Makin' Your Own Sidewalk Chalk Paint

We've had some pretty fab-u-lous weather here in Indy and it's been beyond wonderful for everyone's moods. It's amazing what a little sunshine can do! Great weather means the girls are spending more time outside and I thought it would be fun to try out a new outside crafty project. There are several different versions of sidewalk chalk paint floating around Pinterest and I thought I'd give it a try. It was the BEST IDEA EVER! The girls loved it and it's so cheap to make! Way more cost effective than buying actual sidewalk chalk that breaks and crumbles. Plus it's fun to make your own colors!

All you need is:

• corn starch
• water
• food coloring
• muffin tin (picked mine up from Goodwill for $2. The are great for all kinds of painting projects.)
• paint brushes of various sizes 

See? Super easy and you probably have everything at home already!

For my mix I used 1/2 cup of corn starch mixed with 1 cup of water. I've seen lots of "recipes" that are a 1:1 mix, but that was too thick for us. It didn't paint well and it didn't wash off our patio to great either.

Put the corn starch and water in a bowl (it's helpful if it's one that has a spout) and mix until there are no more lumps.

Divide the mix into the muffin tins.

Add a few drops of food coloring...

...and stir

Have fun inventing your own colors...

...and let the creativity flow!

When it dries it looks just like chalk! Super cool huh?

Happy painting!

The Nap-Time Maxi Dress

Since this week is a recovery week for running, I took advantage of some "down" time and brought out my long lost friend and did some sewing! A few months ago I bought some fabric to make the girls coordinating maxi dresses for our upcoming trip to Cabo. All you have to do is Google "maxi dress tutorial" and you'll get a ton of results. I looked at a few and took bits and pieces from a each to make up my own "pattern." Since I was kinda making it up as I went along I wanted to do a trial run first. It was super-duper quick to make, it only took about an hour from start to finish. 

It's looking a little nightgown-esk for my taste, but with a few minor adjustments it's going to be the perfect maxi dress.

In the tutorial below I will show what I did in BLACK text, the RED text is any changes I plan to make on the dresses for Cabo. Feel free to shout out any suggestions or tips in the comment section yourself! (I also want to appologize for the tutorial pictures! It was a dreary day and the lighting was just awful!)

Here's what you need:

• Old T-shirt - The perfect shirt is one that fits in the arms and upper chest area but is too short. Of course you can go out a buy a new one, but's it's always nice to reuse one you already have. Knit is best. Noa's shirt was more of an a-line/tunic style. Next time I would use a more straight-lined shirt. 
• Fabric - For my practice fabric I let Noa pick out her favorite from the crafty closet. For their dresses for our trip I bought a nice light-weight, flowy fabric. You just want to make sure it's not too heavy or it will just pull on the knit top. 

First you want to cut off the bottom of your shirt. I measured from the under-arm area and left about 2 inches.

Then I measured the width of the shirt (from armpit to armpit) and multiplied it by 1.5. The length of the front of my shirt was a little over 12 inches. 12 x 1.5 = 18. This will be the width of your fabric panels. This was not enough fabric to give my dresses the flowy feel I was hoping for. Next time I will at least double the width.

After determine the width of each panel I needed to figure out how long I wanted it to be. I measured from Noa's armpit to where I wanted the dress to fall and subtracted the 2 inches that were left on her shirt. (I was planning on using the original edging of the fabric as the hem to avoid having to make a hem. If you are going to hem your dress just remember to add in about 1 1/2 inches to account for that adjustment.) Now you want to cut out TWO panels with the width and length you just calculated. Place them right sides together and sew up the sides.

I really wanted this to be a quick project so I didn't even bust out my serger. I just used the zig-zag stitch on my sewing machine and "serged" the edges old school!

At this point you should have a tube of fabric. 

Now you need to gather your fabric. For help with how to do a gathering stitch you can go {HERE}. Pull your threads until the fabric is the same circumference as your shirt.

Turn your shirt inside out and with right-sides facing, line up the edges.

Make sure to line up the seams on your shirt with the seams on your skirt.

Stitch all away around. Use a zig-zag stitch or serger to finish your edges. Turn right-side-out and bask in the glory of making a dress in under an hour!

As soon as the last stitch was in, the Lil' Monkey was adamant that she get to try on her new dress!

It's good for playing in the garden...

 ...and twirling...

...and smelling the flowers along the way...

She has declared it her new favorite dress and is wearing it today! I love that she loves it so much! She's already going through her old shirts looking for more that I can turn into dresses. 

Magnetic Chalkboard Tutorial

Little by little our new family office is coming together. I just have a few key pieces to finish and then I'll be able to share the complete makeover with you!

One of the things I really wanted for me and the girls was a magnetic chalkboard. I am a huge list-maker and while I'm very organized, sometimes I need a visual reminder. The girls, especially Lo, do great with lists too. It really cuts down on me having to remind them over and over (...and over...). Initially thought I could use magnetic paint under chalkboard paint, but after a quick unofficial Facebook poll I found I needed a Plan-B (It was pretty much unanimous that the magnetic paint doesn't work). I decided to use sheet metal sprayed with chalkboard paint. In the end it was the perfect solution and I'm beyond pleased with the result!!! I used a combination of supplies I already had and a few purchased with coupons. In the end I spent under $10 to make both boards! 

Here's what you'll need:

• Empty frame - You can usually get a good deal on frames without glass in them at Goodwill or at your local craft store. The one I used was from my clothespin frame. It was originally purchased at Michael's in their "mistake" frame bin. The one I put over my desk is huge, 24x30in. The girls' is 11x14in.
• Chalkboard paint - I like Krylon spraypaint. In my experience the regular paint kind doesn't adhere to all surfaces well. They sell Krylon at Jo-Ann's so you can use a coupon. 
• Tin snips - Giant scissors for cutting metal. I borrowed mine from a friend.
  
