The Simplest Baby Blankets

I’m waist deep in baby prep right now! I’ve finally finished all the other ‘necessary’ projects before baby comes and I’ve been able to concentrate on baby stuff. And it feels good. I’ve never had any pre-term labor scares and have never had a baby before my due date but it still feels really good to finally be ready for this little one to come. I guess I should clarify that – I’ve still got lots of things I’d like to do before this baby arrives but at least now it will have diapers and clean clothes and a bed to sleep in and I have a place to sit to feed it. It’s kinda funny how that definition of ‘ready’ changes from your first baby to your fourth.

Anyways, one of the projects on my list was some simple baby blankets. We didn’t find out the sex of this baby and we already have three boys so I knew I would need to prep a couple girl things just in case. My favorite blankets with my boys have been large single layer flannelette receiving blankets. They are lightweight, yet cozy and make a great swaddle. So while I obviously have a few boy blankets that are ready to be used again, I wanted to whip up a couple girl versions.


I found the flannelette on sale for around $3 a meter. I got 1 1/4 meters of each so that I could make them as large as possible. After I prewashed it, I laid it out on the floor and folded it on a diagonal to square it up. (This is way more than 1 1/4 meters. There was already a precut piece on the bolt and the lady just let me have it all.) I just used the width of the fabric as my sizing guide. It doesn’t really matter what size it is but I prefer them square and quite large. (The blanket in the picture above is folded over twice.)

Then I just trimmed up the edges until they were straight and square.

Then I folded the edges down 1/2” and ironed it.

I only folded over the edges once because I didn’t want the hem to be bulky at all. Then I set my sewing machine to a zigzag stitch and sewed around all four edges with a 1/2 inch seam allowance. This stitched right over that raw edge and will help to eliminate most of the fraying. I do still anticipate it fraying a little so I will just check them when I take them out of the dryer the next few times and trim any stray threads. It’s a little hard to see the white thread on the white fabric, but this gives you an idea of how the zigzag stitch just enclosed the raw edge.


On the front, it is just a simple zigzag border. I think it would be super cute to use a contrasting thread color but I didn’t have anything on hand.



I’m so happy with how these turned out! And they only took me around 45 minutes to sew them both. Now we just need a baby to wrap up in them. And if we have another boy, they will make great (and inexpensive!) gifts!

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Every Superhero Needs a City to Defend

I’m back in Tyler and Landon’s room today, sharing a really really fun project with you. Please don’t let the terrible lighting detract from the awesomeness that it is. Unfortunately their room is in the basement with only one small window so these are just things we have to deal with. From the get-go when I was planning their room, I saw this idea on Pinterest and knew it would be so fun. It was one of the first projects that we did for the room and the other awesome thing was that it was so awesomely inexpensive. I bought one sample size of paint for the foreground color and I found a quart of mistinted paint for the background. (I was also able to reuse that on the bookshelves so that was super cheap!) The only other supplies I used were Scotch Blue painters tape, a small foam roller, and a few dollar store paint brushes.

We debated a little at first on the best way to do it. I have had really bad experiences in the past with painters tape. I could never understand when I saw people using it because I have always, always had it bleed on me. I really hoped that didn’t happen this time around so I spent a little more on Scotch brand and made sure I pressed down really firmly. I had accepted that I would probably just have to touch it up after but there was no need. It was amazing! We got really crisp lines. The only spots where it bled was one area where I forgot to press it down really well and on a couple of the windows where the tape overlapped.

Anyways, back to the process. We used this image for inspiration (sorry, couldn’t find the original source). It really helped us have an idea of where things would go before we started. But then we just kinda eyeballed it. We did use a level to make sure our tape lines were straight but we didn’t measure anything. I don’t really think you can go too wrong. Then we taped off some windows and just rolled on the paint with a  foam roller.


It took 2 coats to get good coverage but I just did them one after another and we pulled the tape off when it was still wet.


Here’s how it looked after the foreground was finished.


We let that dry overnight (actually, I think it was two days before we got time to work on it again) and then moved onto the background. I forgot to get a picture of the background taped off before we started painting but here’s an idea of what it looked like. It was a little more time consuming to tape off, just because we had to tape around all of the foreground buildings too. But all things considered, it was still a relatively quick project.


Here it is with everything done except the bridge.

The bridge was not exactly easy but it wasn’t too bad either. We used a level and penciled in the main lines and then just freehanded the rest before we painted it. Up close it definitely isn’t perfect but my 5 year old is pretty enamored by it! It really was a fun project to do and made such a big impact!

