Organizing our books

Books, books, books.  We seem to be over run with books at times.  I had put groups of books on certain shelves in order to make finding them easier.  However it seems that I was the only one who could remember where a book was supposed to go after it was read.  Oy.  My system was not complicated.  All library books on one shelf, all small board books on another, and the girls' books on two others.  I also had a shelf devoted to my books, and how-to books.  Anyways it was pretty obvious to me where each book went, but not so obvious to any one else :-)  So I had to take matters into my own hands.  I decided to put a strip of colored paper on the spine of each book.  That way all the 'red' books go on one shelf, all the 'orange' books on the next, etc.  Problem solved!  For the most part ;-)  The baby hasn't picked up on this system...ha, ha!!  Oh well, in time he will.  Hey, maybe it can double as teaching him his colors!  Killing two birds with one stone.

By the way, these pictures were taken with our family camera!!  It will still need to be sent in for a repair on the battery door.  It's pretty hard to hold the battery door shut (with force) and take a decent picture.  It will be a much cheaper fix than my camera.  I'm still going to miss using my camera :-(  Boo hoo.  But, too many other more important things that need to be done than fix a camera for that money!

Above you can see the green stips of paper that I taped on to the bottom of the spines.  I really love this system!!  Now no one, except that baby, has to ask me where a book goes!  Nor can they get away with leaving it out because...."I don't know where it goes."

Some books have one strip of color, those books belong in the living room, and some have two strips of color, those belong in the family room.  Above you can see a shelf with red strips and the one below are the books used for the online curriculum, Ambleside Online.  They all have a blue background with a white strip in the middle.  On the white strip I wrote the year the book is read in and which semester.  So for a book that is read in the seventh year, in the third semester I wrote, "7.3".

Had to include this picture of our resident cutie :-)  Tomorrow is a big day for Jedidiah.  He turns six years old....SIX!!!  Wow, amazing.  He is very, very, very...did I say very?  EXCITED to be having a party at the pool.  It will be lots of fun.  With so many July birthdays I convinced him that he didn't need to have cake for his birthday.  Ha, ha!  Actually there was no need to convince him.  Once he heard he could have pie he jumped all over that idea.  We will be making two trays of 'fruit squares'.  One of pineapple, one made with peaches.  Yummo!