And the winner is....me!

I found a new thrift store nearby (yay!) and while meandering around, I found a shelf of trophies.  After the obvious moment of silence for all the kids who haven't realized their mom tossed their soccer/T-ball/gymnastics trophy yet, I realized it was a win for me.

So, I picked up a soccer trophy that was pretty hefty in weight.

I gave it a coat of white primer, and then picked a sunny yellow to top it off.

And now it serves as a great bookend for some DVDs in our kids' room.

I like the bright whimsical nature of it, while it still serves a purpose!

Hanging Herbs

I dig the idea of fresh herbs, but with a second story kitchen with no deck, we were facing a bit of a problem.  Then I realized I don't care about this rental house, so let's screw some holes in the railing!

All in all, a simple formula.  Three herbs and a planter...

Sage, Basil, and Spicy Basil awaiting their potting in this rectangle planter.

Plus one empty railing outside your kitchen sliding door....

Plus one hunk with a drill...

Equals one hanging planter...

Filled with plants!

Next is to make cute labels - what's the neatest way you've seen to label plants??

Rock, Water, Kids

For a cheap $7, we picked up this clam shell sandbox/pool on a random trip to Walmart.

Though tiny, I knew my kids would have a great time splashing/throwing rocks at each other in the evenings.  Although meant for sand, I really despised the idea of kids covered in sand, sand in diapers, sand all over the house, etc.  Taking a hint from other blogs, I decided to use pea gravel.  True, it doesn't make castles, but my kids just want to dig and put rocks on each other's heads, so I thought it was just fine.

Three bags of this was under $12, so this project was going pretty well for me.  Now pea gravel is pretty dirty already, and I wanted to give it a good rinse to get what loose sandy materials off of it I could.  I didn't have a big rinsing container or giant colander, but I did have a shell pool!

First, I took a drill and put a ton of 3/16th holes in the bottom of what was going to end up being the rock side.

Not sure where this line across the photo comes in, but hopefully you can see all the holes

 Next, I dumped in two bags of rocks (that seemed to make it deep enough, and now I have some in reserve to replace all the ones that are being dumped on the ground) and then Avery helped me hose them all down while Dash pretended not to care.

Once the water was in we (well, really I because at this point, Avery had lost interest) pushed the rocks around in the water to loosen up any dirt.  I was please to see the water draining out of the holes in the bottom.

And, not that my kids waited for it all to dry, but it did eventually dry.  All that was left was to throw a bath mat in the pool side, fill er up, and let them go nuts.  And by "go nuts" I mean Avery gets naked and hides.

Here's the finished project - they love it, with our without the water part.  Our new favorite game is to manually transfer rocks from one part to another.  For less than $20, I can't complain!

Kid Art Organization

It's agony to have so many art project brought home by the kids and not know what to do with them.  I take pictures of them and put them in our yearly scrapbook, but I can't bear to toss the originals.  So, one trip (my first, and now I'm OBSESSED) to the container store for boxes, files, and stickers, and now all the school art (and shot records, and random kid-papers) are filed away for each kid!

Easy Bowl Makeover

A $7 bowl at the thrift store became my new table centerpiece pretty quick!

Before, it was metal and rusted:

After a coat of primer, a coat of bronze spray paint, and a hint of shiny gold, it became a real work of art!

Do any quick thrift store fixes lately??

Snow day art

Nothing fancy, just canvas, stencils and lots of marker scribbles!

Masterpiece

Hanging in the living room

HUGE check off the list. And a Giveaway!!

Let me start with a "Yay!  This wall looks great!!"  And then follow it with a "I hate this stupid wall!"  I don't have a ton of in-progress pictures to show you cause this took FOREVER (we're talking months) and made me angry along the way.  But, I think you'll enjoy the tale...just not many pictures.

But seriously, I love what I did, but the process - whew! 

Please don't email me and tell me which ones are crooked.

Inspired by John and Sherry's book, I bought a pack of postcards from Fab.com that all had this vintage vibe.

I didn't know what to do with them, but after seeing J&S make a collage of sorts in their book and then seeing the postcards on sale on Fab.com, I knew I had to at least buy them.  Then we moved into this place with a giant blank wall in the dining room.  And...idea!  The plan started off very easy.  I went to the dollar store and bought a ton of frames.  And by ton, I mean EXACTLY the number I needed, with no thought as to what might happen if one broke (this is called "foreshadowing").  Jon and I went through all the postcards and picked out 24 places we had been (sometimes together, sometimes separately) and I took them to Home Depot.  I lined them up and picked 4 paint colors that seemed to compliment the postcards and got little sample pots of each.  The colors I used were:

All from Lowe's Olympic line

Then the time consuming part.  I spray painted each plastic frame with a primer, then I actually spackled the places where each side met, because the cheap frames had natural separation at their seams.  THEN I sanded down these cheap little frames (I got a bit obsessive, I admit) and THEN painted 6 of each color.  Well, to be honest, I put them up there approximately one row at a time, so it didn't happen as fast as it perhaps sounds.  

