Homemade Wax

Not only did I made the DIY Exfoliater this weekend, I made some homemade wax.  It's kind of an embarrassing and funny story why I made it.... so here goes!  I ordered a new teeth whitener system for Christmas.  I wanted to take a "before" picture, and when I flipped my camera around to see how the picture turned out, I couldn't believe how much hair was on my upper lip!  I was seriously mortified!  It wasn't dark hair, but it definitely looked horrible in pictures.. so I wanted to wax my lip.  It seemed painful, but shaving my lip seemed weird, so I decided on waxing...

If you have any interest in making some yourself, here's the link to the video and recipe.

I was happy with the results and it didn't hurt as bad as I expected.  Or maybe it did, but it happened so fast that it wasn't too bad. :)

New Little Chalkboard

We have a cute wooden personalized plaque that's been in our family room for years.  I've looked at it several times and thought about taking it down since it seemed a bit out dated (we've added two kids to the family since!) but always felt like I shouldn't since it was a gift.

The last month or so I've been on a cleaning and purging spree and trying to reorganize things along the way.  Amidst all this cleaning, I finally got the boost I needed to transform this plaque!  We no longer have a chalk board in our living room/dining room area, and I love having one to write seasonal messages on... so I decided the cute outdated plaque needed to be transformed into a little chalk board.

I went to the barn and got some sand paper to begin.  I'm not sure if the letters were painted on the wood, or if they were vinyl cut outs, but it didn't take much sanding to get the wood smoothed.  Once it was smooth, I cleaned it off with a wet rag, then added the black chalkboard paint.  It took three coats to get it just right, but dried quickly.  Once the paint was dry, I took the sand paper to rough of up the edges and expose some of the brown of the wood.

 The little chalk board is right back where it started, but I love the little face lift it got! :)

I'm challenging you to look at what you have sitting around your house... Is there anything you don't love?  Anything that's outdated?  What needs a face lift?  What needs to go?   Do it!  You'll be glad you did! 

Christmas Hand Print Craft

It's been a good couple years since we really dove into Christmas crafts, so this year I knew we were over due for something!  I saw this cute craft on Pinterest a few weeks ago and knew I wanted to make a similar one with my kids.  I wanted to do all hand prints, so I knew ours would look a bit different.

The chalk board we had hanging up in the dining area came down last week when Kevin hung my new angel picture.  It was a 24x24 square, and I didn't know what I was going to do with it.  I ended up having Kevin cut in for this project!  

The wood piece we used was 10x24 and fit 4 hand prints perfectly!  I set up a little hand painting station, and got a hand washing station ready.  We stamped hands oldest to youngest, and they all watched me paint on details.  They kept ooing and ahhing when I'd add another detail and it was so cute.

We got to this point in the project and I said out loud, "Hmmm what does it need?"  Hayden commented the sleigh needed a bag and Santa needed to be saying, "Ho Ho Ho."  I thought both suggestions were perfect!

A close up of the Santa

A close up of the reindeer

I did add the year to the back, and I'm trying to decide if I need to add names on the front to the hand prints.. even though they are in order of oldest to youngest!

Hayden's Cedar Chest

As soon as Hayden decided he wanted to be baptized, I began to start thinking about a gift we could give him that he wouldn't outgrow and he could keep forever.  My parents gave me a gold cross necklace when I made the decision to get baptized and I remember being so surprised by the gift and loving it.  I wanted him to feel the same way, but jewelry didn't seem like the right way to go.  I remembered how much I wanted a cedar chest when I was growing up, and that's what sparked this project.  The idea grew into a plan and I recruited some of the best woodworkers around (Kevin, my dad, and a family friend named Steve) and my vision became a beautiful, hand crafted, labor of love, reality. 

These are the 9 cedar boards that were picked out of a lumber yard by my dad.  They don't look like much right there!

When the wood was purchased, I'm not going to lie, it wasn't what I expected it to look like.  Steve told me the wood needed sanded.  That made sense.  I thought I was going to the shop to help finalize plans, but I got lucky enough to help start the sanding process!  The before and after pictures of the wood were amazing to me!

