DIY Play Kitchen-Finished Project

This post is long over due! My grandpa did an amazing job. The kids love playing with them.

Before:

After:

Sewing is on this week’s agenda

I have to get 3 sewing projects completed in about a week. 2 dresses (for Maggie and Bridget) for the 4th of July and 1 superhero cape for Parker. He requested a cape for his birthday.

Here is the cape tutorial I am going to use.

 

Here is the dress tutorial I am going to use. I am a little nervous about the dress for Bridget. I am going to have make adjustments because she is almost ten and needs a much bigger size. Hope it turns out

I am going to get to use my craft table for the first time. I will actually get to leave the sewing projects out and not have to clean them up every night.

This table is made from the same barn wood. It is super heavy duty. Perfect for my craft projects.

Parker wanted in the picture

Our “new” headboard

A few months back when my Grandpa and I were collecting wood from the collapsed barn we collected enough wood to make quite a few pieces of furniture. I think we made a total of 4 trips, and we came home with AMAZING wood. There are some HUGE beams left that are probably 10x10s or 12x12s. I am keeping my eye on them and trying to determine if we should go get them and just save them.

After the light fixture and coffee table were completed, we moved onto some headboards. One for our room and one for Maggie’s big girl bed that she will use down the road (no where near ready to let her out of a crib).

I found a few examples of barn wood headboards online and on Pinterest. This one was my favorite and it came with some pretty good instructions:

My Grandpa, Dad and I brainstormed. We chose our wood, and pieced it all together. My dad had the idea to use the two posts we had chosen and route out some grooves for the headboard to slip into. It worked out perfectly. My grandpa put it altogether, and then we gave it 3 coats of Minwax Polycrilic (Satin finish).

Here is our finished product. The pictures really don’t do it justice. It is beautiful!

Up close:

Post:

I am looking forward to using Maggie’s twin headboard. It turned out just as beautiful! The wood is simply amazing, and is a piece of art all by itself. We enjoyed changing the bedding and some decorations to compliment the new headboard. It really brightened up our room. A much needed redo of our room!

Featured!

 

Well, I received a a fun e-mail this morning. Knock-Off Décor is featuring our light fixture tomorrow evening. It is exciting!

I love this website and I am currently working on a project that was featured last week. Lots a great DIY ideas in one place. Really nice things that you can make at for the fraction of the price you would pay if you purchased it from the retailer. You should take a look!

Boy Subway Art

Here are some boy subway art printables that I created for some shower gifts. Happy printing!

This is the Navy/Green/Grey version. Please feel free to download here.

This is the Navy/Orange/Grey version. Please feel free to download here.

Knock Off Decor

I made my first submission to Knock Off Décor. It is a website where people submit their DIY versions of items from retailers such as Pottery Barn, Anthropologie, Crate & Barrel, etc. Often times the projects are completed for a much cheaper cost than what the retailer is selling them for.
People really can do some amazing things! It is fun and inspiring to see what other people are able to replicate. One of my friends encouraged me to submit my mason jar light fixture to the site. I forgot about it for a while, but I decided to give it a shot. We shall see if it actually gets posted

Summer Wreath

Crafting has been put on hold lately. My efforts have been focused on getting a regular workout routine down. I was very tired at first, and only had energy to focus on that. The routine has been established, and I began to get the itch to finish up some projects that I had started.

It was time for a Summer wreath. I had some burlap leftover from a wreath fail. I saw a wreath on Pinterest that gave me some inspiration and decided to go for it.

My inspiration:

I loved the stripes, but I didn’t have the yarn in the colors I wanted. I decided to wrap my pool noodle wreath with the leftover burlap, and then I painted the stripes. I added some felt flowers and a ribbon hanger. It took me a little bit of time, but I am pleased with the results.

 

An Affordable and Memorable Gift Idea

Years ago I remember helping my Grandpa get ready for the 4th of July. He was getting his American Flag out of the garage, and I commented on the great quality of his flag. He mentioned that the flag was flown over the US Capitol on his and my grandma’s 40th wedding anniversary.

Well, fast forward about 7 or 8 years and Abe and I were getting ready to get married. I remembered my grandpa’s flag and thought it would be neat to have a flag flown on our wedding day. I placed my order, and our flag came about 6 weeks later. It sat in a box for a long time, but I found a way to display it our home. Our flag plus a window from my parents’ house equals and extremely special wall hanging in our home!

 

The great thing about these flags is that they are extremely affordable to order. It is only $17.30 for a 3’x5’ cotton flag or $28.05 for a 5’x8’ flag. We have the smaller one, and it is plenty big. They are GREAT quality flags. We have 2 couples in our church getting married in the next 2 months. I am going to order them a flag for their gifts. My friend who used to work at the US Capitol mentioned that they order them for each of their children for the date of their birth. I think it could be an awesome shower gift. Just fill out the form, attach a check, and put the form in a card for the parents to mail in once the baby is born and the birthday is known. It could also be good for a special anniversary, milestone birthday, graduation, etc.

