A library in the making

I posted previously about my daughters first books and how I was hoping to infect her with my love for reading,  and I can tell you it is working already! Her face lights up when I give her a book and she loves to turn the pages and pretend to be reading it.  After the first few cloth books, I decided to introduce a few board books; a couple at a time.We made it part of our bedtime routine to read at least one story every night and it's going great so far. The only issue we had was book storage. I wanted a form of book storage that would be visually appealing and practical, without breaking the bank.

I researched online and was intrigued by how many other moms had improvised and used non conventional items as book storage. I especially liked the Ikea Spice race turned book shelf.

This Ikea rack is literally a spice rack which is meant to be mounted in a kitchen to store your everyday spices but as you can see below this spice rack works great for storing children's books too. Books for toddlers are best stored with the cover facing out because it is easier for them to find the book they want to read by recognizing the cover photo.

Source

Considering the fact that this Ikea spice rack retails for $3.99 per rack I was pretty excited to try this because that is a much better deal than most of the book cases or book shelves out there.   We decided to pick up a few of these racks on our next visit to Ikea. sadly for us when we got there these were out of stock {cue sad music} so I had to move on to plan B.

While browsing through the many innovative products at Ikea I came across their picture ledges which are a bit more expensive than the spice racks but look just as good if not better. It reminded me of similar book storage ideas I had seen online.




The ledges are super basic, very easy to mount and available in black, white or unfinished wood.



I decided to to try a couple of the unfinished wood picture ledges in place of the spice racks. I liked the fact that just like the spice racks these picture ledges are expandable, which means we can start out with just a few ledges and expand it to cover as much of the wall as we want, as her library expands.I also love that when she is older and transitions to a regular book case that displays books with the spine out rather than the cover, we can re-purpose these ledges into other rooms in the home. So it's a good investment either way. The photos below show how we mounted our picture ledges in her room.

We only have two ledges at the moment and my husband put them quite low on the wall so she will be able to reach them on her own soon. We could have put them side by side to create one long shelf, but I decided to put one on top of the other, so there would be room for the wooden growth chart we are making for her. The books we have so far are:

1. Dr Seuss's ABC: An Amazing alphabet book This is the abridged version of the full book and its  great for her age, it has the rhyming lines and silly made up words typical of Dr Seuss!
2. Ten Fat Turkeys. This book also has silly made up words, rhyming lines and a count down.   
3. The Nose book Just like the Dr Seuss book, The Nose book is the perfect size for small hands and has a rhyming little story about noses.
4. Moo, Baa, La la la Both of us really love this book. This is our favorite.
5. Where is baby's belly button? This lift-a-flap board book is fun and interactive. My daughter giggles excitedly when she sees whats behind the flaps
6. Baby touch and feel, Colors and shapes This isn't really a story, but each page has a textured photo and is great for teaching colors and shapes
7. A child's first Bible This was gift from my mother-in-law for my daughter's first birthday. It is awesome. I have wanted to get her a bible since she was born, so I really love this. It has a collection of short Bible stories with great illustrations. This is the only book we have that has regular pages and not thick board pages so I have to supervise her with this otherwise she would rip all the pages out.
8. We also have the Brainy Baby ABC board book   which was a gift from her god-mother. We received this book as part of a set with a DVD and pack of flash cards. She loves the vibrant photos in this book
   
   
   I love looking at her little library in the making and knowing that as the months and years go by we will keeping adding to it until she truly does have a full blown mini library of her own