We had a ton of landscaping stakes left over after we put up our own fence (you can read more about that here). We needed some shelves for our bathroom makeover. We got rid of a medicine cabinet mirror and replaced it with a flat mirror, so we needed something to store little odds and ends and keep them slightly out of view and easy to access; we thought some cute wooden boxes would do the trick.
We had been putting off going to the hardware store for some wood when it suddenly dawned on me - all those stakes were just sitting in the rain next to our house doing a whole lot of nothing!
Cor went ahead and cut the tips off of each end of the stakes, wood glued them together (holding them with clamps while they dried) to make a bottom and sides, and boom. Boxes.
We used some L brackets to hang them as "floating shelves" similar to the ones we put in our main bathroom.
I intentionally left the printable free of "Happy Grandparent's Day" so we could write it in ourselves with our cute kindergartner handwriting. It would also make a great card for a birthday, mother's day, father's day, or any day! We printed our cards on white cardstock, but you could also print them on a color cardstock too. I think a blue or a light gray would be super pretty! You could also print on some printer paper or construction paper and call it a day. Grandparent's just love anything from their favorite tiny people!
You can either trim the cards around the mason jar itself, or keep them squared off like I did (because I'm in get-it-done mode. Sorry not sorry.)
Next, grab your kiddos and have them put a few fingerprints on the card with yellow paint or ink. Because I have so many children, I just let each of them put one firefly because I wanted to add their names under it, but go crazy if you want! When dry, take a fine tip Sharpie or a black pen to draw in some little winged creatures and add each child's name under their print (if you want. It's totally optional. You do you, boo.)
Get extra credit by punching a hole around both sides of the jar and adding a ribbon bow. So sweet! I used a fork to help pop the ribbon around the front and then brought it back around through the back and tied a bow.
I keep a box of 4x6 envelopes on hand. They are perfect to pop a photo in or stick a cute kid-made card in the mail to Grandma.
We've been taking a break from our room-a-week situation because we've been working on something big outside. (and we've just been all around busy, but let's just blame it on the out side thing...)
We have a FENCE!
Cor (and a few good friends) did a ton of work to get our 286 foot fence up for a whole-lotta-less-money than paying someone to do it. Plus we had an friend trade us some fencing material for some furniture. Win-Win.
Online estimates show our fencing would have costs us at least $3,000 and Cor got it done for about $1,000.
The first thing Cor did was rent a brush cutter and cleared out some of our property (we didn't fence in all of our property because we wanted to keep the woods in the back of our property line). After breaking one brush cutter, Cor and a friend moved on to measuring out the fence line and marking where post would be. Then they moved on to attempting to aug some of the big holes for the fence posts...
This didn't work to well. He had a two man auger (and a friend) and totally needed something different.
The good news was when he went to return the equipment, the company gave him a credit to rent the proper auger (and another brush cutter).
A few weeks later and the guys were back at it (now with an expert, my very amazing father-in-law.) Cor finished out clearing the hill and then they used a one man hydraulic auger (or so I'm told) to dig out the post holes. This looked super duper easy and took the guys no time at all. We've got a lot of tree roots. So that was fun.
A few holes in, the wise, experienced one, decided they should probably put up a few posts to make sure they measured everything out correctly... Surprise! They we're off by a few inches. But at least they only had dug a few post holes by then and could fix the rest of the work they had to do. Good looking out, Daddy-O.
A few more weeks later (hey now - free weekends are hard to come by when you have so many little humans!), Cor got back to work on the fence. He needed to cut 18in off of each post and measure from the bottom to make sure each rail would be where it needed to be. This required more math. Good thing we met in Middle School Pre Algebra and both aced it (Spoiler: We did not. Not even close.)
Once he got going, math seemed to make more sense and he got into a groove of cutting and setting the posts (and we he had 28 posts to set!) and adding in the rails (we have a split rail fence with 2 rails each).
On a whole other weekend (good fence building takes time, people.), he attached nylon coated metal netting to the inside of the fence. He used 1 1/4in galvanized metal fence staples to staple the netting into place. There were a few issues where we had hills and some creative patch working was needed, but for the most part, it was unrolling and stapling all along our fence line.
Then, with the finish line is sight, we ran out of netting.
Yeah.
We needed like a good 10ft.
And the store was sold out. (Looks like a lot of people buy fencing materials on 3 day Holiday Weekends. Who knew?)
We were able to use some of our garden fencing to block the bottom of the small section of fencing that is lacking the netting (and the area where a large gate will be put in).
Eventually we'll add two side gates and add netting to those too...
In case you didn't know, I'm an English Professor. I, quite literally, love big, classical books. So I knew I wanted extra large book prints all over my home. This post has a few affiliate links to products we used in case you want to make one too!
