He tends his flock like a shepherd: He gathers the lambs in his arms and carries them close to his heart;
he gently leads those that have young
. {Isaiah 40:11}

28 January 2013

A Different Point of View

Miss Mak is an arsty chick. If you've ever seen the outfits she picks out you'd understand what I mean.
Lots of color.
Lots of pattern.
One friend of mine described her as "spunky" and I think that's just about perfect.
So Gram bough Miss Makaroni the kid friendly camera kidzoom from vtech.
It's pink, of course.
I hooked it up to the computer this morning to unload the three hundred pictures she accumulated and I couldn't help but want to share with you.
I love how kids look at things so differently.
Literally and figuratively.
Hope you enjoy!
 self portrait
 family photo
 favorite blanket
 view from her carseat... the back of another seat
 playroom table and chairs
 drippers at the greenhouse
 apparently Mak doesn't see anyone's face from where she stands
i had to laugh going through her pictures because so many of them were of the space between peoples shoulders and knees.... kinda makes ya feel bad for kids!
Happy Monday!

24 January 2013

Homemade Catapult



 
 

As is often is the case, this is not Krystle original idea. I actually found the link for this guy here at Random Scraps which sent me to Spoonful for directions. I noticed that Spoonful didn't offer any pictures with their directions so I took some pictures as I went in case any of the steps were confusing or if you're a visual person like me. Hope it was worth it for you!
Happy Thursday!


15 January 2013

Headboard Done. Here's Some Tips.

I don't know if you happened to notice our headboard-less bed back in this post but after over a year of pillows disappearing over the edge and the morning sun waking me a bit too early in the summer we decided it was time to grow up and get a headboard. I looked on craigslist.org for several months with a couple of prospects but no real winners so once I found this post by Sarah M. Dorsey Designs I gave in and did it myself.
 I was sort of impatient in getting this project done since I had been looking so long with no success so I didn't figure out buttons for the tufting. I'm going to let this simmer for a while until I decide what I want to do anyway.
Since I'm not giving any tutorial on this I figured I would share this with you just so I could point out how simple it was and fast. I put it together in one Sunday afternoon. I'd say it took about 3 hours total. I can't speak for the supplies Sarah used on hers but I can speak to how I made this project less expensive...

WOOD: Sarah uses a larger piece of wood for her headboard that I did. I have a queen sized guest bed I'd like to create another headboard for so I decided to risk being short on wood and had the handy man at Home Depot cut a piece of 1/2" plywood in half for me so that I could squeeze two headboards out of one piece of ply. The final dimensions for our king size headboard were 24"x77". (If you decide to do this on your own, don't use anyone else's measurements. Measure your bed because they can vary.) The board pictured above drops only 2-3 inches below the mattress line but thanks to the sidearms you can't tell. 

FOAM: If you've looked, foam can be crazy expensive. Some of the foam I saw was $60 a yard!!! I was not even close to considering spending that so I went to target and bought myself twin sized egg-crate mattress pad for $13. It wasn't thick enough to get a deep Victorian looking tuft which is good because that's not what I wanted. (

FABRIC: drop cloth. I think it was between $10-$20 at Home Depot. It was just what I needed and the color I wanted.

And that's that.
Happy Tuesday!

11 January 2013

DIY Building Blocks

Do you remember the cardboard bricks that only the best church nurseries and day cares had?
I loved those things and thought they might be something CJ,  Miss Mak, and Bean would like too.
<enter my inexpensive solution with big impact>
This was the perfect time of year to start our collection as boxes flowed in to our house with the Christmas gifts. Each time the kids opened a gift that came in a box we tested the sturdiness of the box and if it passed the stability test we set it aside to wrap in wood grain contact paper which we purchased from Home Depot for about $7 a roll. The set we ended up with took three rolls of contact paper and we love the result! 
They were easy to put together and the kids love them just like I had hoped. One of the great things about the set we created was that we picked the box sizes we wanted and so we are able to make castles and forts that Hubs and I can fit into with the kids. 
{Miss Mak the princess and CJ the ferocious fire breathing dragon}
{the princess showing the dragon who's boss}
Looking back we should have given this to the kids for Christmas and saved ourselves some work finding other gifts but our pain is your gain as I highly recommend giving this a shot if you have builders in your home. You can start saving boxes now and have a huge stash for next Christmas!  
 
 


And... if you're not up for making boxes or don't have access to larger boxes, my sister was able to find sets of 40 for our kids for Christmas from Melissa and Doug. They are smaller but also much sturdier since they have cardboard supports in the middle whereas our boxes are empty and can't have weight put on them and smaller size means easier to store. {Another painful lesson learned.}
Happy Building!


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