Cinderblock Raised Garden Bed

This one's not really crafty, just a clever idea that I thought I'd try this year. We put newspaper underneath before laying it all down, because according to a different pin, that was supposed to stop weeds from growing through. Well…maybe we didn't lay enough, or maybe it's just a funny little fiblet, but it didn't work…at all. :( Other than still needing to weed the garden on a regular basis, I love this. Next year I think I'm gonna try to assemble a vinyl cover, so I can start seedlings in it and cover it at night. 

Used an egg carton and newspaper cups to start my seedlings.

My radishes were the first to pop.

After we got most of it planted.

Yeah, our grass is wanting, I know.

Radishes, peppers, onions, tomato, strawberry, peas, green beans, corn (galore!), carrots,
bib lettuce, parsley, and potatoes and pumpkin are planted off to the side.

Threw together a little pea trellis with twine and wire.

Up-Cyling Little Tikes Swingset and Slide

I've been meaning to get this post up for a while now…like a month, but life gets busy, and little things of slightly lesser importance get piled up in a corner for later…if ever. But luckily, the pile is being ransacked, later is now!

I saw an up-cycle of a Little Tikes picnic table on Pinterest a while back, and really wanted to get on board of that trend…but didn't really want the old school table that didn't fold up. (And refurbishing things, just for fun, is a habit my husband would like me to lose.) Then, upon further study, I learned you can spray paint plastic…WHA???! I know! So I started researching it, and sure enough, many little kid cottages and houses had been brought back to life with a few cans spray paint.

So, I took to our local Craigslist (which has now become a problem in itself)…I scoured and trolled for about a week. I struck out several times…'sorry, it's sold' was becoming my Craigslist anthem. But after work one day, I got on, scrolled through all the newly added kid stuff, found nothing, refreshed, and BOOM! A Little Tikes Swing Set and Climber for $75, posted 16 minutes ago. I jumped on that faster than burnt bacon (what? I like burnt bacon)! It was dirty and disgusting and had water sloshing inside of it, but I knew with a little love, it could be transformed. 

In order to move it, we had to fully dissemble it (pain in the ass, by the way). We gave it a good scrub down with soapy water and sprayed it all off. We picked up some cans of Rust-oleum 2X spray paint in green and red at Home Depot. Last minute, I decided I wanted one more color, so I ran to Walmart and bought some Krylon Fusion spray paint. Both claim to work on plastic. After laying down a tarp, I got busy. The Rust-oleum worked incredibly, with smooth, even coverage. Not so much can be said for Krylon, which dripped and splattered and made zero effort to disperse evenly, if at all. Rust-oleum good, Krylon bad. I ended up returning to Home Depot and buying my third color in Rust-oleum instead, and repainting over the Krylon mess.

One slide painted, the other slide still faded!

The green (Hunter or Forrest, I forget) covered very well,

Just by looking at the cans, you can tell which had better control and dispensing.

If you look closely, you can see the splatter and drops from the Krylon…terrible.

In all, it took about a day and a half of painting and my arm hurt like a mother!! After reassembly (which was hard considering we had no real instructions) a few of the pieces had slight scratches afterward, but touched up easily. It's been in active use now for a little less than a month, and is holding up fantastically…with a few minor scratches on the slide (because the bubble-blowing lawn mower has taken a turn or two down it).

I loved the outcome so much that I actually tackled two Little Tikes cube slides for friends, one with left over paint and one with pastels. 

Before.

After.

Hard at work.

Quick note: after so many painting jobs, the paint on the tarp from jobs past,
will peel off and stick to your current job…even more so if it's hot out.

Button Art

Button art is nothing new…you'll find all sorts of tutorials, from the intricate to the simple initials. I've been wanting to do this for a while, but didn't have any bright or specific ideas for it. When I started redoing the boys play nook, I decided the walls definitely need some attention, the time for button art has arrived! :)

I bought turquoise chevron fabric with the intent to make decorative pillows for the bench…but with no sewing machine, (I was going to get one, but I never cleaned the guest room/craft room and just kept compiling more crafting goods on top of the already existing mess, so there's no space for it…weird, right?), which makes sewing nice pillows just a pipe dream for the moment. But I can't just not use this fabric, it's lovely!

Now, you don't really know me, I mean how could you with two other blogs under my belt…but I LOVE am obsessed-to-an-unhealthy-degree with chevron! If I could and it was socially acceptable, I would deck myself and my home out in nothing but chevron! I deserve some crazy good high-fives for refraining from this particular madness of mine…even though the curtains and headboard in my bedroom both have succumb to this craze…and maybe one of the curtains I made in the laundry room…but you really just don't even know if that's true…in fact, those are probably just vicious lies.

My boys are my sunshine, so I thought a vibrant sun seemed fitting…and later I'll be doing a rainbow for the other side of the window.

Here's what you'll be needing:

- A board or canvas (I used leftover MDF board)

- Fabric (I used indoor/outdoor fabric I bought here)

- Assorted buttons

- Glue gun

- Spray adhesive

- Scissors

- Drill

- Marker or pen

- Ruler or measuring device

Cut out your fabric to fit your board.

If you aren't a fan of hanging hardware, like I'm not a fan of hanging

hardware, I suggest drilling a hole in the back of your canvas in the top area, dead center…

plus any excuse to drill something…

Spray the adhesive onto the front of the board. I lay down a trash bag

 under the board to keep the glue from going everywhere, which it tends to do.

