An Animal Tree

We love projects. In fact, my husband and I dream of someday designing and building our own home. We would also be prime candidates to buy a "fixer upper" and make it into something fantastic. Being both partially of the melancholy temperament, creating, fixing and transforming things energizes us both in a way that some people might not be able to relate. To be honest we enjoy the weekend a little more if it holds at least one small project - and we're learning to take on some projects that we can both participate in together. We might just start inventing projects if we run out soon! What some might call work, we call wholesome, satisfying FUN. Are we geekin' it or what!? Last weekend, we worked on a little improvement for Bella's room.

After receiving some serious inspiration from my friend Amey on how to nicely store stuffed animals, I determined that we just didn't have enough wall space in my daughter's room to make the adorable animal cage. However, our current stuffed animal situation was not working for me! To make matters worse, since I was fiercely attached to my stuffed animals as a child, I can hardly stand the thought of getting rid of most of them since Bella is showing a similar propensity toward stuffed animal love.

Then I remembered my friend Jody telling me that she used a fantastic space-saving technique for her daughter that her mom used when she was a child - an animal tree! After doing a terrible job of explaining the concept to my husband, we set out Lowes. Two or three tiny incidents of miscommunication ;-) and ten dollars later and we had all the supplies we needed (watch me butcher the names of half of these supplies. Ha ha!):

*A Plant hanger hook (fits very securely into ceiling, easily bearing the weight of the animal tree)
*Eyelet hook (large enough to fit over the plant hanger hook)
*Cup hooks (we got a pack of 40)
*A pole or rod or any piece of wood that is thick enough to screw your hooks into (ours reaches almost from ceiling to floor)
*Paint to match your room (optional)
*1/8" ribbon (I used a little more than one spool which was 10 yds.)


First Clay painted and sanded the pole (We actually used a rectangular piece of wood for this, but I'm going to call it a pole for lack of a better term.) Then I marked the desired location for the hooks by eyeing the number and sizes of Bella's stuffed animals. Next Clay pre-drilled holes in those spots and screwed the eyelet hook to the very top of the pole. Then we screwed the cup hooks in, up and down the full length of the pole on each side where we had drilled our holes.


While Clay installed the plant hanger hook into the ceiling from which to hang the pole, I tied ribbon around the necks of each of Bella's stuffed animal friends. So, now we had a pole with hooks all over it hanging from our ceiling. ;-)


After that, I hung each of the stuffed animals from the ribbon, with the smallest ones on top and the largest ones on the bottom on the "tree."


Now Bella can actually see her stuffed animals (they were previously piled in a giant heap on a coffee table in her room), and each day she requests different ones to play with. She loves her stuffed animal tree!

Pros:

*Her stuffed animals take up almost no space in her room now and freed up lots of previously wasted space (I'm going to sell the aforementioned coffee table)
*She can see all of her stuffed animals at a glance.
*It is so darn cute, like a stuffed animal store display!
*It only cost $10 to make and was accomplished in one morning.

Cons:

*I have to get the stuffed animals off for her (until she learns to do it).
*I have to stand on a chair to reach the animals at the top of the tree.
*There might be safety concerns to consider if your child would think it fun to climb the animal tree. (If this was the case, you could solve the issue by using a pole that doesn't hang down as low so the child cannot reach it.)

Posing for mommy.
(Ignore the framed poster on the floor that I've been "in the process of rehanging" for the past week. Hmm...better get on that!)

Choosing the fluffy friends she wanted to play with this morning.