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DIY Superhero Canvases

Here we are, back in Tyler and Landon’s bedroom, AKA the superhero room. Of course, any superhero room needs superheroes! I thought for quite a while about how to best represent different superheroes, on a budget of course. There are some really awesome posters available on Etsy and I was so tempted. But after the cost of the posters plus frames for each, it was just more than I wanted to pay. So I finally decided on creating my own artwork. And of course I just decided to use symbols since they are super simple.

I started by having Landon pick which symbols he wanted, which sounds a lot easier than it actually was. He’s 4 after all. Then I picked up some 12x12 canvases from Michaels. They were about $25 for a pack of 7 and I had a 10% off coupon. But don’t be like me. If you can, wait until they are on sale or until you have a 40-50% off coupon. I live an hour away from Michaels though so I don’t really have the luxury of waiting until I get a good coupon to pop over. My husband was also able to bring home a projector from work, which really made this whole project possible. Seriously, I’m all for the hand painted look but I do not do free handing well.

Here was our little set up. It’s a little hard to see but I rested the canvas on the baseboard and taped it up with a small piece of painters tape. Then I centered the image over the canvas and started tracing the outline. I just Googled the images to find ones I liked. This is what a traced image looked like. I just used pencil and it worked fairly well. Just keep in mind that it took a lot of coats of paint to cover with some colors.


After they were all traced, I got to work painting. I worked in a bit of a haphazard manner. I tried to do as much of one color at a time if I could. Each color needed at least two coats in most places. I won’t lie, it wasn’t exactly a quick job. But I found it pretty relaxing  and had fun doing it so it wasn’t too bad. It ended up taking me a couple days. I even did most of it while my kids were around. A couple times I had them take off their shirts and gave them some paintbrushes and cardboard so they could join me.

I used a combination of these brushes. They are all just from the dollar store but I really liked the paintbrushes with the straight edges. I found it gave a lot more control when doing the details.

To me the most important part of the painting process was outlining each symbol in black. Wherever there was a transition from one color to the next, I painted a black line. I feel like this keeps it looking authentic and instantly makes it look neater. I used the smallest brush pictured above and it really helped me keep the lines uniform in size. Just for contrast here is what a canvas looked like without the black outline.

And again, here is the finished product. Once they were all dry, I took them outside and sprayed them with some clear gloss spray paint I’ve had for ages. This helps protect the canvases since the paint has a very flat finish and will easily scuff. Hopefully this also helps repel dust. I imagine you could use Mod Podge for this as well.

I’m so pleased with how they turned out. And a certain son of mine is too. He was my sidekick the whole time I painted them, watching me closely and asking questions. And making sure that I knew which color went where. He also deliberated for quite some time over their arrangement. Luckily, they are just hanging up with a couple nails so he can easily rearrange them if he decides that they aren’t in the ‘right’ place. (And no, I didn’t paint the Hulk canvas in the middle. That was a Home Sense find that I thought was just too awesome to pass up!)

I love that these were a really inexpensive way to add lots of personality and color to the space. And the great thing is that the idea can totally be adapted to paint whatever your hear desires!

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Forward Facing Bookshelves

We are jumping next to our older boys shared bedroom for a quick project that I absolutely love! I haven’t shared much yet about their room but it is pretty fun! When we started shuffling their rooms, I was a little nervous to have our boys sleeping in the basement, away from us. But I was excited for the possibilities of making this room really fun. Our second son, Landon, just loves superheroes. And he wanted a superhero bedroom. So that’s what he’s got. We worked on a few bigger projects (sneak peak on the right of that picture below) but we really needed some functionality. When we moved the older boys downstairs, we left their bookshelf in their old room for Nash to use. I hung an old IKEA frame ledge beside each of their beds for them to place their bedtime reading and a drink but they still had a lot more books with no home.

Ever since I saw these forward facing bookshelves online, I knew they were something I wanted for their room. Especially because most of the books they are reading these days don’t have a substantial enough spine to tell what book it is. There were so many books that we just weren’t reading, simply because they forgot they were there. Enter this simple, but fantastically practical solution.


I basically followed Ana White’s tutorial. I knew I didn’t want to spend much money so I went with basic pine boards. I used a 1 x 4 for the back and bottom of each shelf and a 1 x 2 for the front. Each shelf is 2 feet long so I was able to use the whole 8 foot board. They cost me less than $15 in wood and screws, which I was pretty happy with. I had them cut the boards down at the store but when I got home, I found they were pretty uneven so I used my miter saw to even them up. I gave them each a quick sand with my orbital sander, wiped them down and laid them out on my kitchen counter to paint.