I started with an idea with the girls' room. The last two pages of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland has the word "sister" in it about five time. And it talks about the hopes and dreams of seeing her grown sister sitting and telling stories to future children. Could it be any more perfect? Swoon.
Want to watch us build it (and mess it up) on YouTube. Good! Click Here!
I'm quite aware of copyright law (hey, remember those multiple English degrees?), so I knew that Alice in Wonderland was well out of copyright. Especially since you can find scanned complete copies of the work on online libraries (like here at Google Books). They can do this because it has been over 50 years since the author and illustrator's deaths. Making the works out of copyright and free for use. (Note: DISNEY'S Alice in Wonderland is a whole other ballgame and is NOT out of copyright.)
I knew this.
Staples did not.
I had to go to war with them.
Not really. It actually wasn't too terrible (especially because I made Cor do it...). I needed to print out something that included the copyright situation and include it with my order. I went ahead and used one of the copyright pages listed in a Google Books copyright page, and they happily printed my pages. (And I informed them that I would also planning to do similar projects with other out-of-copyright materials, so now we both know what's up.)
We got an Engineering Print in the largest size Staples prints (36" x 48"). I just scanned a book page and it came out clear enough. I've done photos too that have turned out great! Cor took the file in but you can also order it through their website and preview it.
The entire 36x48 page was only $7.29!
Once I had my giant pages, they sat in my garage for ages... Kidding... Yeah... Kidding. Once I finally got my crafty bug back, I went to work. I used this spray adhesive to attach my large pages to a piece of .205in X 4ft X 8ft plywood underlayment from Lowe's. The whole piece of wood was around 16$ and I had some left over for a few other projects.
I placed a really large desk top on top of my papers to give them so weight while they dried on the wood. The adhesive gave the paper and wrinkly sort of texture, but I was cool with that. It makes it look like old pages. You could staple gun the pages tight to the board if you want to avoid the wrinkled look.
Cor then cut the pages down to size. If you're making more than one page, make sure you make your pages even (if that's what you're going for). That meant we had to have a little more white space on one of our pages.
Then we took some 1 1/2in X 2in X8-ft wood and stained them with this walnut stain. We did math... And did math again... And messed that up and mathed some more (Hey! I teach ENGLISH, folks!) and finally got them cut right to fit as perfect(ish) little frames on our large book page. (We actually mathed so wrong that we ran out of wood for the frames for the second book page... So, that's why you only see pictures of one. Project: To be continued).
Then we used a nail gun to shoot through the back and attach the frame pieces to the book page. We made sure to remove the baby before this step ;) . Gorgeous!
We used these D-Ring Hooks and attached them to the back of the frame on both sides. Then we hung it above Ay's bed, and admired our genius. Boom.
It's one of my new favorite things. I can't stop sneaking away and hiding in her room.
I've been wanting to do this DIY Flag Shirt since Cam was a baby. Now that we have ALL our babies, I thought maybe it was finally time. Haha. I've included some affiliate links in this post so you can make your own shirts too!
These we're so so easy! The hardest part was finding a pack of white tee shirts that would easily fit my 2T 3T 4T wearing bunch. And I found these that worked perfectly in size XS!
Since we were using this craft fabric paint I didn't even prewash the shirts.
I used some leftover painters tape to tape off a few stripes per shirt (I taped less stripes on Air's onesie since it was obviously much smaller). I also stuck a piece of paper inside each shirt in case the paint bleed through (It did. Don't skip this step.)
Then I gave the kids a foam brush and the painted the white part of the shirt that was taped off. Everyone had a different method. Brush strokes and dabbling seemed to work the best. We we're going for fun and not for perfect. So I just let them go at it. (You may want to also place a piece of tape vertically at the ends of the stripes if you are in a going-for-perfect mood).
Then we took some star stickers and put them on our top left corner. (Ours came from a practice workbook but these are similar)
I painted each kid's hand with blue fabric paint and quickly put their handprint over top the star stickers. Fabric paint dried quickly. So work fast on this step.
Next we freaked out and washed everyone's hands before they touched anything easily pulled off the star stickers and tape to reveal white stars and stripes!
And that was it! It was so quick and fun and I can't wait to get a picture of the whole gang in their shirts (Fingers crossed. That will probably be more difficult than actually making the shirts!) We even made a onesie for baby Air!
Last year I created and printed off these adorable bubble tags and tied them on with some cute twine. Boom. Instant summer gift. There's 9 to a page on the printable PDF (linked below) and the perfect summer send off.
Follow this link to a printable PDF to print some for yourself!
I decided that I want to FILL our new home with literary quotes, and I was on the hunt for a place to keep our keys, so I decided to make this ol' thang from some recycled wood. Maybe you want to make one too with a favorite quote, bible verse, or song lyric.