These were the plans that were drawn up... and Allie signed off on them :)

Kevin and my dad and Steve spent two solid days building this.  The craftsmen ship is really something for them to be so proud of!  Kevin kept sending me picture updates!

This was the end of day 1.  It was really coming together!

The last day of work, Kevin and Steven put finishing touches on it.  Kevin added the 7dark button holes on top so he could remember he got it when he was 7.  :)  The pictures don't do it justice.  It's so much prettier in person!

We kept it a secret from Hayden the whole time it was being built!

He says it's his favorite gift ever!  He wants a lock on it so he can put special things in there and "the babies won't get it".  Guess that's typical big brother thoughts!  We have a few more little things to do to it, but I'm so pleased with how it turned out!

"Towels On The Floor" Solution!

When we first moved into our house (can't believe that was 6 years ago!) we gutted everything.  One thing to go was every fixture in the house.  In the bathroom, that meant towel racks and sinks and flooring.  Well, we never replaced the towel racks.  I had grown accustom to throwing the towels over the shower doors.  Here the problem.  My kids couldn't ever do that.  They'd try, sometimes, but most of the time towels littered the floor.

Last week after I had finished a sewing session, I laid in bed trying to think of a solution to our "towels on the floor" problem.  I decided the next day I'd go on a hunt for a towel rack.  But my mind kept processing that thought, and I didn't want to waste the money on a new rack if the kids wouldn't even use it!  So I was trying to come up with a fool proof way that was guaranteed to work.  And then it hit me.  Button holes.  Yes!  I'd sew button holes on my towels, and he kids would know how to exactly hang their towels.

I found a cute rack at TJ Maxx for $20.  It was a little more than I was wanting to spend but I had no luck at the first few stores I had tried before.  We finished our shopping at nap time and as soon as the kids laid down, I hung the rack.  Next I got out my sewing machine and started sewing red button holes (I wanted them to be easy to spot) on my white towels.  [I folded the towel in half lengthwise, determined the center, and let my machine sew the button hole. Easy peasy ]   

I showed the kids the new towel hanging system and they thought it was so cool.  I'm happy to report that in the last week, there's not been a towel left on the floor!  They've been so excited to hang them perfectly all by themselves and I've been so excited to have a towel-less bathroom floor!

Bookshelf Upgrade

I was sitting in our rocking chair about a month before my birthday.  I looked at this eyesore in my family room and though "it would sure be nice to upgrade this bookshelf!" My mom always asks for ideas for birthday and Christmas gifts and I thought maybe I could find a replacement with he money she was going to spend on my birthday.  

Within 5 minutes I had found this piece on Craigslist.  I loved the shelves were high enough the kids couldn't rummage through my books and I loved the doors at the bottom for extra storage. I immediately emailed the person who posted the ad and she called me right away to let me know it was still available.  Kevin and I went to her house that evening with some of my birthday cash in hand.  I'm glad I brought him because I needed the muscles!  He took the heavy end and I took light end and we loaded it up in the old Ford.

I was excited to start the remodel project and I made it known to my parents I'd be painting and updating it.  A couple days later my dad called to say he was coming over to help me start sanding the cabinet.  I told him I had planned to do it myself and he said he knew that but thought I'd want the help. And I did. I just didn't want to bother him with a project I had high expectations for.

I told him I'd like to put legs on the bottom and replace the back with bead board.  I actually did over half of the sanding on it (Kevin helped me use his big sander), but that's about as far as my help went.  My dad took it to his friends shop where they finished priming/painting and rebuilding it.  They rebuilt the chewed up corners on it, added some new trim to the top, and added a new board to the bottom to make it a little taller.

(I picked out the Palladian gold color to use as the bead board color.)

The before and after is pretty dramatic!

Our Christmas tree kind of steals it's thunder, but I love love love how it turned out!  It's by far so much better than I could have ever done by myself!  I had to rearrange my picture collage to center it above the loveseat and that turned out better than before!  I have updated pictures for my collage printing at Sams Club as I type!

I'm so happy to have added this beautiful piece of furniture to our house, and even more thankful for all the hours of work my dad put into redoing it for me!

