I think it was in January when I got on Pinterest. I originally got on for new food recipe ideas. But as I was scrolling through everyone's pins for food ideas I would see other pins that were interesting. It was about March when I decided I wanted to conquer some of the pinterest projects I had pinned.
The first one was the Rain Gutter Bookshelves. I decided this would be great for Jack. Up until this point, he wasn't really into reading books. Possibly because all of his books were stacked in a basket. I thought if he could see them, like he can at his preschool, then maybe he would be more interested in reading them.
This wasn't hard at all. First, Ben and I went to Home Depot and bought our supplies: plastic rain gutters, the clips that you screw into the walls to hold up the gutters and the end caps. The funny thing was when we put the 10 foot gutters into my car, Ben didn't have much room to sit and luckily we didn't have Jack with us.
Then my dad came over and helped "cut" the gutters to the length I had measured. He used his Dremel saw, a tiny saw but it did the job. Then I drilled the gutter hooks into the walls and slid the gutters onto them and last but not least placed the end caps on. I did most of this while Jack was napping. Here is the end result:
Once Jack got up from his nap, we took him down to see his books. He was so excited and loved looking at each one.
Here are two videos of Jack when he first explored these book shelves. The first video includes him counting. You'll notice he skips #7 but starts counting with the #1. Forever he would start counting with #2 and skipping #1 altogether. He also would skip #7 until late April.
After completing the book shelves downstairs, I put some up in Jack's room.
The next Pinterest project I conquered was the $10 extra large magnetic board. The only place in our kitchen with a magnetic space was on our oven. For a while this worked to hold Jack's magnetic alphabet letters and farm animals, but as he got older he was getting more curious about the oven and it was becoming dangerous. I saw this idea of using a $10 oil drip pan from Walmart as a magnetic board and found the perfect place for it in our kitchen. I bought the pan, screwed in 5 screws and ta-da, plenty of room for all of his letters and animals to safely play with.