The first (and hardest) part is to find a quote you like. Then follow my tutorial here to get your quote transferred to your wood.
All you need next is a few hooks and two saw tooth hangers. Plan out where you want your hooks and twist them into place. Then take two saw tooth hangers and place them on each side of the back of your plank. You don't want to use one in the middle. When you hang it and add your keys, it will tilt (don't ask me how I know this...)
We got our hooks and hangers at Lowes, but you can also grab everything your need right from these affiliate links from Amazon. Here, here, and here (and you didn't even need to get out of your pajamas. You're welcome.)
We were getting close to Easter and really hadn't done much. (Oops!) To be fair, we are closing on the new house and getting ready for Cor to travel and for us all to take a pretty extensive road trip (stay tuned for that), so Easter was on the back burner.
Car brought home this craft from preschool and I thought it might be a fun idea to replicate with melted beads. We used BIGGIE BEAD PERLER BEADS (affiliate link) and placed parchment paper on top of our template and put the whole thing on a Baking sheet.
After we had them all placed relatively close together, I carefully slid the bottom paper away.
I then put the whole thing in the oven at 300*F for 1 hour. Ours needed about 10 more mins, and then it was all perfectly melted together. I used a spoon to squish one stray bead down while it was all still hot and it did the trick.
Here's the template Car came home with from school. But you could also Google image "preschool Easter egg color page" for more ideas.
Hey guys! In case you haven't caught on, we're getting a new Mouse House super soon! I have been so excited. We don't close until next month, but that hasn't stopped me from making. all. the. things. The first thing I wanted to make was a GPS sign of our new house. I thought I'd add a compass rose on the sign, but decided halfway through to switch it up for the Whitman quote. Because it's perfect. I love these things, so I included affiliate links to help you find what I used.
I have a cutting machine (a silhouette cameo), but decided I didn't want to use it for this project. Sometimes dragging it out and setting it up seems like more work than necessary. It has it's uses, but today I didn't want to mess with it. And now YOU can make one too if you don't have a cut machine.
The first thing I did was go to this website to find the GPS coordinates for the new house. Easy Peasy. I typed it out in Word and picked a font that I thought was thick enough to trace.
Next I took an old piece of scrap wood and painted it brown with acrylic paint. If you stain it instead, the white acrylic paint won't stick as well. So I just used a dry brush and some brown acrylic and wiped it off with a paper towel to get a dry, wood-like look.
Then I took out my printed coordinates and quote and took some good ol' kid sidewalk chalk and chalked up the whole back of the paper. (Full disclosure, whenever my kids get sidewalk chalk I immediately take and hide the white chalk... Mom of the year here, folks!) Then I placed the paper on the wood and used a pencil to trace over my letters. This works like copy paper. Tracing the white chalk onto the brown wood.
Next I used an extra fine Sharpie Paint Pen and filled in my chalk letters. This also came in SUPER handy when writing out the quote. Just take your time.
After using the Sharpie pen, I went back over the letters with a fine brush and white acrylic paint to finish it up.
So easy! I did this whole sign in less than an afternoon (and had to chase after a few little kids while doing it... So that was fun.)
Remember that song about the monkeys jumping on the bed? Well, apparently they can do a bit more damage than just a bump on the head.
Cam fell off between the bed and the nightstand and broke his arm. We had to make an emergency call to Dad at work and go right to the ER. It was obviously broken. One of those "Arms are not supposed to bend that way" breaks you'd expect from a skateboard incident gone wrong...
After 6 hours at the ER, Cam got his own XRAY images and a brand new, generic, Emergency Room, boring white cast.
He. Was. Stoked.
I was not. How on earth do you keep a 4 year old who needs to stay away from water clean enough to rock a white cast? I knew we needed to cover it for a couple reasons.
1. Fiberglass casts are strong, light weight, and are as rough as sandpaper. Cam is running around scratching everything in sight. Including us!
2. White is boring.
3. Patterns are fun.
We did something simple. We headed to our local Walmart and I looked at all the adult tube socks. We found one that matched his super hero obsession (Hello, Captain America).
We simply cut the toe off of the sock, keeping the stitching attached to the tube part and not the toe part.
Then we just slipped that sucker on. We didn't cut a thumb hole, because the velcro like fiber glass is keeping it in place just fine. And we can switch it out with fun patterns easily and still have his white cast easily available for fun signatures.
Be sure to keep the sock OFF the skin of the arm. You don't want to restrict blood flow to a healing arm. Keep the sock only on the cast.
I've seen other tutorials that use nylons or adult tights to cover a cast. They wraped it in a bandage to prevent it from tearing on the fiberglass, but the sock was just the perfect size for a 4 year old and snagging wasn't an issue.
Hopefully, Captain America heals quickly and doesn't use his super hero skills to jump any far distances in the future.
