DIY Kids' Art Wall

 I think there are some pretty cute aspects to our home. There's the DIY toy bench mom and I made (and later recovered), the $5 "Canvas Prints," the whale mobile in Gummy Bear's room... Yet the feature that gets the most notice and compliments is the kids' "Art Wall."

The compliments must be nods to my kids' vast artistic talents, since the actual holder is as simple as it comes. To recreate it, all you need is:

• Small Command Hooks
• Picture Wire
• Wire Cutters
• Binder Clips

I got everything from Walmart (except the wire cutters, which I had on hand in our basic toolbox). The instructions? As straightforward as they seem: first, determine where you want your art wall. I slipped mine in the corner of our playroom over the craft table.

As you can see, I wanted mine four layers high, so I measured the "display" area to equally space my four rows and marked the spots for the hooks with a pencil. Following the directions on the command hooks, I attached them at my marked spots. (All it takes is unpeeling stickers, pressing the hooks in place for one minute, and then waiting an hour before hanging anything heavy. Easy-peasey.)

Then, I strung the picture wires from hook to hook as taut as I could, securing them by looping around the hook and then winding the end back along the wire. Once secure, I snipped the ends with wire cutters.

Next, I put several binder clips on each wire and voila! It was ready to hold art! So simple, so inexpensive, and so customizable! 

Mum has a version of this in her home, sometimes for the grandchildren's creations but also for her own watercolors. That sloth is to die for, mum...

Happy drawing/painting/crafting!

Recover Your DIY Storage Bench

It's super satisfying to look back at a project from four years ago and think, "Yes! This was so worth it. I love what I made and use it on a daily basis." 

That's how I feel about our DIY Storage Bench of 2017. That bench was an essential part of our townhome's living room décor, holding the kids' toys and standing strong despite lots of sitting (and jumping...) on it. The cube's structure held up, only needing some occasional screw-tightening. The white finish did a great job withstanding the constant pulling and pushing of toy boxes. The cushion, though a little droopy on the front corners from supporting so many sitters, is still foamy and comfortable. Somehow, mom's crazy idea of using hardboard and attaching it with command strips worked perfectly. In fact, I never took the cushion portion off (until very recently). The only things that didn't hold up were the $5 cloth bins from Shopko. Ah, well, we can't have everything.

Now, in our new home, we put our toy-holding bench in the playroom, but it didn't vibe with the bright, rainbow look I was going for:

I knew I wanted to recover it, but we were also in the midst of covid lockdowns. So it sat, like so, until mom came for a visit a few months ago. Masks on and with my fabric expert in tow, we ventured to JoAnn's to pick a brighter cover for our bench.

Can I make an aside? The fabric we bought last time was awesome! Outdoor upholstery fabric for only $3 a yard??? It lasted like a dream, and the pattern hid any spots and dirt that must have inevitably gotten on it after years of use with little kids. Our new fabric, though adorable, was much more finicky to work with. What did we get, you ask? Mum, take it away:

This time we chose an indoor upholstery fabric that picked up the corn color in the pennants hanging on the wall. It has a classic pattern that makes a brighter, bolder statement than our previous choice. It is heavy duty and should wear well. But it was also expensive; I think it was listed at $30 a yard. (Fortunately, we had a couple of coupons and got it for half off.)  It is an indoor fabric and doesn't have the built-in protections of our earlier outdoor choice, so we sprayed it with ScotchGuard to help protect the surface from inevitable spills. Laurel's note: we also sprayed the previous fabric with ScotchGuard. One must be thorough when one has young kids...

So, how would this thicker, brighter, more finicky cloth, work on a bench cushion? Since the original cover was still smooth and taut, we opted to put the new fabric on over our old one. This was less time-consuming and saved us a lot of staple-removing, but it also meant the fabric under our hardboard was getting thicker and thicker. Would it be too bulky? Would the command strips still work?

We decided it was worth the risk and, like last time, started to staple. This bold, big pattern made it more essential that we line up the fabric just right to keep the pattern lined up and square along the cushion. There was lots of adjusting.  Also, notice that mom made sure we doubled over the fabric before stapling to avoid fraying. Nice thought, mum. 

