I have to say, this may be one of my favorite trends in parenting lately. Yes, it’s a way to entertain and keep your toddler busy (YAY!) but it’s also super cool, and I want to play with it probably as much as E does!
They’re also super easy, and completely customizable. Basically you take a piece of wood, and screw on whatever random stuff you have lying around the house, or want to incorporate, and voila! You have something fun and entertaining that is teaching your toddler valuable life skills in the process!
It’s totally the type of skills that E finds fun right now, but are also things that I think he should work on to help improve his dexterity. So last weekend we hit up Lowes to grab a few things to get started. We got a board, lots of stuff to put on it, and I even tried to let E pick the paint color. However he threw all of my paint chips on the floor, so I ended up choosing the colors. Sorry kid, you had your chance.
It also wasn’t that hard, I was able to work on it during random times I was home this week and breaks that I had. I started by sanding down the board to get rid of any sharp corners, and then painting it with a semi-gloss paint. Honestly, I could have gone high gloss, but hopefully it's enough to easily keep clean.
I started lying out stuff I knew I wanted to go on the board to see where they’d fit, but mostly I just screwed stuff on. I have different door locks, a tap light that turns on and off, a door stop that makes fun noises, and a zipper. There’s also a big piece of felt that works with anything velcro, which is also behind both of the hinged blocks.
I also put a plumbers pipe on there and bought some pom pom balls that can go through there. E is really big on putting balls down tubes right now (I know that sounds random, but he has a cardboard tube we saved from something and he puts his toy balls down it over and over again). I want to put either a basket under the tube, or a bag that I can attach somewhere to store the letters and pom poms.
And yes there is still a big blank space due to me not having the right screws I need for one last piece, but I couldn’t put the fun on hold forever, so we’re going to play with it now, and I’ll add that piece when I have it.
I hope this is something E and his sibling(s) can play with for a while, but who knows! I suppose if they all hate it, I’ll just play with it all day. Not that I haven’t been doing that already haha…
We have a lot of dreams and ideas when it comes to our house. Some of them we’ve managed to accomplish, and some we’ve pushed off. Sometimes we change our mind after living with a space for a while. I’m a big fan of making your house work for your current life, and being willing to edit it as life changes. Houses aren’t meant to be perfect. Try that weird paint color, give yourself grace over the messy floors (and counters and bathrooms and and and), or turn your dining room into a guest room if that’s what you need right now.
When we first moved in, we brainstormed every possible thing we might like to do, change, add or accomplish while we live here. On that list, but way down the line, was to finish our attic. It was a large empty space that was open with possibilities, and we thought about doing something with it in ten years or so.