Controlling the chaos: jewelry

Lately, I've been feeling overwhelmed by the amount of clutter and general chaos that surrounds me in my home. I am determined to improve my situation! As a first step, I decided to tackle the top of my dresser:

The bulk of the above mess is my pile of jewelry. The pile is not only messy, but it is difficult to find, extract, and untangle pieces (particularly from the bottom of the pile!). I have been eyeing jewelry storage racks for a couple of years now and then stumbled across a tutorial from Home Depot: "DIY Jewelry Organizer Made from a Salvaged Drawer." I didn't have any drawers laying about, but I was able to find a base:

I found this one at Jo-Ann's (and I was able to use a 50% coupon for it-- yay!). Then I pretty much followed the tutorial.

I started by sanding and then painted the piece with an off-white acrylic craft paint.

Then I sanded again and painted with a navy blue.

Then I sanded again to give it that distressed look with the white base peeking through.

Next I mapped out where to put the hardware. I chose a mix of knobs and a couple of pulls and then lined the bottom edge with hooks. I gotta say-- the hardware was not cheap. I think I spent about $28 on the pulls and knobs, purchased from Home Depot and another local hardware store. I am sure I could have been thriftier about it, but I decided the convenience was worth it. Fortunately, the wood was inexpensive and I already had the other supplies. So the project was not a budget-breaker. And it was still a lot less than the jewelry racks I was looking at on etsy!

Using a paper template taped it to the front of the rack, I marked where each piece of hardware was to go. When I went to make the holes, I drilled through the template-- that way I didn't have to mark up the front of the jewelry rack. It worked really well. And I successfully used a drill for the first time and I survived to tell the tale. Yay!

In the above picture, you can see the back after all of the hardware was installed. Just above the rack, you can see the paper template I used (with all of the holes).

And here is the completed front view:

Finally, I got it hung on the wall and loaded it up:

Check out that tidy dresser top! And now I can actually see and easily find all of my jewelry. Success!

One whole hand!

On Sunday, Little Bear turned 5 years old! To celebrate, he wanted to have a Transformers Rescue Bots party. So I got to craftin'!

First on the list was a "Pin the Autobot Symbol on Boulder" game.

I used a projector to trace the image of Boulder the Rescue Bot and then painted him with acrylics. Then I printed and cut out Autobot symbols for the kids to stick on him (the goal was his chest).

I also put together some simple party favors, including bubble wands decorated with Rescue Bot stickers I made using Avery Shipping Label stickers. Since the wands were orange and green, I went with Blades and Boulder characters to match. I also purchased a .pdf of some Rescue Bot bookmarks from So Happy Shop on Etsy and printed them out on cardstock. I finished them with some homemade tassels using a tutorial, "How to Make Your Own Tassels," from Sew4Home.

There was also an array of treats, including a cake. Rather than a fancy Rescue Bot-themed design, I was surprised when Little Bear decided he wanted a chocolate cake with chocolate icing and sprinkles.

I used Smittin Kitchen's "i want chocolate cake" cake. It turned out beautifully. This is the first time in recent memory that we actually finished off an entire cake! Sooooo good!

Bonus: I had a sous chef to help me with the baking!

Last, but definitely not least, Little Bear finally got his very own personalized name pillow.

Happy birthday, Little Bear! I love you!!!!

A Skylanders Birthday!

Big Bear turned 8 on Sunday! This year he wanted to celebrate with a Skylanders-themed party. So, of course, mama had to get her craft on!

His favorite Skylander character is Gill Grunt, so I made a poster. I started by tracing a coloring page image of Gill Grunt onto posterboard using my neighbor's nifty projector:

Then I used acrylic paints and filled him with color:

Here he is all painted up:

Finally, I finished him up by using a Sharpie to do the lettering and outline of the image:

While the paint alone looked okay, I think the outlining gives it a nice, finished look.

There had to be a Skylanders cake:

The symbols on the top represent the ten elements featured in the game. I mixed and piped 11 different colors of icing, which was time consuming, but the effect was worth it. I didn't have room to actually write "Happy Birthday" on the top after doing the elements, so I just put his name and the big "8".

We played two games-- Twister and Bingo. With my husband's help, we created a Skylanders-themed bingo game for the kids to play. I found a bunch of images, sized and edited them. Then he wrote a program to create 5x5 bingo cards that would all be unique. Here's a sample:

So cool!!! Then I went and had them printed out for the party.

The game was a hit!

Balloons, snacks, games, more snacks, cake, presents... it was a fun party.

Here's the birthday boy holding his Gill Grunt figure in front of his new poster.

I just love that smile!

Happy birthday, Big Bear!!!

Party prep time!