This fabric is also much more stretchy, which is its own, special pain. Pull it too taut along the long sides, and the foam will develop a weird, wavy pattern along the staples. Leave it too loose and the bench is frumpy and prone to catch. It took some fiddling to determine the right tightness... and even then, we were wrong. I went back a few weeks later to pull it tighter at the short ends. This avoided ripples and gave the cushion a clean look.

Speaking of the ends of the bench, they were, again, much harder to arrange with thicker fabric. We cut out awkward chunks along the corners to try and avoid awkward bunching (with mom's encouraging "Trust me, this is totally normal when upholstering" to give me courage as I snipped out more and more corner fabric, praying I wouldn't take out too much.) Still, we made it, and a million staples later, we came to the moment of truth: would the command strips still attach it to the bench? Yes! Our folds of stapled fabric were just thin enough so the "velcro" part of the strips could connect and stay put. They are still doing their job a couple months later.

Truly, despite the difficulties, I'm proud of  this project.

Fairy Gardens

It's almost spring, so it's a perfect time to think about fairy gardens. Two of our granddaughters have spring birthdays, and their creative mom decided to help them (and their brother) create fairy gardens as part of their birthday joy. For us, it was a four-part process, and the children were involved in all of it:

Choose a container: 
This can be easy or hard, depending on what you're looking for. There are a bazillion pots out there within a huge cost range. Our goal was to make fun gardens at a moderate price, so we used pots that I already had. And I think I purchased them initially at thrift stores. You want to be sure that the pot or container is large enough to handle the plants you choose plus the fairy decorations. However, soil alone is heavy, so it is also important to consider the weight of the container once it is filled. There are great inexpensive plastic or resin pots that look like stone or terra cotta. That is what we chose to work with:

Choose plants:
Fairy garden plants need to stay relatively small, so check on growth height and spread when you choose your plants. We went to a nearby nursery to find ours, but I have noticed since then that both Lowes and Home Depot have fairy garden sections, and they may be less expensive. (Also, Kroger, our grocery store, recently had small succulents for $1 a plant. Super price!) We tried to choose plants that gave us variety--color, texture and height. You want enough greenery to fill but not crowd your container. (Leave enough space for the plants to grow, and if things start to look too crowded, it's fine to prune a bit. These pictures were taken right after the gardens were created, and by the end of the summer they filled in even more.) Be sure to leave plenty of room for your accessories. Also consider light and water requirements. Two of our gardens had similar plantings, but we chose succulents for the third. Mixing them might have been a mistake because succulents require much less water.

Notice that this garden has ferns, plants that droop over the edge, flowering plants, and taller plants at the back to add dimension. Check for variation in color and texture as well.

Choose accessories:
This is the fun part, and you can be so creative. We found many of our fairies, structures and other accessories online, but we also found them at the dollar store, the hardware store, and thrift stores. (I spotted a darling mushroom at Hobby Lobby this week--a Christmas tree ornament that was 90% off.) The hunt is half the fun. In the gardens above, look for charming houses, bridges, a metal trellis, benches, woodland animals, stepping stones, and a pebble brook, The male of the group chose gnomes instead of fairies and succulents instead of leafy greens. The result was delightful, and of the three gardens, this was the only one that survived the winter cold. The others will need to be replanted:

Again, notice the variation in plant color, size, and texture (and the adorable hedgehogs.)

One of the cottages has little solar panels and lights up at night. SO FUN!:

Put it all together:
We bought a large bag of container potting soil and went to work. We had the children set out their design by arranging the pots and the accessories on top of the soil before we did any digging. That helped us create a pleasing composition without having to dig up and rearrange. Once everything is in place, it might be helpful to snap a reference picture so you can check back as you plant.

The children loved both the process and the finished products. And they are excited to re-imagine their plantings this year. It is fairy garden magic.

There Was a Little House. . . .

Laurel and I have both taken a long blog break, mine longer than hers. But we plan to be back with a vengence because we have missed it. It stirs our creative juices, and, more importantly, it keeps us connected to each other in a special way.

Before I fell off the earth, I had started working on a children's garden and playhouse for our back yard. (I blogged about it clear back in spring of 2018.) Over the next few weeks, I'll update you on the progress and share what I learned from the experience--what worked and what didn't.