Summer Fun List

I have been pinning all kinds of "summer to do lists" on Pinterest for the last couple months.  I wanted to be intentional and make sure to work in plenty of fun things for Hayden's summer break.  I had recently bought some chalkboard paint, so I gave our chalkboard a new coat and then got to work on my list!

The kids were so excited to see all the fun things I listed.  I read it aloud, and they squealed and shrieked after every thing I said.  I sent the list to Kevin and he said, "You're going to camp out?".  Oh the things I agree to for the sake of making memories :) 

Hope you and your family enjoy your summer too!

Diaper Cake

I made my first diaper cake last week.  I had really no idea how to start one, or how to assemble one.  I googled construction ideas and found two common ways to form the layers.  You could individually roll the diapers and form your circle, or you could leave the diapers open and stack them sideways to form a circle.  The first way seemed like more work and I didn't like that the sides of the "cake" wouldn't be smooth.  I also thought it would be annoying for a new mommy to have to go through and unroll each diaper.  So, I decided to try option B!

One way to make a diaper cake...

The way I decided to make the cake.  

I laid the diapers in a cake pan to help create the circle shape.  My layers were 6-9-12 inches.  The tutorial I used showed an empty paper towel roll in the center of the cake, but after the first layer, I decided I didn't like that (mostly because I couldn't keep it centered), so I just removed it and packed my diapers in tight.  I used two rubber bands to hold the diapers together.

These were the supplies I had picked up to make the cake! I wanted the cake to look baby themed, but not too babyish that it lost all sophistication.  I also wanted to make sure it wasn't too busy because sometimes less is more.  I wrapped my bottom layer in my biggest blanket (the whale/navy & white stripe).  The middle layer was covered in a small navy & white receiving blanket.  The top layer was covered with the back of the red & white onesie.  My top and bottom layers weren't completely covered by the blanket & onesie, so I used an additional bib and onesie to fill in the difference (it was the back of the cake and no one knew).  I used 2 rubber bands on each layer to hold the sides in place.  I used some packing tape and taped the blankets, onesies, and bibs in place.  I made sure that the tape wouldn't be showing once it was stacked. 

I wish I would have taken more pictures of the steps, but I didn't!  I laid my extra baby items between the layers, so the bottom and middle layer had a bib on top.  I stacked the cake, added my thick rope (then I cut off my rubber bands that were holding the layers together) and wasn't impressed.  It needed more nautical looking things.  I made a quick trip to Michaels and purchased the fishing net.  It was an improvement but still needed something.  I called my mom and asked if she planned to go to Walmart anytime soon because I wanted a pack of bath letters.  She picked me up a set, but unfortunatly they were all in shades of pink and green.  I had some red paint, so I painted an A, H, O & Y.  I hot glued them together, then glued them to my rope.  It finally looked complete!

My splurge was the little octopus car seat toy.  He was $16 at Babies R Us, but seemed like such an adorable addition to the cake.  And every cake needs a topper, right?!  (Austin seemed to love it too and I felt bad I didn't buy him one.  Maybe I'll go get him one soon.) 

As I mentioned above, I used packing tape to hold the layers together.  I couldn't find anything online as far was what other people used, and the tape seemed to work just fine!  It traveled really well too.  I displayed the cake on a cake stand which gave it a little extra "oomph".  I was happy with the end result, and the mommy-to-be loved it! 

The diaper cake was the centerpiece of the food table!

Sticky Residue Remover

I have been needing to buy some residue remover to get all the sticky spots off my new picture frames.  I kept forgetting to add it to my Walmart list, and we had company today and I knew I needed to get it off before our guests arrived.  I turned to Pinterest to see if they had any great ideas with ingredients I had here at home.  One caught my eye... Peanut butter!

I read the article and it recommended taking off as much of the paper (price tag) as possible, then smear the peanut butter over the sticky area.  Wait 15 minutes then wipe off and clean with a windex type spray.  The lady said she had used jiffy and trader joes peanut butter and both gave her a perfect result.  I only had Peter Pan but I was anxious to try it! 

Here are my results:

Ta-da!  It worked perfectly!!!  It's as easy and it looks and sounds!  Give it a try!