The layers were frame -- glass -- white mat -- postcard -- white construction paper -- frame back -- command strip.

Which leads me to command strips.  A rental's (and, honestly, a homeowner's best friend).  They let you eyeball the exactness because as long as enough of the sticky strips connect, you're golden.  No need to aim for an elusive nail AND put a crap-ton of holes in your wall to patch before your move-out inspection, amiright??

To hang them up, I measured an area down from the ceiling and put a big piece of blue tape across the wall and repeated three more times, then pulled the tape away as I was putting the frame on.  At least, the first rows went like that.  After that, you could really just eyeball it if you put the complete connected two-piece command strip on the frame and then just pushed the whole thing on the wall.

Progress.  I put the stripes up first, but didn't use them much after the first row

So everything was going so well....until two fell off.  It was my own fault - I moved something and I knew the command strip wasn't as sticky as it originally was, but I was an idiot and the frames fell and broke.  Not the glass (yay!) but the plastic frames.  I don't know why - they cost $1 each.  Obviously quality.  But no big deal right, just run to the dollar store and get a new one.  What?  What's that?  We've DISCONTINUED THE LINE OF FRAMES AND THEY CANNOT BE FOUND ANYWHERE????

Yes, that's right.  I dug and dug through a store to find ONE frame that matched the other 22 in my house, leaving me one short.  Two trips to various stores and I was just SOL.  Even online, that frame isn't around anymore.  But, let's face it, it's rare that a project goes well in my house.  So, I bought a very similar frame (it's just more beveled around the edges) and put it in the corner with hopes no one looks/cares.  And honestly, as I type this, I'm turning around checking it out and it's not noticeable at all.  So, sorry, Austin, TX.  You're not different, you're special. 

Lessons learned:

• Buy 30 of whatever you need 24 of.  Always.
• If you move command strips, put up a new command strip

But, all bitching aside, I think it looks really really good.  A great way to fill up a wall with postcards representing places we've been.  I'm thinking about writing when we went there on each mat, but that would require me to take them down, and I'm just not in that place right now :-)

Here's the approximate cost breakdown.  Not bad for an entire wall!
- 27 frames: $27
- 3 paint pots: $12
- Various painting supplies: $10
- Postcards: $24
- Command Strips: $20
- White mats: $20
-Grand total-ish: $113

Have you ever had to fill up an entire wall?  How did you do it?  How do you display travel memories and memorabilia?  Have you ever dug through something in a store trying to find what isn't there?  Leave me a comment below and let me know!

Speaking of - I really enjoy reading comments on my blog, and I don't get a lot of them.  Most people comment on FB, but it's a real high point of my day when I get an email saying that someone has commented on here.  I usually assume the only people that read my blog are my mom (Hi mom!!) and the Russian spambots (Здравствуйте you bastards!) that bump up my blog numbers.  So...if you're so inclined and have the time, drop me a line and let's start a conversation!

AND....to entice you to comment, I am giving away a set of these postcards from Fab.com to celebrate being finished with this project!!  Commenting below will give you an entry and I'll use a random generator to pick someone to get all 24 of the ones that I used, plus a ton more!  They look great on a wall (ha ha) or you can pick one at random and plan your vacation.  Or, gasp!  You can use them as postcards :-)  How cool would it be to go to each place and then send someone (ahem...me!) a postcard from each one?  I look forward to reading your comments that I've bribed you to leave!!!

Be sure to check back here on Friday to see if you won!

Find-A-Quote Art

Saw this on Pinterest and I thought it would be a fun treasure hunt to find a great quote!  All I needed was a 5 cent book from the thrift store, a marker, and a frame!  This is sitting in the corner of my kitchen counters at the moment.

Overall - an interesting piece of art.  But look closer...

...and it's a reminder to be brave!

What inspirational/funny/meaningful quotes are waiting for YOU in a book?

Look What My Friends Can Do!

Remember my spray painted branch Christmas tree that sits on my table?  Well check out my mom's interpretation!

It's perfect for post-Christmas when you're sad that your house has gone from Holiday Spirit to Three More Months of Winter!  The white and the red look really fantastic.  And it was so easy.  She gathered some branches, painted them white, and then fixed little cardinals on them.

 The base is really a hurricane glass sitting in a bowl, and she dressed it up with Christmas ornaments, but you could do the same with pine cones, pieces of pine garland, or artificial snow!

 It goes along great with her white and red mantel this year.  Great job, mom!!