My yard growing up was a childhood paradise, a half acre of house, lawn and flowerbeds, and another half acre in back of orchard and trees--and a brick playhouse that my Dad and older brother built for me. I knew I couldn't replicate that sense of space and freedom in our much smaller city lot, but I did hope to carve out child-friendly, creative spaces for our grandchildren. That space centers around this playhouse--a much smaller and simpler version of the one that my Dad created for me:

I found the free building plans for this house at a site I use often for my DIY creations. Because the site has everything else you need to know, I'll just share the things I learned and the adaptations I made to make it more weather proof; the Ana White house was made for indoor use.

Although I wanted my structure to be sturdy, I didn't necessarily want it to be permanent, so I chose not to lay a cement foundation. Instead, I bought a prefab section of cedar fencing that was about two feet wider and longer than the house. Cedar was more expensive than pine, but I knew that it would weather better. If I had built it myself, I would have made it a about two feet longer to give the house a larger side porch area. As it is, it has a narrow back porch that is shaded by an overhanging part of the roof and a small side porch. It gave me enough room to add a little bistro table that can be served through the back window:

But choosing a pre-made foundation made sense; it was both less expensive and much easier since I was constructing the house by myself. I did add some extra bracing to the underside to strengthen it, and I attached boards to the front, back, and sides for strength and aesthetics.

To keep the platform off the potentially wet ground, I rested each corner on bricks. Since the ground slopes away from the house, I used smaller bricks in the front and cinderblocks in the back where the slope is greater.

I put the frame together on my porch because of a very rainy spring and then moved it to the platform to put up the walls. The biggest challenge was keeping everything square. Fortunately, wood is very forgiving, and when I had to, I just shaved a little off to make things fit.

In a way, it was a good thing that there was a lot of rain. It slowed the process down, and because of that, it quickly became clear that nails from my handy nail gun were not going to be sufficient to hold it together. As the tongue and groove planks became heavy with rain, they began to sag and pull away from the frame. So I went back and added screws to every board. It made all the difference, and I would recommend screws from the very beginning.

The plans call for a plywood roof, but plywood does not hold up well in wet weather. So my wise husband looked for and found a lighter and more durable solution online at Home Depot. We ended up using a Suntuf polycarbonate clear roofing panel that we cut to fit and then screwed into place. It keeps out rain and blocks harmful UV rays while letting in light. The entire roof is a skylight.

I painted the house, both inside and out, with two coats of clear polyurethane and painted the front trim with oil-based, green paint. (You can see from the pictures of the back porch that the wood is already beginning to weather a bit, but I'm okay with that.) Then I had the fun job of furnishing and decorating the interior. I found (or made) all the child-size furniture at thrift store bargains:

And the exterior--a thrift store rocker for the porch, solar lights from Amazon, and a genuine mailbox from the hardware store:

Welcome Home!

Octonauts Themed Birthday Party

Well, our first ever birthday party is in the books! Don't get me wrong; we didn't completely ignore SourPatch's first few birthdays. There were definitely cake and family time involved in all of them, and I think birthday #3 fell on a day I was hosting preschool, so we worked birthday festivities into the activities of the day (that year had the best dragon cake, too! The tutorial is floating around online somewhere...)

Then last year, SourPatch opted for an excursion with a friend over a traditional party. Yet this year... this year it felt like it was time. Patches was excited about a friend party, and I was ready to try to expand my mothering experiences to include hosting said party. His favorite show of the moment is Octonauts, a show of which I approve and an obvious theme for his party.

Here's what I liked about his birthday this year: it gave us an opportunity to work on party-preparations together. For example, we bonded making a pinata of Captain Barnacle's face. I was going to add a link to the tutorial we used, only to find out the site is having troubles. Basically, we cut out two outlines of a polar bear head in cardboard and a two inch strip of cardboard to go in between. We taped it together with packing tape (not too tight, lest the kids couldn't crack it open...) and left an open flap to add candy later. Oh, and I added some sturdy ribbon tied around the inner cardboard strip for hanging.

