Easy DIY Character Table Updates

I'm all about upcycling. For one thing I'm broke and for another upcycled pieces are usually the most interesting. It is  probably a blessing that I don't usually get out to flea markets often because I would buy all the pieces, then I need a craft store and a hardware store.

By the way if you like crafting or upcycling check out Hobby Lobby, that place is amazing.

Anyway, A couple years ago I got my daughter one of those character tables with two chairs and an aluminum frame. Well, she doesn't really watch that show anymore and its not the cutest thing to look at. Especially when moved to the living room for playdates and coloring.  So, a friend of mine got me a glue gun, (I know, I should have gotten one years ago.) and I had some leftover fabric so I started measuring pieces and cutting out each section. I got lucky and had just enough to do the whole set.

The directions are simple.

The back and bottom of the seat and the table top are screwed in with brackets. Unscrew em.
Lay the piece on the fabric and cut out. Doesn't have to be perfect you will be stretching it but leave enough to glue down.
All I did was use the glue in the corners of each piece to keep the shape and to keep the fabric from moving over the plastic.
Glue sections down on the back by gluing a 3 inch strip at a time and pulling the fabric tight. (I used clothes pins to hold the fabric down while the glue dried. It doesn't take long but it prevents you from pulling free already glued fabric.
Trim the extra.
screw back together.
Whole thing took like half an hour.

She loves it!

Feel free to comment with any questions or comments. I will be doing another gardening update soon, this year is going to be epic, I am just waiting for the sprots to get a little bigger before I post. There is also some new stuff coming from my reddit series so keep an eye out for that. Lots more photos.

Not Your Average Mom

The more I build my blog the more it becomes apparent that I should find a style that suits me and portrays the type of woman, wife, and mom that I am. And I can assure you I'm not you average mom.

The basics, I mean, sure, I make meal plans and grocery shop. I'm a stay at home mom that nannies on the side. I'm a home owner and an Aunt. But what people don't see in the endless stream of Facebook posts and mommy blogs is that we don't all start out as Mom's, wives etc. I like rock music and horror movies. I have gauged ears and tattoos. Don't bother asking the internet for they will tell you that I am teaching my daughter all the wrong things by having a tongue piercing or letting her stand on the couch.

To that I say, shut it! No one asked your opinion. I say this half kidding because when I was pregnant I joined a very popular mommy thread for new moms. While the information I could get was very relevant and eased a lot of fears I had about starting this new type of life there were so many women looking for real help and real advise that were torn down by other moms. By people who, for all intents and purposes, were supposed to be there to support each other in a very challenging and scary time in life. And that just sucks.

That all being said I am going to celebrate being different, being an alternative mom. I believe instead of focusing on how we can be more like other mothers we should focus more on being ourselves, something so easy to lose when you have children. Are we withholding vaccines because we believe they cause Autism or are we doing it because it is the new fad these days? What do you really think? Yet, no matter what you choose people on either side will give you a hard time with it.

I received almost hate mail when I mentioned in a post that I was thinking of getting my daughters ears pierced at three months. I can guarantee someone you know had their ears pierced as a baby and they didn't explode into flames or spend their whole lives believing they were mutilated as a baby. Still, this is how we think. Am I doing things right? What will the other moms think? How will society view me if I make this decision? These are things that we shouldn't care about. Our children are ours and no one else's, (assuming your children are safe and not being intentionally placed in danger.) So if you think earrings are a good idea then do it and stand up for yourself. If you want to dye your hair blue and wear shit kicker boots everyday and no one can stop you. Certainly if you believe that a drug of vaccine is unsafe then don't give it to your child. But please, as responsible adults, make sure your getting real information because your FB news feed is not real news.... please remember this. (Always do your research first!)

I say we take back a Mom's real power. We are responsible for our children and we alone get to make these decisions. If my four year old wants a mohawk then so be it and if my daughter wants to wear a hoodie with a skull on it then I am not going to teach her that self expression is unacceptable.

Besides, what is the point of having children if we turn them all into little adults. I guess we might as well just clone people. Have some fun.

If any of you have advise (positive) for other readers about parenting, kids or just being a Mom these days please post it in the comments. Any questions you have for me go ahead and post them or send me a message and I will get back to you as soon as I get it.

Thank you all for reading my blog and I will have much more to come as this parenting thing is just starting. (My husband mentioned having another baby soon YIKES!)

Today's Win

 I awoke this morning, late for work, to discover I now have the day off. This is wonderful because I spent the weekend with my family and for the love of god I need a rest. Green Tea a hot shower and ghost TV and, of course, napping. I have been fiddling around on my computer, looking for a free or cheap photo editor. Everything I found was way too... cartoony or had so many buttons and options for things I would never use that I couldn't figure out how to use it. Then.. I found it!

