Super Simple DIY Train Board

Alright, so I've an insanely simple DIY for you today. A train board! 

My youngest loves her train set, and in our old house I kept it downstairs so she'd just set it up on our hardwood floors and it was fine. But in our current home we keep it upstairs, and upstairs is carpeted so I've been wanted to  make her a simple train board she can set the tracks on. When my teenagers were her age they had an actual train table. The thing was big. And don't get me wrong, it was super nice and super cute but over a decade later and it's not ideal for our current way of life. First off, I'm totally a minimalist (I just recently stopped calling myself a wanna-be minimalist but that post will wait for another day) so the thought of having a massive train table like I did ten years ago for the big kids annoyed me for several reasons...one being the footprint it'd take up; the bigger our family has gotten and the more psychotic passionate about minimalism I've gotten. I want to do more with less and I knew there had to be a way to incorporate the function of a train table without it taking up the space of a train table which is essentially the size of a toddler bed. 

So I did some thinking and I was like, "Eureka! I can make something that can just slide under her bed when it's not in use!" This way she had something to put her trains on and yet it wasn't taking up a valuable floor space when not in use. I knew to move it easily in and out from under her bed I wanted it to have wheels. Then I thought about what it should look like and I immediately was like "all white". But let's be honest, like most of our house is white. So then I thought it'd be fun to paint trees and water and what it on it but that felt too limiting because I started to imagine her also using the board to build legos or stack blocks, etc on. Finally I decided to just use paint I already had because who really cares what color it is, right?

So here's what you need to make this yourself:

• Piece of wood cut to desired size 
• Paintbrush
• Paint
• Polyurethane 
• Wheels
• Screws
• Sander

I had everything on hand already so this project cost me a whopping $0. Pro tip: if you have a Kelley Moore Paint store you can get a free quart of paint from them using a coupon (that's where my paint came from and was left over from painting the baby's dresser). 

Directions:

1. Measure the underside of the piece of furniture your train board is going to be stored under. Take into account you want a bit of wiggle room
2. Cut your wood to size. If you're buying from Lowes or The Home Depot they'll cut it for free. I usually take advantage of that but since I was using left over wood I just used our jigsaw for this project. 
3. Sand the edges of your board really well, you don't want little fingers getting splinters and you don't want sharp corners. I use an electric sander and it's one of my most used tools and still going strong after almost 10 years, if you DIY a lot it's a good investment. 
4. Attach wheels. I had these left over casters from a previous project and like how chunky and sturdy they are. 
5. The fun part! Paint or stain your board! I got away with a single coat of paint but usually you want at least two. 
6. Let paint dry fully then add a few coats of clear poly if you want the paint to stay as is. If you like the chipped or worn look then you can skip this part and your board will get nicks and scraps naturally with use. (Note: Obviously don't apply poly to the board if you use chalkboard paint and want it draw on it) 
7. Admire your work! 

I hope you found this tutorial simple enough and gained inspiration to recreate it or to put your own twist on it for some other use. 

Avery loved helping me with the project (especially the painting) and was so excited to put her trains on it when we were done. 

Total cost for this project if you didn't have any of the materials on hand would be around $30. But chances are if you take on DIY projects you probably have most of this on hand making it even cheaper. 

Free, functional, and I can wheel it under the babe's bed when it's not in use. My kind of project. 

Hugs, guys. 

Averyville

So if you know me, you know I always have a project I'm working on. That's not hyperbole, y'all - I seriously have a project constantly going. I've become much better about it though, now, instead of having numerous projects ongoing I limit myself to two at the max, so I can't start another one until I've finished one of the two. It's helped get things done quicker, so that's nice. If you're a perpetual project-doer like me I suggest you try something similar. Anyway...

I realize it's only September, but with my constant projects coupled with the fact that I make each of my kidlets two of their Christmas gifts each year, its totally necessary to start my Christmas projects early or they won't get done. Kinda like that t-shirt quilt of Owen's that I've been working on for two years. No exaggeration. I just need to bind it but it's the least fun part so I keep putting it off. Le sigh.

I have two and a half DIY gifts for Avery this year. The "half" is a hack I plan to do to an already built ikea play kitchen so I can't really claim that as a total DIY. I like that its made mainly of wood,  if there's anything I've learned in my 16 years of motherhood its that quality toys are what you want. Don't get me wrong, she has plastic toys as I'm no prairie/crunchy mom despite what some of my friends may say, but the majority of her toys are wood because they last longer. With my oldest he had 8 million and one toys and with Avery she has significantly less. I've learned that less is more. But that's a post I plan to bring to you another day.

