Calendar and Lists

We still use the meal planning menu to plan out our meals each week and I thought it would be nice to also have a calendar and a to do/to buy/grocery list.

I used the same colours, red and grey, and made a calendar and a weekly calendar, grocery/to buy/to do list in photoshop. 

We had three 8x10 black frames handy.

The space right above the garbage can in the kitchen is long and skinny - the perfect spot for the three frames. 

N put in three small nails and I jung up the frames!

And yes...we still have the decorations up from my mom's Fiesta Fifty. :-) Since Nathan's birthday was last week and we knew we were having his amigos over this past weekend to celebrate, we decided to leave most of them up. Now it's time for them to come down.

Pegboard

N's birthday was on Monday and last week I had the great idea of putting up pegboard in the basement so he could organize his tools.

I didn't get off to a great start and ended up going to a home depot that didn't rent tools (I needed to rent a hammer drill). So I had to quickly drive to another Home Depot and got there just as they were closing. Luckily I had called ahead of time and they knew I was coming so they waited for me. I rented the drill and drill bit and an hour later I drove home with the hammer drill and all of my supplies.

After getting home I realized that this was definitely not a one person job. There was stress. There were tears. I broke down and called N to come and help with his birthday gift. After he came home we started drilling - only to find out that the Home Depot man had given me the wrong drill bit with the hammer drill. The next morning I got to home depot as they opened and politely laid the smack down and did not have to pay for the drill rental.

We rented a new drill after work and worked together (this was definitely not a one person job...) to hang the pegboard.

Supplies:

Pegboard (cut to size @ Home Depot)

2x2s (cut to size @ Home Depot)

A hammer drill

Tapcon concrete screws

Construction glue

First we drilled all of the holes with the hammer drill. We put construction glue onto the wood and put it up to the wall. The construction glue isn't necessary but I was told it would help make sure the wood is secured to the wall.

I held the 2x2s in place on the wall while N drilled through both the wood and the wall at the same time (to make sure the holes lined up). After drilling the holes we put in the screws and moved onto the next piece of wood.

Basically we created a frame that we would later attach the pegboard to.

Then we put up the pegboard and attached it with screws.

Now all of the work on the wall was done!

To the side of the work bench we have a shelf. I thought it would also be a good idea to add pegboard to the side of the shelf. Seeing as we didn't need to use the hammer drill this was very quick and easy. 

We attached the 2x2s and then attached the pegboard.

Sigh of relief. After much stress and me realizing that I can't do everything on my own - we now have the pegboard up! Next we just need to clean up the dust from drilling into the cement and to organize all of our tools!

Bracelets!

The other day I saw a great tutorial on another blog for this but now can't find it anywhere. If anyone else has seen this tutorial please let me know so tat I can give the blogger credit!

This was very quick and easy to do. We took a mini vacation and I made this during the car ride.

Supplies:

Scraps of material

Needle and thread

Rubber bracelets

Cut the material into a long strip (my strips ranges from 1/2 an inch to 1 inch wide).  

Then I sewed one end of the fabric to the back of the bracelet. As you can see - my bracelets are Harry Potter themed. :-) I got them when I bought the last Harry Potter book at the midnight book selling. 

 Then I just wrapped the material around the very-cool Harry Potter bracelets. Make sure to wrap the material tightly!

For one bracelet I did not have very long strips so I used three shorter strips. I just sewed the new strip onto the bracelet in the same way I started the material strip. You can't even see where one piece of material ends and the new one starts. 

Once I got to the end I just sewed the material onto the back of the bracelet. When I sewed it I made it so that the thread is only visible on the back side of the bracelet. With the white thread it is only this visible on the red bracelet but since this is the underside you can't see it when you wear the bracelet.

 All three bracelets are done! You could trim down the strings from the loose edges but I'm going to leave it - I like how it looks.

 Two bracelets with Duluth in the background. :-)

The teal one is a for a friend and the red and green ones are for me. I'm wearing them both today and love them. Now I just need to figure out how to acquire more of these rubber bracelets so I can make some more...