DARKROOM! really cheap for some reason so I download it click start and I am on the move again. This is the program I used when I worked at the Portrait studio and I trained the new staff on how to use it and make it efficient. So off I go. I find some old photos that a photographer friend of mine had done of my daughter and added my little yweak to them. Yup I haven't lost it.

This is my rugrat having her cake at her first birthday.

So granted I don't have a great camera but where my camera lacks I can make up with proper editing equipment. So off I go to kill some time waiting for the house closing and practice with my own little munchkin. Very exciting, wish me luck!

Handmade Gifts For Boys

So I was given an impromptu vacation. This happens sometimes with child care, the family takes a vacation and you are workless until they return. Fortunately I still get paid when they take time off so I still get a little money. Fortunately, this gives me some time to finish up some gift wrapping and getting a few of my little DIY gifts complete so I am excited about that. Not to mention all this one on one time I get with the little one, (she spends most of her time playing with the boy I nanny and rarely has time for mommy.)

Now that my scarves are done, (check my last post for more on that,) I have time to get the boys fort kit done. These clever little things go for anywhere between 30 and 40 bucks. I'm not terribly certain its worth all that so on Black Friday we went out and got just the pieces. I have two nephews so everything is doubled.

I grabbed:

• Two flat sheets. (I got twin sized just because of limited space and I know their families will have old sheets that can also be used. 
• Clothes Pins (You can get a ton for very little money)
• A mini child's flashlight
• Last but not least a book to curl up with in there. (The boys are pretty big on books so we play that up where we can.)

All you really need to do is cut a piece of burlap about double the width and length of the bags the sheets came in. You just want to make sure everything is going to fit inside. Fold over the long sheet of burlap and sew the sides. Turn it right side out and there is your bag. I took another strip of burlap very narrow and pretty long. Putting slits in the top of the burlap bag to weave your 'ribbon' through as a sort of tie.

These are the pieces all pulled together.

This is the final product. I'm going to embelish the front with some paint so it says Fort Kit and tie the top again to make it look a little more polished. I will update as it becomes completed.
I hope the boys like love them and have lots of fun.

If you liked these projects follow me for more great DIY on a budget.
See you soon.

While I Was House Bound

Here in New England our winters get pretty brutal and we are all mostly used to it. It is common to lose power a few times. Well, we got hit early this year and had some down line and bitter temperatures. Regardless we cooked Thanksgiving dinner on the grill, you read that correctly, on the grill. The sides were all done on little propane camp stoves and we warmed the appetizers in ceramic dishes on the wood stove. To top it all off we had frosty cocktails and a little warming brandy to snuggle up to. All in all it was a pretty cozy evening. Even the baby didn't seem to mind since all the attention was on her and not the iPad or the TV. Anyway, since all the crummy weather came through it has been too cold to go outside so I decided to keep myself busy with some inane project. I cant really work on my furniture indoors and we are still working on the offer for the new house so I needed a relatively short project.

Crochet! Time consuming while still being productive. Well after about 45 minutes and two inches into a blanket I needed something a little more..... fun. Arm knitting seems to be the new fun thing so I figured if I do well I have holiday gifts and if I mess it up I have dog blankets. Win, win!

I am pleased to announce.... It worked beautifully and they look nice rather than like a child knotted a bunch of strings together. (I have a habit of busting out some epic pintrest fails from time to time.)

 I will warn you, as I quickly found out, one pull on one of the chains and you will never get it back in the right place so try not to let little hands grab at them. The cuff with the button was just a quick single crochet stitch with a double crochet at the end to make the hole. This thing works great for hiding the seam where the ends are stitched together. These took about 15 to 20 minutes each and together they used about 2 and a half skeins of super bulky and bulky yarn. Make sure you get the fluffy stuff to fill in the holes a little.

Any of my projects you would like to know more about feel free to message me or leave a comment. I don't mind doing tutorials if you need one. I'll be back soon with some more projects as the Christmas gifts start coming together. Thanks guys!

Food For Tiny Fingers

It's official, my daughter is 1 year old! 

We celebrated her birthday over the weekend followed by my husbands party and it went very well. This morning my husband asks me, as he is making her bottle, "Aren't we supposed to be weaning her off of these soon?" Crap, he's right. That means more finger food, relatively scheduled meals, make ahead breakfasts. (I am out of the house by 6am and home with the other little one but 7am so breakfast is already a pain.) Then I start wondering where am I going to put all these meals and tiny tupper ware containers. Well, I think I've got it.