I painted them grey, an ‘oops’ color I had picked up for another project in their room and just gave all the boards one quick coat on each side. Since I was using cheaper wood, I knew I would never get a perfect finish and decided to embrace their rustic-ness. Besides, with two boys using them daily, they wouldn’t stay pristine for long.


After painting, I assembled them, following Ana’s directions. I predrilled and screwed the bottom board to the back with 1 1/2” screws and then used my brad nailer with 2” finishing nails for the front pieces. Then I figured out the placement I wanted (they ended up being 12” apart), found studs, and screwed right through the back of each shelf.


I’m super happy with how they turned out! I did the whole project in less than a day, while doing all my regular mom duties with three kids around so they were definitely a quick and easy project. I love things that can be completed in one day! And my boys sure are pleased to see all those books they have forgotten about. Just the look on Tyler’s face was enough to make this project worth it. That boys loves his books!

I can’t wait to share more projects in this fun superhero bedroom. Stay tuned!

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Creating a Basketball Mural

Well, surprise! We’re having a baby! And we couldn’t be more excited. But that has meant some major changes around here in the past couple months. As you can see in my floor plan post, we have three fairly small bedrooms on the main floor and it has worked out great for us for the past 3 years. But with baby #4 on the way, there just wasn’t enough space any more. So we are switching things up. The oldest two boys are moving downstairs to a fun new room (that I can’t wait to share) and our third son is moving into the larger bedroom (Bedroom 1 on the floor plan) so we can prepare his nursery for the new baby.
 
So let me tell you a little about this third son, Nash. He is 2 and he loves basketball. With a passion. At 18 months, we would go to my younger brother or nieces basketball games and he would sit on my lap and watch the whole thing. While his older brothers were running up and down the aisles and needing distractions in the form of snacks and my phone, he was enthralled. So when we asked him recently what he wanted in his new room, of course his answer was ba-ball. Now, I’m not usually one to dive into a theme-y type room but really, how can I resist that request?

Here is how the room started out.


Actually, the sad thing is that this picture was taken more than two years ago and really it hadn’t changed. I still hadn’t made those headboards I had planned and there was almost nothing on the walls. There was, however, quite a bit of damage (it’s amazing what two little boys can do to some walls in two years!). So our first order of business was clearing things out and getting a fresh start. We bought new bunk beds for the older boys and so we were able to just leave one of the beds in here. We disassembled the other one and stored it in the storage room. It will come in handy in a couple years when this baby is ready to graduate from his/her crib.

Once we had all the walls patched up, I gave everything another coat of paint. I touched up the caulking, baseboards, window molding, door and walls. I told you, my kids are hard on this poor house!

And then the fun began. I have to preface this next part by saying that I am not artistic. Seriously, the first time Landon asked me to draw a cow for him, he laughed at it. He was two. So when I say that if I can do it, anyone can, I’m not joking.

First, I got the idea from this pin on Pinterest. But obviously baseball would not work here so I used a cute little t-shirt from Children’s Place as my inspiration.

Please excuse the wrinkles. I may or may not have pulled it straight from the laundry pile to take a picture for reference as I was working.

I started by making my outline. That part was fairly easy. I picked a center point and taped a piece of string to the wall. Instead of drawing it out right away, I just used some painters tape to get a general idea of size and location. I just kept playing around with it until I liked it. Here’s what I ended up with.

Then I used a pencil to actually draw an outline. And then came the fun part. I sketched in the other lines of the basketball. It wasn’t too hard but I definitely had to redo a few lines. For the record, a magic eraser is your friend when trying to remove pencil marks from walls. Unfortunately I don’t have a picture of this part; the lines were too light to show up.

Next I used a sample pot of paint left over from another project to paint over those lines. This was the first draft.

I was happy to see that it wasn’t totally skewed but it was also looking pretty rough so I started doing another coat. I just used a cheap foam brush. But, as you can see, the edges were still pretty rough so I went over some of those places with a smaller artists brush.

It did take a few hours but it wasn’t too bad. I just turned on some music after the kids were in bed and went to work. And here is the finished product.

Obviously, there is still a lot of work to be done in this space but we have one happy little guy to have a place just for him. Stay tuned for more updates as we continue to chip away at it.

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Living room gallery wall

It took me a really long time to get stuff on the walls of our house. It was partly due to the fact that we were more worried about things like flooring and kitchen cabinets and windows and doors and bathrooms and trim. And then once we finished that stuff, I was just way too big and pregnant and tired to even care. But things are finally starting to happen. The one big thing that I’ve had in mind the whole time for this house is a gallery wall. And not just any gallery wall, a massive one! I have always hated the fact that I take tons of pictures but they just end up stuck on the computer. I also really wanted to showcase not just the most recent pictures, but my favorites from over the years. And so from all of that, you get this!