• Leather gloves - I used my gardening gloves. Once you cut the metal the edges are sharp and can cut you. 

• Sheet metal-I went to 2 different home improvement stores before I got smart. I guess the secret is out that people are using sheet metal for various crafty projects. When I asked for the sheet metal the sales people at both stores took me to a display of "decorative" metal. The sheets were in various sizes and the one that I needed for my large frame was marked $29.99. Um no thank you! There was no way I was going to pay that much for thin, flimsy metal! Instead I "borrowed" a magnet from the store and went in the plumbing aisle and basically stuck it on every piece of metal I could find to see which ones were magnetic. The one I purchased was 30"x36" and was only $7.99 a sheet (as an added bonus there was a $3 rebate on them too!). You could easily make two smaller boards with one sheet of metal. 

Here's what my frame looked like before:

• I removed all the fabric, twine and pictures and painted it one of my favorite colors left over from Noa's yellow room (It was a mistake paint so I'm going to be so sad when it's all gone!).  I did the same with the girls' frame.

• Using the cardboard backing from the frames I traced the shape on the sheet metal. You really need to be exact. I found that it's hard to trim with the tin snips, instead of cutting it just bent the metal. One of my sheets was too big for the frame and it took a bit of work to get it to fit properly.

• Follow the directions on the chalkboard paint and cover the sheet metal with several thin layers of paint. Let it dry according to the directions on the paint. Once it is completely dry you can put your metal into the frame, just be careful not to scratch the paint. The metal is fairly flimsy, so you'll want to make sure you have some support behind it. I found using the cardboard and backing from the original frame was enough. My mistake frame didn't have backing so I cut a piece of cardboard to fit it and then used duct tape to keep it in (no one is going to see the back). 

• Before you can use your board it needs to be seasoned. Basically you cover the entire board with chalk. I usually let mine sit for a bit. I have no idea if that makes a difference, but that's how I roll! Once it's seasoned it's all ready to use. The more you use it, the more seasoned it becomes and the better it will wipe off

Ta-da!!!

I'm in L-O-V-E love! Now I have a place for notes, reminders and pictures of the family. The girls love theirs too and keep asking me to write down homework for them, that NEVER happens!

I've got some cute ideas for magnets that I'll be sharing with you soon! You certainly can't have a cute board without cute magnets too!

Thanks for checking in!

The Office-Playroom-Office/Playroom-Office

We have a room in our house that has been changed about a bizzillion times. When we first moved in it was our office and we put the playroom upstairs. When no one wanted to play upstairs we flip-flopped and put the playroom downstairs and the office upstairs. Then I got pregnant with GG and we needed to use the office upstairs for the bedroom and we turned the downstairs room into our office/playroom. As the girls have gotten older we have less need for a playroom and more need for a family office. It's been a long and clustered process. Our dining room became a temporary storage unit and our garage was so full of crap things we have procured over the years that we couldn't fit either of our cars in it! It's certainly not finished, but it's usable and I have my dining room back and we have space for one car in the garage. I thought I'd give you a sneak peak today and I'll be sharing the room break-down once it's all done.

Here's what it looked like as the playroom:

Here's what it looked like after the hubby and the girls removed all the decals. There were also boxes and bins piled to the top of the window in most of the room. In my excitement to get them out, I forgot to take the picture before I moved them. To put it mildly, it drove me nuts. I actually had the hubs hang curtains over the French Doors so when people came over they wouldn't be blinded by our messiness!

...and here's how it looks today!!!

It still needs:

• lots of shelves over the desks
• curtains or quick cornices or both
• chalkboard/magnetic boards for myself and the girls
• a BIG rug to cover the gross carpet (it's just not in my budget now for brand new carpet)
• some sort of organization for under the desk

I'm loving the paint color and having a couch in the room. The girls can sit and read while the hubs and I are working. All of the furniture was either ours already or purchased secondhand so I've been able to redo on a budget-AWESOME!

Thanks for stoppin' by!

T-shirt Quick Fix

It never fails. I fall in love with a shirt and then it gets a hole in it! I love the look and feel of the thin cotton shirts, but it's only a matter of time before they look like this:

I got this little cutie (second hand) not too long ago. To my dismay there was a fairly good sized hole on the lower back. Too big to go unnoticed. Definitely unwearable!

I was so sad!

Then I had an idea! I could just cover it! I cut a heart out of another thin cotton shirt that was beyond repair and covered the hole with it. Then I took some embroidery thread and stitched around the heart. 

Now I have a cute little one-of-a-kind top that only took me 5 minutes to fix! YAY!

Fix It Friday

This is the view from my front door this morning. Snow cones fell from the sky all night long. That's right, that's not snow, it's a sheet of ice and it covers all the sidewalks and roads here in Indy. Icy roads= 2 hour school delay which was well received around here. It's so nice to sleep in every once in a while and have a nice relaxing morning. Everyone is in such a good mood when we don't have to rush for the bus!

This is the view of my crafty desk. Somewhere under that mess is a sewing machine and serger. The "stuff" on top is months and months of things needing fixing. It's full of things that need to be sewn or hot-glued. It's where the girls put everything they want mended, even the hubby has a pair of pants on there. The truth is that most of it has been there for a VERY LONG TIME. 

Last week Lo's most favorite stuffed dog needed her tail fixed. I told her to put it on the crafty desk and she burst into tears. "It'll NEVER get fixed if I put it there!!!" and she was totally right. Broken crafty things go there to never return. Until today. Today I am tackling the desk. If you need me today I'll be sewing on buttons, performing minor surgery on various stuffed animals and gluing broken doll furniture and hair bows.