A Tale of a Table

We've all seen them.  And by "we" I mean craft losers like me and by "them" I mean those IKEA Lack table hacks where the parents glue down a Lego platform and build a station for kids to play block.  A-like so:

A sample - not the one I did

Well, who am I to turn down such a great idea!  First, I bought these big blocks that I thought were Duplo blocks, which will be fun for Avery, but not a choking hazard for Cassidy.  I got two sets because there isn't that base, flat piece that Legos have and I wanted to use a set to make a platform.  I wish I could properly foreshadow for you what went wrong here, but I'll keep you nice and innocent, like I was at this stage.

This project also gave me a reason to go thrift shopping and pick up this little baby for $7.99.  WHAT?  $7.99!  And it's a solid piece, too.  I used a little 150 grit paper to rub off the shine and then it was time for a primer.  Primer helps the paint bond and also prevents stains from coming through.  I bought water (latex) based, but then read online that some people use oil-based.  Enh, I wasn't overly concerned, so I just gave it a nice thin coat of primer over the course of a couple of days, dusting off the excess sand and a few cobwebs (how long was it at the thrift shop??) along the way.

Primed and ready!

Then, it was time for some color.  I decided to go with a black base and a green top.  The green simulates some grass, and the black just goes with everything, right?  I bought this color and this color and did very thin coats to avoid drips and a sloppy look.  After 2 coats, it looked nice.  And because kids are using this, I also put a layer of Minowax to keep it shiny and wipeable.

Then it was time to set the base.  Like I said, I didn't have a flat base to work off of, so I took the flattest Duplos and made a square on top, playing around with the size of everything.  One I had my pattern, I was ready to glue them together.  So I got out the super glue and.....

Nothing.  No sticking.  So I got out the hot glue gun and....

Nothing.  No sticking.  The hells?

So I got on Skype and showed Jon my failure and he did a little research and told me about this ABS melting glue crap from Lowe's to go buy that would fuse it all together.  So, I went, I bought it, I prepared to make a mess, I put the fusing glue on and.....

Nothing.  No sticking.   HOLY CRAP!  We had researched how to glue Legos/Duplos together, and once we ignored all the haters to think it's punishable by death to glue Legos together (seriously, they are very adamant about this) we had read that this ABS glue should work.  And then Jon said...

"Are you sure they are Duplos?"

(Ali pauses to read the bag)

"Uhhhh....they aren't.  They are Mega Blocks."

Well, guess what everyone, Mega Blocks and Duplos are made of different things, and Mega Blocks apparently can never ever be glued together.

So, it's 3 days before our Christmas Eve, and my cheap project is turning expensive because I have to order Duplos (which SURPRISE! have a base plate piece) on Amazon Prime, but the holiday season means I still have to pay extra to get them there on time.  $70 for two sets of blocks and a base plate.  On our Christmas Eve they arrived in three shipments from three carriers (weird.)

So, during naptime, Jon got out the drill and turned what could have ended up just being a plain random green and black table into this, using the base plate and a shoe container from The Container Store:

And when the kids came down for Christmas morning, it looked like this:

Both kids were super excited, and while I wasn't thrilled with how much it ended up costing, the fun they have with it makes up for it.  And I learned a lesson: Mega Blocks don't glue together.  It was a Christmas miracle :-)

Teacher Gifts

This one is fast and dirty, as I'm trying to get the house cleaned and everything packed up for our holiday trip to the Midwest, but I wanted to share what I got my kids' 10 (!!) teachers this year for Christmas:

Yep, it's a cookie recipe in a Mason Jar, just add butter, eggs, and a bit of vanilla. 

The recipe is from Spoonful.com, which is owned by Disney.  Luckily, I made a test batch a couple of weeks ago, because 1 stick of butter and 1 egg is NOT ENOUGH to make good dough.  At all.  I had to play around and double it and they came out much better.

Just for fun, I ordered pictures of the kids (5 of Avery, 5 of Cassidy - they each have 5 teachers), cut them out, and modge podged them onto the top. 

Putting it all together with a bit of yarn, some Christmas stickers, and careful pouring, and we get cute holiday cookies in a jar!

Look What My Friends Can Do!

My friend and fellow Airman, Reina, and her kids can make Christmas ornaments from dough!!

Via Pinterest and the Woodside Kitchen, she and her kids used the following recipe:

• 1/2 cup cornstarch
• 1 cup baking soda
• 3/4 cup water

She heated it on the stovetop on medium heat, stirring constantly, until it formed a ball (about 5 minutes).  Then she placed the dough in a bowl and covered with a damp cloth until it was cool enough to handle.  Once it cooled down, they kneaded it to about 1/4 inch thick, grabbed some cookie cutters and went to town.  Note that they poked a hold in each in order to have a place to thread a ribbon/string to hang. To harden, either air dry or bake at 175 in the oven for an hour.

Waiting for glaze

After some drying, everyone painted them up with some acrylic paint, let them dry, and then Reina sprayed them with a matte acrylic glaze.

 After drying, all that was left was to string and hang them!

Pipe cleaners (or "fuzzy sticks" as we call then in my house)

Gorgeous, and what a fun thing to do with kids!  Great job!