So There are several things I pick up for my lil munchkin to eat. 
Cut up green beans, peas, carrots, broccoli chunks, any frozen or canned veggies really. Throw some in a cup and microwave or grab a small pot and toss in your veggies. Storage is simply your pantry or canned goods cabinet and they take seconds to make. Pair them with some fruit or pretzels.

I will hard boil some extra eggs and throw them back in the fridge for a pre-made breakfast or an afternoon snack.

Cook an extra chicken breast or meatballs when you make dinner. Bonus: split it with the kids and make some quesadillas for lunch or a salad and you got your lunch too with little work.

I am a big fan of chunks of block cheese with some fruit and crackers or cheerios. All very easy things to put together.

With all these little finger foods filling up the fridge and pantry I decided to throw together some Martha Stewart and Betty Crocker and up-cycled some old formula containers to use as storage.

After you pull off the label you can spray paint it with plastic paint. Then I decorated it with some washi tape. The one on the left I use for storing crafts like beads, pom poms, washi tape rolls, etc.

Using small zipper bags and mini storage you can set these up for where ever you need them. For instance one will have small bags of cheerios, (instead of bulky boxes in the pantry.) pretzles, fruit snacks, snack pouches, really anything. 

For the refigerator snacks like fruits and veggies I have small storage boxes,

The white one you see here houses small tea boxes, instant coffee and all those rogue k-cups and kool-aid packets that make such clutter in your cabinets.

One of these little guys can slide out of one side of your fridge and all your toddler to-go bags remain contained in one place.

Last thing I am trying to do more of is making foods ahead, as I mentioned cooking a little extra the night before so you are all set for lunches and snacks the next day but I also like to load up the freezer. (Depending on space you can use those containers above to hold bags of freezer food.)

I like to make french toast sticks, mini pancakes, mini muffins etc. Its a good project for a lazy Sunday when I have an extra pair of hands for the baby. You can make up a ton of them in the time it would take to make a regular breakfast and on those busy mornings you toss 'em in the oven or microwave and the kids are happy. Not to mention all that breakfast stuff will make your house smell all yummy!

A new one I want to try is yogurt bites. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and use an icing bag (or a ziplock with a hole cut in the corner.) and make dots on the paper. Freeze them and pop them into a bag for a cool summer snack.

Anyway, off I go to start cooking then off to work so my husband can clean the kitchen. ;) 

What time saving tricks do you guys have?

Rainy Day Projects

I love rainy days and fall in New England certainly provides plenty of those. While they are the perfect time to catch up on a book or snuggle in some PJs. unfortunately, if your like me, I rarely sit still for long and I'm soon looking for something to keep my hands busy.

Today, for instance, I got some work done on my jewelry box. Years ago my step Father got me a jewelry box, as I had asked for one. This was something left behind in an apartment he was clearing out. It was a wooden stand up with drawers. The drawers and cabinet were lined with a rose pink felt and the cabinet door had a cheesy stained glass flower. While this is perfect for a little kid or little old ladies, it's not really my taste.

 


I saw a potential in this piece though. In a previous post I had mentioned I was starting work and a couple of other projects, an armoire and a china hutch. Well, since I haven't done any woodworking in a very long time I decided the jewelry box would be the perfect practice run since I didn't care about the box anyway.
(The other two pieces were handed down to me by my mother but they were so damaged from several generations of children she just gave me a good luck and let me know how that works out for ya.)

After two days of sanding and deconstruction I got all the finish and stain off, next I will use an ebony stain on it but as I said it's rainy so I will have to wait a couple days. Since stain was put on hold for a bit I decided to move forward with planning. (I'm a wing it kinda girl.) I didn't like the pink felt so I started prying it all out of the drawers and the cabinet. Each piece of felt was wrapped around a cardboard piece. Felt would have been the preferred material but I didn't have any. Instead I used some contact paper I had left over from redoing our gross back splash and wrapped each piece of liner. It started out a little wrinkly because it's paper wrapped around fabric but it accomplished what I needed it to.

Especially when I have refilled the drawers you will not see much more of the liners.

The cabinet had a mirror in the back that I considered removing but washed it and it cleaned up very nicely. Hopefully the rain will hold off a little tomorrow so I can get the first layer of stain on it.

In the cabinet there is a rotating hook that is a crappy plastic and painted metallic gold. That has already been removed and will be spray painted a matte black with Krylon plastic spray paint. That stuff is awesome, I used it to paint some old baby formula containers and turned them into craft storage containers.

So when the jewelry box is finished I will post photos of the finished product and how I did it.

Also, if you have any questions on any projects I do or would like to know how I did anything I post on here feel free to comment and I can write another post with photos on that particular project.

See you again soon.