I wanted to use color pictures so I chose white frames to let the photographs shine. Most of the frames are thrifted and spray-painted white. The pictures are an assortment of the last seven and a half year. It was actually pretty difficult choosing pictures. I could have included a hundred more! Overall I’m fairly happy with how it turned out. There are still a few more things I would like to tweak though. But that’s one thing I love about this wall – it can constantly change and evolve with us.

One thing I’d like to try is to eliminate all of the mats in the frames. I almost think there is a little too much white going on so I may try some enlarged pictures and see how I like it. I’m also not sure of a couple of my frames up there. The one on the top right is always crooked and some of them are not in too great shape or a very different white color. I’ll keep you updated as I move things around.

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DIY Growth Chart

This is one of those projects that seemed to carry on and on forever. Actually it didn’t just seem like it, it was more than two years from the time I bought the materials until it was actually hanging on our wall.
I love the idea of recording our kids’ heights but I had a few criteria when designing mine:
- I wanted to be able to move it around if needed
-I wanted to be able to record each child’s height separately
- I wanted some form with all that function
I started out with three pieces of pine tongue-in-groove paneling from Home Depot. This style had two small panels on one side and one large one on the back. After acclimating in our garage for a few months (totally not a needed step, just my way of saying I procrastinated a whole lot!), I first cut them to length (about 5') and then I glued them together with wood glue. I flipped the middle piece around so that instead of two skinny panels, it had one wide one. I cut off the tongue piece on the right with my circular saw but I left the groove on the left, in case we have more than four children and I want to add another piece of paneling.
Then it was primed and painted white – just some leftover semi-gloss that I had on hand. Now, I know this next part could be done a lot more easily with vinyl but I am not a patient person and I just wanted to get this done so I used a bit of a different technique. I overlapped two pieces of painters tape on a scrap piece of 2x4. Then I printed off the words in the font and size I wanted and taped it over the tape. Then it was just a matter of tracing around the letters with my exacto knife, making sure I was getting all the way through the paper and the tape. After that it was just a matter of peeling off the tape and sticking it to my already painted board. It is definitely not perfect but it worked good enough for me!

Once I filled in all of my stencils with a light grey paint (I just mixed a little bit of black acrylic craft paint into the white semi-gloss), I did the same thing with the numbers and filled them in with a darker grey paint.


Then it was just a matter of adding the measurement lines and I was done!


But by this time, we were about ready to list our house so I didn’t hang it up at the time. Then we moved and renovated and everything else that last year entailed. When we pulled it our at our new house, the paint had been scratched up and it wasn’t looking too hot so it still didn’t get hung up. So then finally this weekend I found a spot for it and figured out how to hang it up. Then it just took a little bit of touch up paint and it looks awesome! You might notice that I still have to add another name to the top but I’m giving myself a little time since that boy is still a few months away from being able to stand on his own!

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A Bed Upgrade

You see, we had this bed. We bought it about a year after we were married and I think it was our first big furniture purchase. We felt all grown up buying this big, dark four poster bed. And it’s been well loved for the past 6 years. And it was still in pretty decent shape, despite several moves and years of wear and tear. But we were just itching for something different.
It all started with the idea of hacking off the posts. I think a four poster bed can be great, but we just don’t have a big enough room to pull it off. It really made the space feel closed in. The hubby was on board with that so we disassembled the bed to haul the posts out to our miter saw and give them a little trim. And while we had the bed taken apart, I decided that there was no time like the present to give it a little facelift. You see, in addition to those posts really closing off the space, the dark color was really heavy and I just wasn’t feeling the leather anymore. So we took all the pieces down to our basement where they sat for the last 5 months. I wish I was joking. In the meantime, our room looked like this. Nothing like sleeping on the floor to keep you feeling young! And then finally with summer winding down and me getting the bug to get the house in order, I finally got around to finishing it up these last few weeks. It was a fairly simple process, although it did take a bit of time (stretched out over quite a few days) to prime and paint all of the pieces. The old leather pieces were just screwed into place from the back so updating that part was fairly simple. I cut a piece of plywood to size and then upholstered it in batting and fabric and screwed it back in. I’m loving our new bed. It feels so fresh! I can hardly believe it is the same piece of furniture.


As you can see, there is still quite a bit of work to do in our room. And when I say quite a bit, I pretty much mean that I haven’t done anything else. Except the lamps. Next up on the agenda: pillows, things on the wall, a new dresser and some closet organization. And when I say next on the agenda, I pretty much mean hopefully sometime in the next year!

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