Lego Shelves

My sons are Lego fanatics.

Our house runneth over with Legos.  Legos are all they ask for at Christmas, birthdays, and when they want to spend money earned from jobs.  With four boys, that equals a lot of Legos. In order to prevent all of their creations from ending up like this.....

We built shelves away from little hands.  I look at this bucket and think of the hundreds of dollars sitting in a bucket from my first son.  It's all good though, because this is where they come up with their own creations. Which is the beauty of Legos!

We love this "City Lego" line too much to see it end up in pieces. The boys love pulling all of the sets down and playing with them. Hours and hours of fun!  So, with the help of my second Lego loving son, we put together simple shelves over this past Christmas break to give the Legos a home.  

We used inexpensive black shelf brackets from Home Depot and (1x8) pine boards.  We love the deep boards, they work well to hold the large Lego sets. My son helped me stain each board with a grey stain from Minwax. We put the brackets up and secured each board with screws.  Super easy! 

My sons love the shelves.  They are the official designated spot in the house to proudly display (& protect) all Legos....spoiled boys I tell you! How about you?  Do you have any great Lego storage ideas? 

We found this clever idea of how to store and organize Lego directions at meredithanderic.blogspot.com. I put my son to work on that project too!

Nicole and I are getting together tomorrow to work on a few Spring projects.  We are so ready for Spring!

Love....Is For The Birds....

Happy Valentines Day!!!

I just had to share my daughter's fun Valentines today.

They were so funny to do and easy!

Over the last couple of years I have become a devoted fan to photo Valentines.

Not only are they personalized but they are so easy to do.

Picasa makes it easy to add the text right onto the picture and all you have to do is hit print!

Our little ducks which are not so little now were this year's theme

and we've been thinking up funny sayings since school started of what to say.

"Be Mine, Valentine....or my Heart will QUACK!"

We hole punched 2 little holes on the side and slipped a heart lollipop in place.

Next project was her funny Valentine box.

I didn't get great pictures of how it worked.  This year all the kids in the district are learning about

simple machines and had to incorporate them into their boxes.

I told Candace we needed a whole post on simple machine ideas because there

are none out there.  Well, at least no pictures and I need pictures!

The back had a lever (like a see saw).  We cut a small hole and threaded a shim

in so that the mouth would open to eat the Valentines.

Then a thousand little squares of tissue paper later (to hide the square box shapes)

I had a very happy little girl and some really weird looks from people as we drove to school.

We hope you have a wonderful Valentine's Day!

Now....off to the school parties~