Next, the wrapping! To give it the appearance of fur--and that classic pinata look--I cut slits 3/4 of the way up two rolls of white streamers acquired from the dollar store. Since I had modge podge on hand, it was my adhesive of choice to brush across the pinata in sections as I wrapped the pre-cut streamer around and around and around, overlapping the strips to leave no brown cardboard peeking through. SourPatch was a great helper here.

Once completely wrapped, I let it dry and cut out a hat, ears, and face from construction paper and card stock. Add an Octonauts emblem to the hat, and voila! The captain.

I'm glad it looked cute and even more glad that the kids universally seemed to enjoy hitting it. Indeed, they kept hitting it even after the candy came out.

My son also enjoyed helping decorate for the party. We added streamer seaweed to the windows.

We also made and hung jellyfish from the ceiling (the tutorial is found here at Little Stars Learning.)

So... activities. I read lots of moms online skip the party games all together and just let the kids play, especially if they have pleasant weather and a big yard. I considered having the party at a nearby park, but the weather was inclement. Further, the point was to try to throw a "real" party, not just a play date, so, consulting with the birthday boy, we tried to think of activities he and his friends would enjoy.

As the kids arrived, we had a bubble machine blowing ambient bubbles on the porch. First thing, they came and played "Pin the Eyepatch on Kwazii" (another creation we threw together with poster board and construction paper, though I believe there's a version you can buy on amazon.)

Then, there were ocean sticker scenes from Oriental Trading Company available for the kids at folding tables to create while waiting for the other kids to arrive. I'd say half the kids chose to do the sticker scenes while the other half played with toys. Works for me!

Once all the children arrived, we unrolled a "treasure map" to three different spots in our home. The first spot had a classic "fishing game." Dad crouched on the other side of a blue blanket, attaching cheap plastic ocean animals to the end of a fishing rod as each child took turns casting it over. The next spot on the map went to these awesome swordfish swords, also from Oriental Trading Company (but sadly now discontinued.) I had them stabbed into a gold, spray-painted cardboard box so they could each pull their sword out King Arthur style. The kids enjoyed playing with them and surprisingly didn't kill each other with them (though one child did obliterate the box... no picture of that one!)

Our last stop on the treasure map led the kids to sand boxes on the porch full of buried gold (plastic) doubloons. After digging their allocated amount of coins, they were free to go and play until pinata time. I, like every other mom on the internet, made "Pesos' Medical Bags" to hold their party swag and pinata candy. Thank you, Misadventures of a First Time Mum for the band aid printable.

As mentioned before, the kids really do love hitting a pinata, especially with their new swordfish sword. Post pinata, we went inside for cake and candles. I made a Kwazii cake on Patch's actual birthday earlier in the week; we rocked cupcakes for the friend party. Now, what to do for food? Looking online, I found that some really beautiful, elaborate, and adorable, ocean-themed spreads. I thought and thought about what to do... and decided to follow one party planner's much simpler suggestion: ice cream bar. Kids love the power to choose their own toppings, she claimed, and she was right. Cake and ice cream? Simple. Though yes, I'm sure I did spoil these kids' lunches...

I really meant to say "no presents necessary" on the invitations and then just didn't... However, it was great to see how excited the kids were to see SourPatch open his presents. I thought kids hated the "open presents" part? I was actually going to skip it. Again, I'm a rookie mom, apparently; this was a highlight for the guests, and though I'll still likely say "no presents" next year, it was fun to see the kids' faces light up with the happiness of giving.

It felt like a win. Yes, we invited more kids than I thought prudent for the age group (and our square footage.) Yes, it was chaotic. Yet the kids seemed to enjoy the activities and company, and SourPatch had a great time, both in the preparations leading up to the party and at the party itself. Victory.

DIY Tulip Wreath

Apparently I'm into wreaths? I remember each holiday in my childhood, mom would lug a giant rubbermaid box of decorations out of the garage, and we'd bedeck the house. In hindsight, I suspect our decorations were probably a mix of garish-and-cheap next to expensive-and-broken items: White ghosts (stuffed with plastic grocery bags) hanging from the trees out front for Halloween, real pumpkins stabbed with wooden feathers to resemble turkeys at Thanksgiving, or intricate little Christmas nutcrackers with delicate hats, hands, or heads that were super-glued back on after careless children broke them.