Now to go with Av's play kitchen area I thought it would be super cute to make her a sign. She loves role-playing lately (taking care of her baby, 'cooking' me food, 'reading' to herself) so a kitchen and serving area would be right up her alley. Check out some of the cute hacks I found on Pinterest, this is the kitchen I plan to get her but my 'hack' is going to be slightly different as I plan to pull inspiration from some of these and yet make it all her own and to go with the rest of her decor in her play nook.

Can we talk about that faux marble contact paper they used on the counter of the first kitchen?! Mama like. Essentially this kid is gonna have a nicer kitchen than me. Which I guess isn't that difficult seeing how we are in a rental and its builder basic. In a couple years, when we aren't moving states or countries every five seconds I'll have a pinterest-worthy kitchen, just you watch.

Now, to go with her kitchen I made her a cute little sign. I love personalized decor so I thought it only proper to give my girl her own sign. I went with the "Averyville Cafe". I promised my girlfriend a quick how-to and figured it'd be a useful blog post as well so here goes...

1. Decide how big you want your sign. I plan to hang this directly above her kitchen. The kitchen is 28" wide so I made my sign 27" long. I had this wood already stained and left over from a past project so all I did was measure and cut. Yay for easiness.

2. Hop on your computer and open up Photoshop of whatever editing program you like to use. Pick the size and face of your font. The font I used was "Sweet Pea Regular" in all caps at 250 size font. That was after resizing my image to the size of the board (27" wide by 5" tall).

3. Print your saying.

4. Position your saying at your desired location on the board and tape it in place.

5. Using a sharp pencil (a pen would work too) trace over each letter HARD! This is going to leave an indent in the wood.

6. Choose your paint.

7. Remove the paper and hand-paint the words on your sign using the indentations as your guide. You need a steady hand for this so enlist the help of someone else is you tend to be a bit shaky.

8. Let it dry.

9. And a coat of poly to it (this will prevent the paint from being chipped) and viola!

Easy as pie! Tracing the letters took me the most time. And I think I spent about 30 minutes total on this project and I already owned everything so it was free, what's better than that?! I do plan to distress the sign a bit but I want to wait for it to dry for a couple days before bringing it into contact with sandpaper then I'll poly it so that'll probably take me another 10-15 minutes but I'm not complaining. Now I can't wait from Christmas to show you what I do to the kitchen. I'm more exited than I probably should be, guys.

Welp, hope this tutorial helps you bite the bullet if you've ever wanted to try your hand at making your own custom sign. Merry Christmas Happy Fall, friends!

Oh, sheet!

See what I did there? Pretty. Corny. But I can't help myself...

I like to think of myself as a pretty crafty gal, but a seamstress I am not. I've always had a love/hate relationship with my sewing machine but I can never stay away too long. That's thanks in large part to my brain constantly overflowing with projects I have in mind and many require me to buck up use my machine whether I like it or not.

via GIPHY

When I was pregnant with Avery and looking for baby bedding I wasn't finding a whole lot that caught my eye. There were cute sets, don't get me wrong, but none fit my personal aesthetic. You know when you see something and you're like, "That's cute...for someone else's house." That's what I was dealing with. And then when I did find the rare few (two to be exact) that I loved, the price tag was insane. Eighty dollars for a crib sheet is not where it's at. Ever.

So I decided to make my own. I found fabric that I love and got to work. 

Avery's crib is a UK crib so most of the tutorials I found for making a crib sheet weren't going to work for me because American cribs are larger than British cribs. But good ole Pinterest came to the rescue and I came across this tutorial where she does an amazing job at explaining how to make a custom sized crib sheet. And guys, it was super easy. And if I'm saying it's easy theeeeeen...yeah. As pie. 

I only made one set because I'm on this whole minimising our belongings kick. I'm not going minimalist or anything, Lord knows that would never work for me, but I have been getting rid of items in our home that we don't truly use consistently, need, or absolutely love. And let me tell you, it's amazing. Less clutter, more thoughtfulness in purchases, and it's freeing. Seriously, try it. 

I will admit I do have another set I bought for her. It's a solid white set (love me some all white bedding) and it's handy for when these are being washed since these British washers take 43 days to wash and dry one load. 

And guess what's now on my list of things to sew? A duvet for Ethan! It can't be too tough to make, right?! Famous last words. 

