kid's dining

I LOVE this time of year. The weather is perfect. The food is delicious - but one of my absolute FAVORITE parts??? The garage sales!!!

A friend of mine is moving to Germany and had a garage sale this weekend. The night she was setting up she invited some people over for a sneak peak and I'm so glad she did because I came home with a steal!

I snagged this cute little table and chair set for 5 bucks!

Ever since we tore down the wall between our kitchen and dining room I've had this corner I wasn't sure what to do with. Well this little set happened to fit perfectly!

So I applied 1 coat of gray primer and then finished it off by spray painting it one coat of basic black. I sanded it down a little and here she is...

Absolutely adorable and my kids and I love it!

Do you love garage sale season as much as I do???

sunroom table redo

We inherited this classic table from our college apartment. I'm sure many of you may have something similar! It's been hanging out in our sunroom ever since we bought our 'real' dining room table several years ago!

I finally decided on a color scheme for our outside room and so the table has FINALLY gotten a revamping!

No sanding. Just 1 coat of gray primer and 1 can of Navy Blue spray paint later (both of which were already hanging out in my paint box)...

(don't mind the shadows and BAD lighting!)

I also revamped these college chairs as well - they already had a coat of spray paint and fabric on them from a past redo - now they're just covered with some white washable slip covers from here - you can't beat $2 dollars!!!

Ta Da...

I'm still slowing decorating and adding more accessories but I think our outdoor space is well on it's way to having a little bit more style!

Candy Buckets

I have a good friend who gave me this fun idea that Kierste over at Brown Paper Packages shared for general conference!

She used this activity while watching general conference to try and get her kiddos to pay better attention. She fills bowls, buckets, etc. with treats and a corresponding word. Every time the word is said the kids get to pick a treat.

This year I decided my oldest was big enough to try it out and with a ton of Easter candy in stores and cute Target $1 buckets stacked up in my basement already - I figured it was worth a shot.

She is still too young to be able to read the words on each bucket so we attached a picture with each corresponding bucket. Every time she heard the word she would run to that picture and pick out a treat. She definitely paid more attention than I thought she would and definitely considered conference a fun time and was always asking to listen to more!

This will definitely be a tradition in our home from here on out.

This activity could easily be adapted in lots of other 'learning' activities.

Instead of using church words you could attach numbers to each bucket and when kids are solving math problems if their answer is on a bucket they get a treat.

You could attach a 'chunk' to each bucket (-ick, -at, -ump, etc.) or a sight word (and, there, etc.) and every time the kids think of a new word using that 'chunk' or read that sight word they get to pull a candy out.

So many ideas...Have Fun!

Tissue Paper Pom Poms

We had two little girlie birthdays this month at our house so that meant some fun parties over the past couple of weeks.

I have seen these cute tissue paper pom poms around blogland for awhile now and finally tried my hand at making some of them.

At Walmart and the Dollar Tree I found they sold tissue paper by the color so I spent 3 bucks and bought a pack of teal, hot pink, and white.

Then I followed the super easy tutorial by Martha Stewart.

Supplies (for one pom pom):

- 8 sheets of tissue paper
- 2 inches of floral wire
- ribbon to hang the pom poms by
- scissors

Directions:

1. Take 8 pieces of tissue paper stacked on top of one another and fold the entire thing accordion style.

2. Cut a 2 inch piece of floral wire and wrap it around the center.

3. Cut the edges of the tissue paper (either pointed or round).

4. Fan out paper to make a huge ball.

*Mine turned out a little too big for my liking but I was too lazy to go buy more tissue paper to make more. Next time to make them smaller I would cut some tissue paper off the ends after putting the floral wire on before fanning them out.

They've now found a permanent home in my kid's 'book nook' in the basement. Such a fun and inexpensive decorative touch!

Have Fun!