**Side note: Spray adhesive disperses itself like a thin layer of invisible jam with a foot radius of where you're actually aiming…and when you're a parent, you're aware that invisible jam-like stickiness is the enemy! So maybe take the precaution and lay down something as well, just to be safe…because evidently it's very irritating to be walking through the kitchen and your sock just randomly sticks to the floor because your lovely, DIY-driven fiancé made the wedding programs there and she left the floor fully exposed to the invisible jam warfare and it takes weeks for the stickiness to wear off on it's own. Although I'm sure rubbing alcohol would take it right off, your fiancé took no such steps.**

Press the fabric firmly onto the board and be sure all the lines are straight,

 or properly zig-zagging in my case. Then glue gun all the sides down nicely.

Confession: I really wanted to bring out the staple gun…just for the fun of it.

Once your board is beautifully fabric'ed up…start gettin your button-gluing on!

I think using only round buttons would be easier than all the random shapes I used.

Once you're done, put it on display, for the loin-fruit to admire!

Foam Board Scrabble Tiles

To set the stage for my kid's play nook, I wanted some fun decor…enough with the huge, decade-old poster board of pictures equally as old. Pinterest pulls up "excuse the mess, my kids are making memories" wall decals and expensive Etsy Scrabble tiles. I love the tile idea, but I can't rationalize spending a load, especially per letter…I've got a lot to say, $2-6 a letter is gonna get pricey. Also, my house being circa 1900, some walls are weaker than others and can't handle too much weight. So here's my cheap, lightweight solution: Foam Board Scrabble Tiles.

You'll need:

- foam board (depends on your words and size, I needed one)

- exacto knife or box cutter

- ruler

- pencil

- tape

- printer and paper

- paint (optional)

- sharpie

- craft popsicle sticks

- glue gun

- velcro dots (optional)

First, figure our what you want on your wall…I got my actual scrabble tiles out and started playing around with what could fit together. Then get on your computer and print it out in the font you like (I stuck with Helvetica) and the size you want (mine were well in the 300 range) and then print out the numbers to accommodate your letters. Cut out your letters and numbers.

Now grab your foam board and decide how big you want your tiles to be (I went with 5"x5.5" to fit my 'w') and using your ruler and pencil, measure it out, then cut out your pieces.

 Now trace the back of the letters with pencil, be as precise as possible! Then tape it to your tile, and using the tip of your pencil with the lead pressed in, rub around the letter until the letter is fully transferred. Repeat with your numbers.

Once you're done with the tracing, you have the option to paint your tiles (or I suppose you could have painted them first if you want your tiles to be a complete other color). I like the splattered paint look…it's childish and whimsical. I stuck with the turquoise and yellow that I used with the bench. I painted the popsicle sticks with a green to match one of the pillows I bought.

After that's all dry, you can trace your letter and fill them in with sharpie, or if you trust your artistic abilities, paint…I used sharpie. Ha.

It's not perfect, but you get it.

Once all your tiles are done…give yourself a pat on the back and do a shot (Tarantula or Rumpleminz if you're pouring one for me!)…cuz that was a pain in the ass! Just take comfort in the fact that I share your pain through this whole process.

Using your glue gun, line up and glue together your words (you can choose to put them straight together without the popsicle stick showing, I went the more chaotic route…because this is for the minions, remember). I glued them in two sets, then glued them together once they were on the wall…having a helping hand might make this set easier.

After all was said and done, some of the letters weren't as flat on the wall as I would like…so I used these little velcro dots to get them to stick. You could probably use these little dots to hang

each letter individually if you like!

Here's my before and after.

And yeah, it does kinda bug me that the end of 'play' is shooting upward…maybe I'll fix it, but probably not.

Toy Storage Bench

Recently I came to the conclusion that my little minion friends (age 3 and 1) wreak havoc on my poor home. I bought into that colorful bin toy organizer, hoping it would help sort through the madness…but in the end, it became problematic in itself. The boys would make a game out dumping each and every last one out and then stacking them on top of each other (making it nearly impossible to separate…no matter all the swear words I threw at it).

Here's my problem before pictures...

And here's one of what it looked like 'picked up'…if you can even call it that.

This is after their Sept. and Nov. birthdays and then Christmas.

So, I took to Pinterest and found this blog of an absolutely amazing playroom, in perfect order. Yes…I need some of this action here! Now my house is modest of size, so I just dedicate a small nook to my minions…and a little corner storage bench would be just the ticket. Right off the bat, I messed up and ordered the Billy bookcases instead of the Expedit bookcases. But I search Pinterest to see if my hopes were still reachable and found this pin. So yes, it's doable…and so I shall!

I started with two of these bookcases ($24.99 each).

I wanted to add a pop of color, so I painted the inside of the cubicles a turquoise and yellow. I used acrylic paint and Mod Podge to finish…not the best, but it worked.

After trying to simply super glue the shelves into place, I realized that wasn't going to cut it, so I added a couple of screws into each shelf on each side, to ensure the sturdiness required for active kids.

I got MDF board at Lowes and had it cut to size, then measured/guessimated and cut all the other materials (foam and batting that I got for a previous project that I never used from JoAnns, and canvas fabric which I got from this website). I used a bread knife to cut the foam, since I'm not fancy enough to own an electric turkey cutter and wasn't going to purchase one for this particular project.

Now before I did any stapling, I need to add a little more support to the MDF board, since there was a small area that had no support in the corner. I should have taken a picture of the corner, but I didn't. Here's the two legs that I added for support.

 Now with those legs secured and ready, I could get busy stapling everything down…I love this part. :)

 I got it all stapled and put my two bench cushions on top, added some screws to secure the cushion in place, and I was done!

I got the baskets for this at Target (black or white options), and they informed me that the colored baskets usually become available around back-to-school time. 

My husband feels I should note that I donated and sold a great deal of toys, so this storage system doesn't magically fix my hoarding or hopeless-packratting…NOTED.

The boys really love their new bench to climb on, and I love the ease of big baskets to store the toys. I apologize that all my pictures are off my iPhone…busy mom problems, you understand. ;)