Crocheting a Baby Beanie

I crocheted my little girlfriend a beanie this past week. And even though it's just a hat, it's totally a big deal because 1. Dude. I made my kid something and 2. I have like 37 projects current "in progress" so to check one off the list was freeing.

I wanted to write this post for anyone out there that is new to crocheting like me. This beanie is the third thing I've ever crocheted. Ever. So I'm very new at this. And while the hat itself was simple I had one helluva time simply making the 'magic ring' which is how to begin a hat like this one. Laugh all you want but the tutorials were not making sense to me. But I'm the same person that would take an entire notebook page to solve a basic Algebra problem in college and the professor would say: there's a much easier way to get the answer. But my brain didn't understand that "easier" way. So the magic ring is like the 30-ish year old version of my 20-ish year old self's Algebra issue.

So I tried tutorial after tutorial but finally, FINALLY found one that clicked in this complicated head of mine. Check it out here.

And the pattern I used for the hat, it was a simple but cute pattern. And knocked it out in a few hours while watching Netflix in bed while my little monster slept soundly beside me.

The pom-pom took me three tries to get to my liking. I used the tutorial's (that I linked to above) cardboard method.

Also, this being my first hat I didn't know you needs to 'block' it afterward. But you do. And I did. And it definitely made a world of a difference in the end result. I googled how to block acrylic and I quickly learned there's some serious sass in the crochet world about whether you block acrylic or not. So serious.

Bottom line: do it. The method I did was this: I found a bowl. No joke. That I guessed to be close to the size of my kiddo's head. I put the hat on said bowl and pulled it down so that the edge of the hat folded under the bowl (so that it wasn't stretched out, if that makes sense). Then I took my iron and used the steam setting and steamed the entire hat. Hold the iron about two inches from the hat. Don't touch it with the iron. As you do the position the hat exactly how you want it to look in the end. Then let it dry in that position.

I let it sit about 24 hours just to be safe. And it fits my boo thang perfectly.

Oh, and just as a warning, the pattern says an H hook will give you a 9-12 month sized hat but I used an H and the hat fits my newly seven month old perfect. And homegirl has a smallish head (25th percentile for the win!).

So that wraps it up. I hope I was able to help anyone that's new to the crochet game. If you have any more crochet tips/tricks leave 'em in the comments below! Lord knows I could use them.

Happy hat-making!

That's My Bench

Once upon a time there lived a cat named Jersey. He loved sunbathing in the living room window sill where he could watch cars and people pass by.

But let's admit it, it was awkward (check out that back foot action), so his ahhhmaaazing owner *cough, cough, yours truly, cough, cough* made him a bench.

Boom! Your face.

Years ago, after donating our old dining set and searching for a smaller one to fit in our tiny Destin apartment I bought some dining chairs off craigslist to hold us over for the time being. I searched and searched for a dining set that was small and yet would comfortable sit our large family but I'm picky to my search came up empty for the longest. Eventually I found a dining table I loved. I refinished it, more on that here. But I still couldn't find chairs to my liking, so I bought a set of four for the meantime (the four in the photo of the link in the last sentence). They served their purpose (we used them for about a year at our dining table) so I feel like I got my $40 worth out of them. When we moved back in August I finally found two chairs I like for the dining table so I bought those and no longer needed two of my craigslist chairs, I didn't want to trash them because they were solid chairs and I knew I could get more use out of them (I'm tree-hugging like that) so I broke out the jigsaw and cut the backs off, painted them with some cream colored paint I had on hand, and recovered them with navy blue fabric I had laying around. 

Holla! A quick little makeover for my kitty and it didn't cost me a cent. I intended to screw the two together to give it more of a bench feel but Ari suggested I not attach them to each other and simply push them together so that if we wanted to ever use them as extra seating or what not we could do so with ease. That kid's a genius I tell ya, pure genius.

Jers loves his new little benches. Here he is with Owen enjoying them the first night I made them.

And not only does he use the benches to sunbathe and be nosey during the day...

But he also takes hardcore cat naps on them at night too. 

If you're happy stick out your tongue!

Ha, couldn't resist including that pic. 

Look, Ma! No Pants!

Hands. No hands. No pants would just be awkward. Although she did birth me and change my diapers and witness my tiny 17 year old body give birth to an almost 9 pound, big headed little dude so maybe it wouldn't be as awkward as one might expect. Am I embarrassing you yet Mother? Cause I could keep going.  Man, you should be proud that your kid is such a proper broad. Okay, okay, I'm moving on, for your sake...

