BUSY BOARD FOR A BUSY {BIRTHDAY} BOY!

**UPDATE 7/21/15** Two and a half years later, this post has been pinned exactly 228,908 times! Thank you all for your interest and support. We have since added another busy baby (girl) to the mix and traveled to God’s country, Texas, and the busy board is happy in its new home and still going strong with my own kids as well as their friends.**

Today was our son Weston’s 1st birthday. I could gush and tell you all the typical mom speak that seems to spill out of the mouth of a proud mama but this post would be entirely too long and there are enough pictures I wanted to show you so I’ll spare you. Just know I love my son’s guts and I am so blessed to be his mommy.

If “idle hands are the devil’s playground” my son is ANGELIC. He is a boy in the utmost and he is always getting into stuff, so why not give him an outlet for all that investigative energy. I’ve seen some busy boards on Pinterest and from some Googling but the idea to do this was all my hubby. When you have 2 young kids already, there’s not really a need for toys. I try to buy clothes for the kids (on sale of course) 6 months – a year before hand to save money. So what do you get for a little boy who doesn’t need clothes or toys and who had his 1st Christmas just 2 weeks ago. A busy board!

I wanted it to be eye catching and more interesting than just bare wood. Black and yellow stripes seemed to do the trick. I used the wax paper image transfer technique from Unexpected Elegance to get my message across the top and then I just used a black Sharpie to fill in the letters and achieve the sharp message of : “Caution: Boy At Play”.

Between a trip to Lowes and going through random stuff we had around the house, we were able to pull together all the items you see here to keep those little hands busy, if even for a few minutes! Between everything we probably spent about $50 which pains me a bit to say, but I guarantee that between all 3 of my kiddos we’ll get our money’s worth.

This little thing came from a swag bag my husband picked up at a scuba diving convention. When you push the little button, a small LED light shines. To attach it to the board I just relied on my tube of trusty E-6000 glue (Love that stuff. It works so well and it’s super cheap. Less than $3 at Walmart). I just swapped out the message under the plastic and using my Silhouette machine, (squeeel! I’m still so excited I have one finally!!!!) I printed and then cut a piece of card stock to the exact dimensions including the rounded corners. It made me smile…

This latch was seriously my favorite. To be honest, I don’t know what it’s called, but the range of motion that the handle goes through in order to lock is what makes it a perfect addition to the board ‘o business.

Because we countersunk the light switches, that meant that they were sticking out of the back by about ½”, so to fix that problem, we took some spare pieces of 1×2 screwed into the back of the board and then through the board into the wall. We kinda liked the way the hardware added to the look.

I added a hidden message with some good old thumb tacks underneath one of the hinged boards.

My perspective.

Weston’s perspective (exaggerated just a bit).

The Hubbs and I “installed” the board during nap time and this was little man’s first introduction to it….yes, we took a million pictures (only in Florida can the baby take a nap in January in nothing but a diaper).

The door stopper was a last minute addition to the busy board plans and it has proven to be worth it’s weight in FUN. Like every baby I’ve ever known, the door stopper or the “boy-yoy-yoing thing” like we call it, is his favorite thing on the whole board!

Born just 1 day after my own birthday, there’s no one cuter who I’d let steal all MY birthday thunder than this guy. He is my {son}shine and snuggle buddy and I can’t imagine life without him. Happy 1st Birthday Weston!