FHE Board

In our Church we are instructed to have a special time once a week (Monday night) devoted to our families. We call this Family Home Evening.

Our Church's website states, "This is a time for families to study the gospel together and to do other activities that strengthen the family spiritually, create family memories, and increase unity and love. "

Here's one of the crafts I made last year along with other friends to organize our Family Home Evening amongst our family.

It consists of a routered wood board that's painted and distressed black.

Over top of it is a piece of beadboard painted cream.

Finally, the top layer is a piece of sheet metal with vinyl lettering (we get our vinyl lettering from Hathaway Signs) adhered to it.


Finally, I just finished (yes it's been an entire year - that's the way projects seem to be going around here - they've been taking close to a year to finally finish!!!) the stars. I bought the unfinished wood stars from Michael's for 29 cents. I painted and distressed them and then adhered vinyl names and magnets to them.

If you would like to know more specifics (sizes, colors, etc.) just leave a comment and I'll try and get back to ya!

Basement

Lucky for us when we moved into this house one room in the basement was completely finished. It has been the home of toys, toys, and more toys ever since we moved in. It now houses a treadmill and TV as well. It was plain and I never really knew what to do with it until a few weeks ago.


I love the blue/brown decorating colors that are oh so popular right now but they've never really had a place anywhere in my house. Of my friends (who is an awesome decorator and I wish she had a blog) has a room filled with brown, bluish/turquoise, and red accents. I've loved it ever since I saw it over a year ago and finally decided I try it out in the basement.


First, I painted our largest wall blue.We also got this bookshelf from IKEA to store all the gazillions of books and toys we have (which still find themselves all over the floor most of the time). In the future I would love to get some really cute baskets to fill the shelf but in the meantime small plastic baskets that I had leftover from my classroom will have to do.
Then I found these unfinished wood frames at Micheal's. I painted them brown, paired them with some scrapbook paper, and then hot glued a wooden letter to the front.

Below the name will be a whiteboard (hence the painter's tape).
Also underneath the name are some cute art boards we made for craft day this year. Mine still lacks my children's names in cute vinyl lettering but I'll have to post more and more as more projects get completed down here.

Here's just a sneak peek of the process our basement is going through. I'm sure the final project is probably years down the road when it will be finished off with a projector, couches, rug, shelves and picture frames, bookcases, etc. but for now here's what we got going on to make this part of the house more of our home.

Recipe Book

I hate having to look in five million different cook books to find my favorite recipes. So last year as part of a craft day I made my own recipe book to house all of our family favorites.



If I made this last year then why now is this post going up??? Well I'm just now getting around to actually typing up recipes, printing them off, and filling it up.


Now that I'm really using the thing I absolutely love it. I love having one go to spot to find all of the goodies we're gonna cook up around here!

All you need is:
- a binder (the size is your choice)
- some cardstock and cute paper for the dividers and cover
- sheet protectors to house all those recipes from getting covered in spills ;)
- ribbon (optional)

Dust Bunnies

One of our other Mommy/Daughter activities this week was making dust bunnies. I saw this idea in Family Fun magazine and thought my toddler would be at the good age to use some of these.



We used a pair of socks and then decorated them using a permanent marker, pom poms, and googly eyes.



Now when I'm trying to clean the house she can be right there by my side dusting away!

Oodles and Oodles of Noodles

I've started a new thing around here and I'm trying to plan at least one structured activity (something aside from reading and playing) during the day that just my little girly and I do together.

One of our activities this week was to make noodle necklaces. My baby loves sand and sticks and cars but the girl also loves makeup and jewelry just as much. So I decided we would make necklaces. We used our cheapest (and her most favorite) noodles - Mac'n'cheese and went to town.

First we tried coloring them but for a two year old that was a little tough and she wasn't into it very much. So we just beaded them along until it fit her and she now has been wearing it around the house for days.

kitchen

Our dining room/kitchen BEFORE (well I had painted)...

How many people had this same table from college???


Then we attempted the biggest home improvement project thus far - knocking down a wall!!!

First we removed a few cabinets...

Then went at it - removed drywall and 2x4's, moved electrical, drywalled, mudded, etc...

Our dining room/kitchen AFTER...

There's still a lot left on the list - paint kitchen, ceiling, and cabinets, as well as finish the hole in our flooring. But for the time being we're are pretty pleased with the results.

I'll post some more pictures when we are REALLY done with this project. Don't hold your breath though because it's taken us almost a year (yikes!!!) to get this far so there's no timeline on when the rest will really get completed :)

~toy chest~

This is a chest my mom passed down to me. I wasn't in love with it as is but saw the potential. It was one of the first pieces I ever attempted to refinish. I wanted it to go in our nursery and hold the millions of baby blankets we had. I think it is now a perfect fit!

Instead of sanding a good friend told me about primers made especially to adhere to various surfaces without sanding. YAY! The easier the better in my book.

Then I painted it white.

Next I cut up and used Mod Podge to adhere different pieces of scrapbook paper I had found to the front of it.

Finally I painted and hot glued on the wooden letters.

BEFORE:

AFTER: