The theme for this month’s Lowe’s Cre­ative Influ­encers Net­work post cen­tered around toy boxes. When I first heard that, I was sure of a cou­ple of things: I wanted it to be at least part of Big Brother’s Christ­mas present and I wanted to do a dress-up bin! But, I wasn’t sure what kind of toy chest I wanted to do. While many tra­di­tional wooden chests are so pretty, we lack a lot of the tools needed to make it nice–namely the saws. Plus, I wasn’t sure that it would be big enough for all the dress-up stuff. A quick face­book poll revealed that most moms (who answered my ques­tion) like plas­tic bins best for toy stor­age. And, I hap­pen to agree. So, here is the fin­ished product:

I didn’t have to do much! In look­ing for the right stor­age bin, I wanted some­thing that wasn’t clear and that Big Brother could actu­ally open on his own (some of the bins the kids can’t open–which of course is great for some things, but for this I wanted him to be able to open it). And, then, we found  this bin at Lowe’s! At under $25, it was PERFECT! Easy to open, sort of “boy” col­ors, large enough to store a lot of dress-up items, and some­thing func­tional that we can use for other pur­poses down the road! A great find!

As for the items to put in it, after Hal­loween I checked out some of the clear­ance cos­tumes and scored these fun things (plus Daddy’s old Super­man cape handed down from Grandma ):He is going to lose his lit­tle mind when he sees the Star Wars cos­tumes!!! We can’t wait! And, because the stor­age bin is so large, there is plenty of room for all of that, plus some of the dress-up stuff we already have. Here’s what he’ll see when he opens to bin:As for spruc­ing it up/decorating it a bit, I didn’t want to do any­thing that was per­ma­nent. Since the bin is so func­tional I wanted to keep our options for it open. But, I also didn’t want to leave it as is. Enter, vinyl. I’ve seen SO many vinyl projects out there, but hadn’t tried one. Seri­ously, I have no idea what I’ve been think­ing. It was AWESOME. I cut out the vinyl let­ters on my Cri­cut and within just a few min­utes had “imag­ine” writ­ten on the top of the bin–in a man­ner that looks really nice, but isn’t per­ma­nent. And around the rim on the other side, I put his name! Although it’s noth­ing fancy, it’s func­tional & per­fect for what we wanted! Now, we just can’t wait to see the look on his face Christ­mas morn­ing when he sees what’s inside!

Spe­cial thanks to Lowes who pro­vided me with a gift card to pur­chase my toy box sup­plies and also donated $100 to the char­ity of my choice–Make-A-Wish Foun­da­tion! #LowesCreator

Linked to: *Get Your Craft On