you’ll need a LOT of these little guys. But for $3.99 each, that’s totally doable. Oh, if and when you decide you want to make the trek out to Ikea for some of these, as an FYI they’re UPSTAIRS in the kitchen organization area, not with all the other kitchen stuff downstairs. Yeah, that was confusing.

After I got the Mouse’s new shelves hung, then I worked on the Froggy’s new book storage based off of this idea (also found on Pinterest … yeah, I’m addicted):

Super cute, right? Here’s how my version came out:

I had a BUNCH of ideas for book shelves in the Froggy’s room, and it was really hard to choose, but I had all kinds of fabric left over from the Froggy’s crib skirt and decided this was the one I liked the best. SUPER easy to do … you’re basically hanging a dual curtain rod on the wall, and hemming a piece of fabric. Easy peasy.

The only thing I will say about this storage idea is that while REALLY cute and aesthetically pleasing, it’s a little cumbersome for the actual storing of books. Because of the curtain rods I chose, the pocket that holds the books is really shallow:

Also, depending on the height you make the pocket, it could be difficult for your kiddo to see what books are in there … especially if you’re going to be storing a lot of baby board books, which are usually shorter. These would work a lot better for taller picture books I think. But regardless, I’m really happy with how they turned out. I’m excited now to get some things framed to go over them in that corner.

I only *thought* the Froggy’s nursery was done back in February.