Discovery Gateway Children's Museum

Whoa...credit to the ladies who blog week in and week out (or daily) and never tire of it or persevere even though tired! A few weeks of steady posts from me and I was burnt out for months! My last post was about my daughter's first lost baby tooth. Since then she has lost the matching tooth and they are both almost grown back in! Well...in my time away from my computer I have been very busy. But on a nice slow summer day we took a family break and visted the local children's museum. Both of my kids had so much fun...but I was really surprised to see how much Jane was able to co-operate with the other big kids in the imaginary city to build a building and deliver mail and stuff like that. Since she was an only child for so long, she usually is good to just play on her own. So I was really pleased to see that developement in her.

My husband has been having fun editing photos and here is a great one. We were torn between naming it "A One, A Two, A One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six?" and "Xyloclones".

And here is Teddy playing in the awesome ball structure. My kids could and do play here for hours. In this particular section, a vaccuum sucks the balls up into the tubes and they go up and around and down into the ball depository. But there are all sorts of different ways to get your balls into the tubes and it provides for endless fun.

Jane gets ready for the Tooth Fairy

Jane lost her first tooth today. It has been loose for more than a week now. She has been ultra protective of it and refusing to bite food or even brush it. We were at my dad's house for a bbq and I said to Jane that if she let somebody pull it out today, that I would take her to Build-a-Bear tomorrow. She was sitting on her uncle Jason's lap. She asked him if I was cheating her and he said, "nope." So she opened her mouth and let him pull it out!! I couldn't believe it. A lot of crying ensued...but not because it hurt. She doesn't want to grow up and she doesn't want to loose her baby teeth. But she cheered up about an hour later and was excited to write the Tooth Fairy a note and get to bed.


Here is her new and improved Tooth Fairy Pillow. You might have seen the first one I made here. Or the inspiration and pattern for it here. I wasn't happy with the crazed look on the first one or it's skirt...so I tried again. This fairy sports a real tutu, improved expression and pocket on the back for a note for the Tooth Fairy and spot for the pack of gum and what not that she chooses to leave.

Gnome Town Terrariums

Ever since I first saw Amalie, I have been in love with gnomes. Here, there and everywhere you can find them making themselves at home in my house and in my garden. So, to be nice, I thought I would create a little natural habitat for them and then like a curator for a zoo, I captured them with a glass lid! It's ok...they all went in happily. They love to be observed!!

For Mother's Day, I asked for terrarium supplies which included containers, soil, gravel, carbon, and plants. Martha has a great tutorial here.

Here is Gneil sitting on a log.

And here is Gnoah taking a dirt nap. He is using rocks for a pillow! Silly gnome!

I have to confess that this is the second planting for these terrariums. I had put way to much water the first time...and the plants drowned. The hardest part is finding flowering plants that are short enough to fit my containers. But they are doing much better now! I love looking at them...they are such a charming addition to my home!

Porch Chairs Refresher

One day I thought..."Hey, these chairs are kind of blah." We have had them since we got married 9 years ago. I have always thought that they were indestructible.

But on closer inspection...I noticed that they were getting rusty. So...even more reason to clean them up and give them a fresh coat of paint.

I have spray painted a lot of things in my time...but these were tough! All the holes! All the angles! The clean up from the over-spray took as long as the spray painting did! (I used Krylon Cherry Red and I loved the ease of the nozzle, but the over-spray seemed ridiculous! I sprayed in my garage with a large tarp under and behind the project, and there was red dust from corner to corner of my garage. It didn't stick, so I just had to sweep it up...but it was messy!)

I love the results! The red chairs look fresh and summery! To entice neighbors to come over and stay awhile, I whipped up some outdoor pillows. I used one yard of Waverly's Sun and Shade fabric and at 40% off of $17.00 per yard, I wanted to use ever inch of it, and I did, selvage and all!

I used the little leftovers of the fabric for some rosettes. I added some burlap alongside the blue fabric to stretch my leftovers and to incorporate the burlap ties (I didn't have enough of the blue fabric to make ties...and in the windy city of Herriman, you need to tie your pillows to your chairs). I hot glued to rosettes and some red buttons to tie the whole look together. So cute!




I thought while I was at it, I would add a rug. I couldn't find anything that I liked that went with my color scheme, so I decided to make my own after being inspired by Jen's runner. I bought 4 cheapo rugs from Target and laid them out on the floor and taped them together with duct tape. Then I carefully flipped it over and hot glued ribbon on the seams. It is pretty sturdy... I have picked it up and shook it out a few times and it has been blown back into a crumpled heap by the aforementioned winds.
My porch definitely needed a makeover when competing with the stairs that have these beauties growing on them! (my first successful containers!)

Linking up my Red, White, and blue porch to:

School House Rocks!

