With an excessive amount of books already in our house that is steadily increasing each week, you would think we could go without library books also. However Cakes is an avid reader who is continually requesting new and/or specific books. We visit our local library and surrounding libraries at least weekly and sometimes up to three times in the same week. The problem with her library visits is the collections of books she has on loan at any one time can reach a total of forty. Until today we had no real storage system for these borrowed books as all book shelves in our house are full. For the past eighteen months these borrowed books lived at the end of her bed (much to the disgust of the cat who would like to sleep at Cakes's feet). We had seen many different versions of spice racks used as book shelves on Pinterest and thought it sounded like something we could do.
On Monday we purchased three spice racks from Ikea for $2.50 each. It is the best $7.50 we have spent in a very long time, though the time spent waiting in store was not the best spent time. Over the next few days they were painted in primary colours and the sides decoupaged with scrapbooking paper Cakes chose to match.
Then it was time to put them together and how much fun is building without a trade assistant? Not fun at all. Cakes and I spent a great deal of time screwing the pieces together with screws and a trusty Allen key. I put them in a little, she took some time to get it almost all the way in and then I finished it off. Such a great way to develop her fine motor strength, hand eye-coordination, an enjoyment in construction and her attention span. Next we cut the paper, pasted PVA glue under the paper and over the top, wiping away the excess with a sponge. Here is the final product of our painting and decoupage. Don't they look great!
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With my husband's trusty drill, screws I rummaged up out of his tool box, a pencil, ruler, level and the shelves I set off to put them on the wall with my little trade assistant. I won't lie to you, I didn't do the best job. There are a few extra holes in behind the shelves for various reasons (such as having the drill on reverse thus the screw not going in, measuring incorrectly and screws twisting) but no one will ever know (except you guys). As you can see here Cakes is very fond of her new book nook. Now I just need to work out away to store all the other books in the house in a more appealing way.
 My husbands sporting books, my children's books from teaching and some of our textbooks that haven't sold from both my husband's and my recent study |  Board books and soft paged books in Cakes's room that have been collected in the short two years she has been around |  Board books in the lounge room from when I was teaching |  Small books in the car for any length car ride |
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