Sooo, I fixed my toilet. Yeah, you heard me - Imma talk about toilets today. Classy me. We've only lived in this house for five months. And we are the first occupants. So when we had a wobbly toilet seat within a month of moving in (yeah, this post is waaaay late) I was all like...?!?!?!*&$(@#*?!$#@?!#?!?!

So when I got a coupon in the mail for Ace Hardware I was all like, "They have to have toilet seats at a hardware store."

So off to Ace I went and boom, toilet seat in my face...

Oh, and excuse all the crappy iPhone photos in this post.

Best part? I paid only a dollar something after the coupon. Holla. 

So with my helper present I tackled the hard part. 

And by 'hard' I mean gross. And by gross I mean kinda fun. I got all handsy with the toilet seat and discovered it was only a matter of unscrewing two plastic looking screw thing a am jiggers and bam. Toilet unhinged. 

It's like whoa.

And here I found the reason we were having issues, the little hinge on it had cracked. No bueno.

Then I put the new, unbroken seat on and called it a day. Now we can sit without sliding off. For real, I'd sit on it forgetting it was broke and it would sliiiiide and I'd be this.close. to busting my bare ass on the linoleum floor. 

Keepin' it real. 

So there you are, a little update. I know you we're just saying you needed an update on our shenanigans - bet you never thought I'd take you to the bathroom. Then again, you know me well enough to expect the unexpected. 

Peace and Love,

Ur classy kid

The Non-Hall's Sliver of a Wall

Say that five times fast.

I love photos and framing sentimental things. In our Destin apartment I covered an entire wall in the living room with frames and I loved the way it turned out.

So when we moved I knew I wanted another asymmetrical collage somewhere in the house. And as of now we have four different walls covered in frames. From a sliver of a wall to the wall spanning the length of our staircase. Anyway, today let's focus on the hallway upstairs. It's not actually a hall. I guess I don't really have any halls in the entire house, technically. Upstairs is more of a squareish-rectangleish area filled with doors. And some of the only blank wall space sits between the boys' bathroom and E's room. Here's a horrible picture so you sort of have an idea...said wall is on the right. Oh, and keep in mind that I took the following two photos the day we moved in so it's straight up crazytown in the hizzy!

So I simply hung some of my existing frames to fill the space and make it a bit more...well...us. Some say 'less is more' but when it comes to frames I say, "More is perfection."

So BAM! There you are madre! Another look into our little ole house that we will now be moving out of soon. It seems as though as soon as we got somewhat settled we received word that we are on the move again, oh the joys of the Air Force.

Xo,

Lor

Paint Chip Calendar

I made a free piece of art back when we lived in Destin. I simply used a frame I already owned, used paint chips I dug out of my craft bin, cut them all the same size and put it all together.

Then I put a layer of homemade mod podge (1 part Elmer's glue, 1 part water) and put a few coats on top. But things were looking a bit too perfect. And perfect is cool and everything but I'm down with imperfection. So I took a paper towel dipped in stain and rubbed it on the entire thing.

Then I popped it in my frame and hung it in our dining area.

In our new place I needed it to be functional and not just art. Our new kitchen is small, with little counter and wall space. No room for extras. Anyway, I needed a calendar because these kids have me going in ten different directions. So guess what I did? I got all fancy and busted out the dry erase marker.

I literally just scribbled everything up there so I'm sure if I had more time I could make my lettering all pretty and spiffy it up a bit but it's totally not that serious for me.

There you have it, my free and easy paint chip art turned calendar.

Holla!

Lorri

Television Stand Complete

Remember the furniture I bought a month or two ago? And remember the dresser that I turned into a television console? And remember that I told you I'd show you a better photo of it when we were all set up in our new house? Okay, no more questions, I promise. Well, here she is all settled in our new home.

Ain't she a beaut? All grayish-blue and distressed - she's the stuff dreams are made of. I originally planned to paint it white then distress it, but when at Lowe's buying paint I gravitated towards the grays and the lighter blues. Then Ari spotted the Valspar sample pots and the rest is history. I bought two and they weren't even $3 a piece and I still had some left over so for less than $6 we (yes, Ari helped) painted the dresser, orb'ed the hardware, distressed it a bit, and called 'er done.

It sat like that (photo directly above) for a good couple of weeks - we still lived in our tiny 1300ish square foot apartment in Destin and had no where to put it, so it lived behind our sectional all awkward yet yummy.