Several weeks ago I was browsing the 'yard' area of my local thrift shop when I spotted this beauty (the school house desk...not that uber-fabulous buffet behind it). I instantly put my hand on it and wouldn't leave it's side for a moment... not even to track a worker down. I probably waited about 5 minutes before I was able to get someone's attention to help me get a sold sign on this baby. $10.00 later... this baby was mine!

Besides being really dirty, I liked the whipped butter color of the desk top and shelves, but wasn't loving the copper? color of the legs.



I didn't love the Q99 FM sticker or it's friends either!


Or this ultra deep scratch that some punk etched while they were being bored to death in math class.
Anywho...while I was cleaning the desk up, I noticed that I wasn't the first one to refinish this piece. Someone sprayed the gold color over red. Here is a closer look at the cool legs.
It turns out that the desk is adjustable for height. Whoever refinished it last, just left the legs at the shortest setting...so above that the legs are just red.
And here is the really gross gob of gum that the last refinisher didn't bother removing. "Scrape that off...nah, I'll just spray paint it gold. I'm sure it will just blend right in. Spray paint kills creepy desk scratching kid germs, right!?!" So I scraped that off and cleaned the desk with TSP. I was really torn about how to refinish this. I new that for the present, I was going to put it in my daughter's room, which is pink and brown. But I really wasn't liking the idea of baby pink on the desk. I kind of wanted to spray it aqua...but then I would have to redecorate her room entirely... and I still love her Paris room. So I went with hot pink and cream. It doesn't really 'go' but it is so cute that I love it there anyway!

The desk is definitely a she now! I taped and papered the desktop and shelves and spray painted the metal parts of the desk. Then I painted the wood parts. I only had ultra white paint on hand, so I added some almond color to a portion of it to cream it up. I kind of hate hand mixing paint, because I'm terrified of running out and having to try to make a match.

I barely had enough paint to finish. To make clean-up easier, I kind of scraped out the remaining paint with my foam brush and put the brush in a plastic bag and threw it away in my garbage can. Several hours later I thought, what am I doing!! That desk isn't done! I really wanted to try to stencil on a design and then cover it and sand down to the stencil. So I dug through my garbage to retrieve my loaded paintbrush and hoped that it wasn't dried out and that it was enough paint.

I grabbed my stencil (from Hobby Lobby) and taped paper to all sides of it. After I measured my desk top to find the center and figure out my stencil plan, I stuck the stencil down with stencil adhesive and blasted it with spray paint. Some of the designs turned out crisper than others. But that was a-o-k! After the stencil part was dried I painted over it with my remaining white paint and waited for that to dry. Then I sanded lightly in places and harder in other places to achieve the worn down look.

I super love the way it turned out! I will definitely use this technique again. And maybe one day she will fit into her surroundings a little more... we'll just have to see what happens.

Teddy takes a trip down the OR lane

A few weeks ago, I pulled Teddy out of the tub and discovered a bulge down there...and not in a good way. Teddy had a hernia and it had to be fixed. Luckily, the new Primary Children's Hospital is just a 4 minute drive from our house. Especially since we had to be there at 6:15 in the morning. Here Teddy is in his "hospital pajamas".


Teddy loved the waiting room. It was well stocked with a bunch of awesome toys and bubbles.

A few minutes later the sedative had kicked in and Teddy was still having a great time...he was just loopy and not in full control off his body. They wheeled him down to the OR in a wagon and a few minutes later I was holding him again. He was all fixed!

We were home by 9:00 am and I don't think he was aware that he had gone through anything out of the ordinary. He wanted to run around the house and there was nothing we could do to stop him. Since he still had a bevy of drugs on board, we were chasing after him with our arms outstretched to catch him if/when he fell. But before we could stop him, he ran smack into the glass porch door (I'm guessing that through his rose colored glasses, it looked like it was open. It surely wasn't because it was so clean he couldn't see it!). Anyway, a few hours later it seemed like all the drugs had worn off and he was acting like himself again; which is to say he was still running around like crazy, just with a steadier gate! Hopefully he will heal quickly and painlessly and we'll see no more scary bulges in his nether-regions!

Felt Toddler Watches

I saw the cutest little watch project at a linkie party the other week. Kimberly came up with a toddler watch made out of felt and buttons and included a great tutorial. I ran right out and bought the supplies the very day I saw her cute watches. I made 4. Two for my son, one for my daughter's best friend, and one for my nephew.



The only thing I would change about Kimberly's watch would be to cut two wristbands and glue (I used hot glue) them together. Felt can be stretched out and it doesn't get unstretched. My son is only 1 1/2 and he started pulling at his to pull it off and it got stretched. so...I just glued a strip to reinforce to them. But I think it would look more professional to have the whole wristband shape.

So cute...and you don't see too many cute things for boys. So I jumped on this one!

Linking to these parties: