Progress

As I mentioned in my previous post, I have no plans of taking this fostering journey off of the table. I am still, little by little, making progress on the kids' bedroom. Between item donations and money raised through the garage sale and raffle, here is some of what is in place so far:

• Bed & Pillows
• Couple of sheet sets
• Dresser
• Blinds & Curtains
• Storage bins for closet & underneath the bed
• Laundry basket
• Some books & toys
• Some various clothing items (mostly shirts)
• Backpacks & tote bags
• A few art supplies (crayons, markers, watercolors, colored pencils, scissors)
• 2 bicycle helmets & a left-handed baseball glove

Whew! What progress! My latest accomplishment is a space-saving bookshelf display inspired by Pinterest. I found a few great ideas on that site, but none quite fit within the budget I wanted. So, I created my own version using the same concept, but different supplies. I went in search of items to use and ended up at my favorite store, the Dollar Tree, where I ended up with these wire dish racks. I tried other options during my in-store testing with Gatorade bottles, but these were the strongest. Including the racks, no-slip material, and screws (from Wal-Mart), it cost me just under $10! Here is the final result! (Sorry for the poor photo quality - it was taken with my phone.)

I did get a roll of that no-slip stuff as I thought it would be necessary. But, it seemed to work just fine without it when I tossed all of these books on for testing. I may still experiment and see which works best. For now, I'm pretty proud of my little project and am excited to have nice display shelves to inspire the kids to pick one up and read it. 

As you can see, there is plenty of room for more books. If you or anyone you know has books that they would be willing to donate (that would be appropriate for children between the ages of 6-10 years old) please contact me. I would love to have more! Most of what I have now is for the younger readers and would like to have plenty of options for both ends of the age range. On my end, I will continue to shop garage sales & Goodwill/Salvation Army.

Well, this will be the last progress & update on the kids' room for at least a few weeks while I am recovering from surgery. I look forward to be able to do more on the room and getting things ready. Until then, I'll just decorate in my head!