A Seasonal Book Crate for the Littles

I have been an avid reader my entire life and I’m hoping to pass that along to our kiddos as well, so we read a lot in our family.  A lot.  We have been reading to each of them since they were just days old, and we read to them every single night before bed.  As you can probably imagine, we have accumulated a lot of children’s books over the years.  We have books about everything – trucks, princesses, colors, feelings, letters, dinosaurs, teddy bears… you name it, we probably have it. 

In addition to all of the traditional children’s books, we also have tons of different books for each of the holidays – Valentine’s Day, Easter, Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas.    

Because we have so many, it’s really hard to keep up with all of them, and many of our holiday books were getting lost in the shuffle each year… weeks after Christmas I would find that we had forgotten to read one of our favorite Christmas books simply because we had forgotten that we had it in our collection.  Not to mention, all of the books are housed in the kids’ bedrooms, and we spend most of our time downstairs in our living room, so the only time the books were getting read was right before bedtime.

Last year I decided to do something about our book conundrum, and I purchased a cute little crate from Marshall’s, spray-painted it white to match our living room décor, and I positioned it in our living room right at the kids’ fingertips where we spend most of our time.  Each season I change out the books (and the decorations on the crate – so fun!) so they have the current holiday appropriate books all in one spot at the appropriate times. 

You may remember seeing it in our Valentine's Day Home Tour, our Easter Home Tour, our Fall Home Tour, our Christmas Home Tour, and our Living Room Home Tour.

Around mid-January I load it with all of our favorite books about love, so when Valentine’s Day rolls around, we’re all feeling lovey dovey.

As soon as Valentine’s Day is over, I put those books up and pull out the Easter books!

In mid-June, the July books come out… we don’t have any specifically about Independence Day, so I typically just throw some all-American books in there – trucks, superheroes, Dr. Seuss, and a book about our beautiful home state of Georgia.  I also throw the birthday book in there since July is Jacob’s birth month.  :o)

On September 1st, it’s aaaall about fall!  All of our books about Halloween, Thanksgiving, bears going into hibernation, fall leaves, etc. come out and get thrown into the crate.  

Then the day after Thanksgiving, all of the Christmas books come out.  These are my personal favorite (and the kids’ as well) and the Christmas genre is by far our biggest collection.  

During the off months with no major holidays, I fill the crate with random miscellaneous books, and rotate them out often so the kids are reading different stuff.  That way all of their books get read at some point, and we don’t have any just laying around collecting dust.

Win win win.

This past weekend I pulled out all of the fall books, and friends, let me tell you that I could not be more ecstatic!  This book crate has become such a source of excitement for preparing for our favorite holidays and I’m going to enjoy it while I can… I know our years for this particular tradition are numbered as one day our littles will no longer be interested in reading The Night Before Christmas and Happy Easter, Mouse.  I guess at that point, we will just have to figure out a new use for the crate!

*Linking up with Our Pretty Little Girls for Tuesday Talk and Simply Every.