Here is how you go about ordering your flag:

1. Find your US Senator or Representative here or here. We live in California, and I just chose a Senator (these women are not my choice for Senators, but I have not control over that…blech!)

2. Go to their website.

3. Find the order form. Now this part might vary by the member. You might have to do some searching around. You can always send them an e-mail or give them a call if you can’t find the form. I went to “Constituent Services” and the link to the form was found there.

I scrolled down to find and clicked “read more”:

4. Complete the instructions to order the flag. One thing to mention is that the orders can only be placed 6 weeks in advance. Make sure you don’t send in the forms too early.

The order form:

I am going to complete the forms and send them off. Their flags will come in the mail to them a few weeks after the wedding. I hope the new couples will enjoy their flags as much as I enjoy ours. If anything they will be ready for the 4th of July

Tennis Racquet Printable

 

We are the middle of redecorating our Master bedroom. I found some really fun fabric with grey and lime flowers to use as an accent. It so bright and refreshing. The walls are pretty bare, so I am making some things to fill up the open spaces.

My hubby and I love tennis. We love to play and watch tennis. We played quite a bit before we were married. Unfortunately, we do more watching than playing these days because of our busy family life. We hope to have some tennis dates as the weather warms up.

I thought it would be kind of fun to include this hobby in our bedroom décor. I used a graphic from The Graphics Fairy. She has awesome graphics that you can download for free.

Here is what I came up with:

I am sending this off to MPIX to have it printed today. Can’t wait to hang it up!

Here is the link to download the picture!

Family Rules Printable

A while ago I posted our Family Rules. Here they are:

 

I thought others might want to be able to print them or adjust the original file to personalize them for your family. I created the file in Microsoft Publisher and then save it as a .jpg file.

Here is the the .jpg printable. According to MPIX.com you can print this up to 20”x30.”

Here is the Publisher file.

Happy printing!

Maggie’s Nursery Projects

Maggie will be one next month, and I am now just getting around to taking pictures of the projects I did in her room. It was so fun to decorate for a girl. My mom and I went to Joann's last year and I picked out a fabric that I liked. I wanted something feminine, but not over the top girly. There were so many choices, but I kept going back to this fabric that had apples and pears with a blue background. It was so refreshing and cheerful.
Here it is:

Her crib bedding was made by my Grandma and was used by my sister, Chase and Parker. I just needed to change the ties on the bumper pads to something girly. I wanted to line some baskets with the fabric, make a bow board, and some wall art.
Here is what I came up with:
My inspiration was from this very talented lady! I actually traced the pear and apple from the fabric. I then enlarged or decreased the size of the images for the embroidery and felt cut outs.

The baskets with new liners. I used this tutorial. It was a little bit of a brain teaser, but once I figured it out it was very simple.

The bow board. I used an old memory board and covered it with new fabric.

Here is her name. This was the last project because we couldn’t decide on her name. My inspiration was came from a lady on Etsy. She had each letter framed separately. I thought it was so neat! Unfortunately, the link to her item no longer works. I embroidered her name on matching blue fabric and framed them in IKEA frames. I believe the frames were only about $5.oo. I found the fabric at Wal-Mart for about $1.50/yard.

I had a frame without glass from the game board art project. Got my inspiration from this blog. I found the punch at Michaels, and I had the paper in my scrapbooking stash. Very inexpensive and I was able to use the frame.

Here are the bumper pads with the new ties.

Game Board Art

My mom was de-cluttering her cabinets a while back. She came across some of my old board games. The games were missing pieces, so she decided to get rid of them. She threw them out in the trash can. A few hours later she went out and recovered them from the trash. She couldn’t bring herself to throw them away.
The next time she saw me she mentioned that she had these games and was wanting a way to save them. She mentioned that maybe we could frame the box lids. I took a look at them and loved her idea. After thinking for a while, I thought it might be easier to find frames to fit the game boards rather than the box lids. The game boards measured 19x19 I believe.
I started searching online for frames. I checked out Aaron Brothers and it was going to cost about $140 for 3 frames. I came across square frames from IKEA. They were perfect. They were 20x20 and only $20 per frame!
We headed over there and picked up 3 frames. We came home, cleaned the glass, and popped the game boards into the frames. As we were hanging them up, my mom accidentally stepped on one and the glass broke. I went back and picked up a 4th frame, and I used the glass-less frame for another project for Maggie’s room.

There were some game pieces left as well, so I decided to use them as well. I used the $1.00 wooden frames from Michaels. I painted them white. I covered some cardboard in fabric and hot glued the game pieces to the fabric/cardboard. They turned out pretty cute:

Chutes and Ladders Player:

Candy Land Player:

Memory Card:

These relics from my childhood have been preserved and gave our playroom some much needed wall art .