When we moved to our new place a few weeks ago I realized I still hadn't cut the holes in the back of the dresser for the cords. Ooops. So our electronics sat all oddly on top of the dresser next to the television until I had the patience to cut the hole, which took all of 10 minutes but let me tell ya, when you have a house full of boxes, three kids, school starting, and a full-time job, you're not exactly too worried about making your TV stand look cute right away.

Instead, I did other somewhat important things like put beds together, and dig out sheets, and wash clothes, and take actual showers instead of bathing with nothing but baby wipes - oh don't you worry, that story will come soon enough and it actually deserves its own post.

So last week I finally emptied the last living room box, organized the contents of the TV stand, and cut some damn holes.

It was super easy, I simply used our jigsaw and cut holes large enough for all our cords to run easily through yet small enough so that they aren't visible from the front of the unit. And yes, I cut the holes right there in my living room. After I took the above photo I quickly sanded around my cuts and vacuumed up the little bit of sawdust left behind. Easy peasy lemon squeezy.

So there you have it, our $25 craigslist dresser turned television console.

Budget Breakdown:

Dresser (found on craigslist) - $25
2 sample pots of paint - $6
brushes, poly, sander, jigsaw - $0 (already owned)
wood used to hold electronics where I removed the top two drawers - $3

Total for Television Console Makeover - $34

I'd call that a success,

Lor

This Little Balcony of Mine

I'm gonna let it shine...but first you have to read a few sentences and see a horrid photo before seeing that sparkling, shimmering, wonderful balcony of shininess.

If you'll recall in this post, I vowed to get my act together, in many aspects - time management, this blog, and *ahem* my dreaded balcony, to name a few.

Do you like that awesome segue? It's something that can't be taught people, sorry.

Well, I finally got around to sprucing it up a bit. It ended up being a place where we put everything we didn't have room for such as bikes, our lawn mower, and other outside related items. Moving from a house to an apartment meant getting rid of stuff (which we did) but even still some of the things we kept didn't have a home so we shoved it all out here, hence the mess. In addition to storing wayward items I use this area all.The.Time. for my little projects. That's why you see wood, paint, screwdrivers, etc in the the above photo.

When the movers came to pack Seth's household goods (if you don't remember, he PCS'd to NC and the Air Force won't let me join him until next year) they took quite a bit of the stuff from the balcony, leaving much more room for me to build more stuff finally clean it up. The photo above makes the task look much worse than it actually was, I simply took everything that was left after the movers took the majority of the things out there and slid it inside so that I could sweep and paint the floor. After letting that dry for about three days I moved our chairs and table back out there, cleaned out the kids' sand/water table, planted some flowers, and called this puppy done!

The difference is cray-cray. Sing with me ...that shiiii is bananas, b-a-n-a-n-a-s. Love me some Gwen.

This little makeover didn't cost me a dime since the paint was leftover from painting my living room walls last year and I simply put everything I already had back on the balcony. Actually, I take that back, it cost me about $5 since I bought flowers.

The little ones helped me plant them. We dug through kitchen cabinets looking for flower pots and finally found three.

One was being used as a kool-aid packet holder.

Don't judge us, we were thinking outside the box when I needed to find somewhere to store all the kool-aid.

It was messy but that just meant the kids enjoyed it.

This photo is blurry, but too cute to not include.

And in case you've asked yourself, Wait, you put a water table on a balcony? How are you gonna drain it? Yes, I put a water/sand table out there for the kids to use but I chose to only fill it with sand since I have no way to drain it living on the second floor and all. 

I didn't, however, think it through when I bought three 50 pound bags of sand and then realized I had to somehow get them up to my apartment. Luckily there were some guys helping someone move in my building so I asked their help and they carried it. Apparently watching all that heavy lifting left Jersey needing to rest in the shade.

He really does love it out there. He even makes himself comfortable by taking up 50% of the available seating.

I'm glad I finally got the balcony spiffied up but it's a bit ironic because we are moving in less than a month so I won't get as much use out of it as I intended. It does get plenty of use in the meantime though, between the kids playing, the cat sunbathing, and me drinking a mojito my coffee out there, everyone seems to enjoy the space. And I love that the balcony is screened in so we can be out there without worrying about mosquitos and other critters, and if I'm in the kitchen, the boys are in the living room, and Ari's on the porch we can all still see and hear each other. So we're enjoying it while we're still here.

And I, Lorri Rumbarger, promise to not allow the backyard of the house we move into next month ever even remotely resemble the 'before' version of this little balcony of mine. Scout's honor.