Sorry we broke all your stuff, mom (and continue to break; who killed off another wise man from your nativity set last Christmas? It wasn't me this time.) That's not the point, though; the point is that I remember loving the process of decorating our house. However, I'm four years a mother, and I don't really have much of a stash of seasonal decor myself to spread the joy to my children. The one thing I'm slowly accumulating is a small supply of wreaths.

Perhaps it's because my first DIY autumn wreath was (is) so awesome. I really liked how it turned out, and the process was a fun experiment.

Then the Christmas edition came around the next year:

However, pine cones don't really say "spring," do they? I did the unthinkable a bought an Easter wreath on sale at Smith's, but Easter came and went so quickly.  I eyed my barren door last week and knew it was time for something happy, springy, and floral. Thus, to my Pinterest board I went, and I pulled up this lovely tulip wreath tutorial from The How-To Mom. "Laurel," you say, "your wreath doesn't look as great as hers." I know, I know. It's either a product of skill or a Michael's vs. Dollar Tree effect. I do love her two-toned effect, but the dollar store only had pink and pink-with-a-little-bit-of-white varieties. Not much contrast, I'm afraid. Nonetheless, I am super pleased with how it turned out.

I bought the tulip stems and ribbon from Dollar Tree. Fact: I can't remember how many bunches I bought (not enough the first time; I had to go back for more.) My best guess is 12 bunches with 4 or 5 tulips a bunch. I used one spool of 3 inch x 3 yard green burlap ribbon. It... almost reached. I knew it was going to be close, and had I overlapped it slightly less, I think I could have made it seamlessly around. The very last section (where I put the loop to hang it) has a loop of brown burlap that I hope is hidden by the flowers.😊

Since the Dollar Tree only had 9 inch foam wreath forms, I opted for a Walmart one for around $4. I chose the 12 inch (though the original tutorial uses a 14 inch.) All around, that clocks in the price of this beauty at roughly $17 before tax. 

I love the simplicity of this tutorial. After clipping off the individual stems with pliers and securing my ribbon to the foam with hot glue, I wrapped. Just wrapped. No more gluing until securing the ribbon at the very end, no floral wire, pushpins, or eye screws... I loved making this wreath.

I tried to follow the pictures and suggestions from the original tutorial. It looked like she grouped 3 or 4 stems per wrap-around of ribbon, pushing the leaves towards the top so they won't get pinned under the ribbon. The end of the ring is tricky, but I found I could trim the stems slightly shorter and tuck the last flowers into the first loop of ribbon. I used hot glue to secure the end of the ribbon and glued on a loop for hanging.

Voila: spring.

Articles of Faith Cards

Hello, January! I'm excited for 2018; I have a good feeling about this year.

As one of the children's leaders in our church, I spent a good part of December bustling to get ready for a new year in Primary. Much of this busyness was spent on froof-froof: putting up a new bulletin board, getting bookmarks and zipper pulls ready to use as birthday gifts, and printing out cute "you're assigned to give a talk" bracelets. Then there's the logistics of staffing the Sunday School classes and equipping the teachers with manuals, sub lists, and class rolls.

Wowsers, there's a lot to get done! Amidst all this hubbub, we also wanted to gift the children Articles of Faith flashcards on a ring. As part of the Faith in God program, all the kiddos are encouraged to have these basic gospel truths memorized before they turn twelve. So I was tasked with investigating our options.

There are lots of cute, free cards available already on the internet. However, I wanted a relatively small size that would print in black and white onto colored paper, and I wasn't having great success with the ones I tried. Furthermore, the cute, swirly fonts were both adorable and hard to read. I mean, we've got four-year-olds trying to sound some of these out, right? Ergo, I made my own simple cards, and I thought I would share them in case anyone else is looking for something similar.

I have two downloads available: one if you just want to print a few sets and another with 12 articles per page (in case you want to make them for your primary class.) Yes, you could also make these for an entire primary, which despite being fairly economical is also extremely time intensive. You've been warned...

Click here for one set

Click here for twelve!

Happy memorizing (after the cutting, laminating, and hole punching, that is!)