Drop Cloth Curtain

On the sliding door in our kitchen we've had randomly purchased thermal curtain hung on a crappy curtain rod. I've been meaning to fix this for a while and finally am getting around to it.

Since we always pushed the other two curtains to one side (towards the wall) I thought that instead of having two curtains it'd be better to just have one. Since I doubt stores sell curtains that wide I bought a drop cloth and made my own. It was pretty cheap (the drop cloth was $20 and I have plenty of material left for future things) and easy. 

 

Supplies:

Kvartal single track rod from Ikea

Hooks for curtain track from Ikea

1 drop cloth

N hung up the track. We had to buy two and trim one down. 

After the track was hung we measured how big the curtain would need to be. It ended up being 98 inches by 33 inches. 

We laid the curtain on the floor, measured and cut.

 

I only had to cut to two sides so I didn't have too much sewing to do. I made sure that the hem on the cut sides matched what was already sewn and pinned the material.

Then I sewed the edges. The sewing was definitely the quickest and easiest part.  

The curtain is sewn and hung up! When I bought the drop cloth I was expecting it to be one big piece. Unfortunately it was two pieces sewn together with a seam in the middle. I decided that if I leave the seam at the bottom of the curtain it will look okay. Once I line the curtain it might be a little less noticeable....

The sewing is done but I'm not done with the curtain. I had a crazy idea to paint it to look like an old airmail envelope. Feel free to give this idea the side eye - I'm not really sure how it will turn out...:-\

I have the curtain designed and now we need to trace it onto the curtain (using our projector), paint it...and find time to do all of this. It might be a while but as soon as it's finished I promise to post photos. 

update: I painted the curtain! You can see the final curtain here. 

Kubb

N made us another lawn game! He did all of the hard work (cutting, drilling, etc.) and I stained the pieces.

Kubb, a Swedish lawn game, is really fun and easy to learn . You can even simplify the rules for younger kids (we taught the kids at my mom's fiesta a simplified version and they loved it). 

I won't go into the rules but if you're interested you can visit the wikipedia page or you can watch this video on how to play. The rules we learned were slightly different it's more or less the same way we play.

First we bought a dowel for the tossing batons and 2x4s for the king and kubbs. 

Here are the measurements we used:

1 king: 12 inches tall, width of two 2x4s

10 kubbs: 6 inches tall, width of two 2x4s

6 batons: 12 inches long, 1.75 inch diameter

N cut the wood down to size.

Next two pieces of wood were drilled together for each piece (the king and all kubbs).

 

We sanded the edges down...

and then I stained the pieces. I stained 5 kubbs red, 5 black and I stained the king black on two sides and red on the other two sides. 

 Waiting for the stain to dry

 All done and ready to play!

 We set it up in our yard and played.

 

I won the first game! We've played plenty more since we made it - it's great that we can play with just two people or in a larger group.

 We even have a crate that will work perfect for storage.

Peace Sign pillow

Supplies:

Pillow

Red fleece

Grey felt

Zpper

Peace sign outline

Sewing machine 

 

I've had two pillows with metallic green covers sitting in our living room for quite some time. When I got them (for free from my sister) I had planned on making new covers for them but never got to it. I finally made one (and have supplies to make another)!

First I took the old cover off of the pillow and measured the size. Then I cut the red fleece down to size.

Zippers are not my friend but I decided to try my hand at adding a zipper to the pillow. I used an invisible zipper that I already had on hand.

I pinned the zipper to one side of the fleece and sewed it on. 

Then I pinned the zipper to the other side of the fleece and sewed it on.

 

Zipper is done! It turned out okay - not the best but much better than anticipated. 

After printing out the peace sign (I made it 11 inches around) I traced it onto the grey felt fabric.

 

I used a marker designed for tracing on fabric and after a while the marking goes away. 

 Then I cut out the peace sign. 

I centered the peace sign on the fleece and pinned it on.

 Then I sewed around the edges.

Sewing is done!

I put the case on the pillow and it fit perfectly!

 

 

I have one more pillow cover to make and then I'll finally have pillows that match my living room. Maybe one day I'll even get to the cushion covers...