Routine Chart

Another awesome idea from Pinterest here. We want little miss to get into a routine for morning and bedtime as things were taking FOREVER to get done (and I mean FOREVER). This way she can see what needs to be done and if she doesn't do it within a reasonable timeframe then she doesn't get to flip the tab up. So far so good. We have needed to make a few adjustments to help with our own expectations but she loves putting the tabs up and she is getting a bit more independent (yay). The little magnets are perfect for re-using every day. I drew the pictures (with a little internet help) and the writing is in the font she is learning at kindergarten.

Magnet Board

I found this one on Pinterest and have wanted to do it since I saw it. I am a bit tired of not being able to use the fridge when the kids are playing with the magnetic letters. This way they have their own space to play and my fridge can become less cluttered - that's the theory anyway.


I got myself a oil drip tray from an auto store (unfortunately they only had skinny ones). I gave it a light sand then 2 coats of white undercoat. I already had some magenta wall paint but thought that might be a bit much in a big block so I taped off some stripes before doing the top coat. The edges looked like they may scuff the wall so I put some black utility tape over the edges to give a little buffer.
Finally I added 4 small bulldog clips to the bottom with the hot glue gun so we would have a place to display all the wonderful pictures Chloe does at kindergarten.


It is hanging with the 3M velcro picture hangers as suggested in the original blog.

I had a bit of a find while we were in Whitianga to use on the board. In a $2 type store I got a sheet of printable magnetic paper for $2 (surprise!). I only got 1 as I wasn't sure if it would work, but it did. It's quite thin and the magnetic part isn't great, but I got heaps on an A4 sheet and I'm not going to be worried if they go missing.

The cut out shapes and numbers

It was very easy to cut out

Cubes

I was sick of having all my stuff lying around and Chloe was getting to the age where she was pulling anything down that was at floor level, which for us was pretty much everything. The trouble was that we were going to be moving in the next year and I didn't want to buy a large piece of furniture that might not fit in a different space. I decided that the solution for me was to make a number of cubes that I could rearrange as our needs changed.

I started with 9mm MDF which my wonderful dad helped me to cut into lots of pieces. Each cube was going to be 350mm x 350mm and 400mm deep. I also wanted to put backs on some of them so that when they were stacked it would give a checkerboard effect, and also give some stability. I also wanted to have 2 boxes with a shelf in the middle for all our CDs. This meant that for each box there were 2 pieces that measured 350mm x 400mm for the top and bottom and 2 pieces that measured 332mm x 400mm for the sides. These had to be a bit smaller as, by the time they were butted against the top and bottom, the thickness of those pieces would add up to 350mm. The back pieces were 350 x 350. The shelves were cut to the same size as the sides.

Next step was putting the boxes together. My dad showed me how to make a template so that all of the pieces would have holes drilled in the same place. We drilled first and then nailed them together using panel pins.

I'm not going to lie, the next bit took ages. I had to sand, undercoat and then 2 topcoats for each box. My original plan was to end up with a 'unit' 3 boxes wide and 5 boxes high. We got all the boxes made up but so far I have only finished 9 boxes in total. The others will get done sometime. I just need to get DH to take Chloe for a day so I can put in a solid effort.

This is just 6 of the boxes, including the 2 with shelves. You can see the red backs behind them, which matches the colour we have on one wall in our living area. The next 3 got added to the bottom and house Chloe's toys, perfect height for grabbing them.