My week has been consumed by party prep for Big Bear's birthday party. Tomorrow is the big day. He's turning 7!

I'm definitely getting my craft on with this theme!

Making of a volcano - Days 2-5

And then the great volcano sat. Dormant... waiting for its time to erupt! (In other words, lots of waiting around while the giant mountain dried.)

Day 2:

Definitely drying on the outside, but the inside was clearly still on the very wet side. Big Bear worked the blow dryer to help it along.

Day 3:

Hmmm... dry on the outside, but still way too wet on the inside.

My husband decided to try drilling some holes on the sides of the bucket to see if allowing more airflow to the inside would help. There was some blow dryer action after the holes were drilled as well.

Day 4:

The venting holes worked! The inside was definitely drying out. Yay!!!

Day 5:

Dry!!! Time to prime...

...and paint!

Ready to erupt party!

Making of a volcano - Day 1

Big Bear is coming up on his 6th birthday this week, and we are getting ready to party! We're branching out from just family this year and are inviting some of his friends, so we're trying to plan a couple of games/activities for them to do together. The theme is: Volcano! One idea I thought of for an activity was a "lava rock" toss into a "volcano." So our first step is to make a volcano. We decided to try paper mache. It's not something either my husband or I have any experience in, so I thought it might be fun to document our adventure. Here's hoping it is successful, too!

We made a family trip to Home Depot yesterday for the main supplies: a big bucket, duct tape, a piece of plywood for the base, chicken wire, and bolts/nuts/washers. Then I made a trip to the grocery store to get some newspapers and flour.

My husband started by drilling two holes into the plywood and the bottom of the bucket. Then we secured the bucket to the plywood using the bolts/nuts/washers. Next we used chicken wire to build a sort of cage around the bucket.

Duct tape was used to cover the edges of the board and the inside of the bucket where the chicken wire ended-- to cover up all the pointy edges.

As we worked, my husband tried to shape the chicken wire and create some contours. I used a staple gun to help secure the wire to the base as well.

Then came the fun part: paper mache!

Using the recipe we found at cockeyed.com of 3 cups of water to 2-1/2 cups of flour, we made our goopy paste.

Then we used strips of torn newspaper and got to work.

Paper mache is a seriously messy business.

Big Bear didn't help because he was in bed-- but as he hates getting his hands dirty, I suspect he wouldn't have wanted anything to do with this process anyway. LOL!

After about 2 hours of focused paper mache work, we finally had something resembling a volcano.

Now we're crossing our fingers that it will be dry by Wednesday or Thursday night.

I made some cookies today to help warm up the kitchen and facilitate dry time. (Mmmmm.... chocolate chip!!!)

There may still have to be some blow dryer action involved. Or maybe more cookies.

Hammer Bot!

After painting the tanker cars with the Bears, I was in a painting kind of mood. So I broke out our copy of RoboRally. RoboRally is a fun board game-- a capture-the-flag, action-packed racing puzzle adventure. Woo! (And yes, it is totally as fun as it sounds!) Up to 8 people can play, and each player chooses a robot to control as their playing piece. The robots that came with the game were unpainted metal figurines. Many years ago, I started painting all of the playing pieces in the game. Because when your robot has a little but of personality, it adds to the fun! There are 8 robots total. I managed to paint 7 of them before Big Bear was born.

That last unpainted figure (the "Hammer Bot") has been taunting me since 2006.

Before (primed):

After:

It feels good to get him done! Anyone want to play? :)

Train painting fun!

Last week, my husband picked up some unpainted wooden train toys. We all worked together to get them ready for playtime.

Big Bear decided he wanted an apple-grape juice car, so he started by painting his tanker dark purple.

Little Bear is a chocoholic, so we decided to make his into a chocolate syrup car and he painted his tanker a light brown.

Then Mama and Papa took over and did some detail work. He finished up the apple-grape juice tanker, and I completed the chocolate syrup tanker.

And now there are some very unique tankers being shunted about on the train table as well as a pair of very happy boys.

Crafty Friday

Yesterday the boy and I met up with E for a field trip to the Bellevue Arts Museum. They have a new quilt exhibit: American Quilt Classics, 1800 - 1980: The Bresler Collection. I wish I had some photos to share, but alas, no photography allowed. The collection included some gorgeous quilts. They grouped them into categories, including whole cloth, mosaics, albums, Amish, medallions, log cabins, and more. The boy precluded me getting to really focus too much on the details of each quilt (must be moving at all times!), but I really enjoyed the exhibit. There were some truly beautiful quilts on display and I came out feeling seriously inspired.

Later, the boy and I went over to E's house and we crafted it up! E saw some super-cute Valentine garlands being displayed around blogland (like this one) and decided it would be a quick and fun afternoon project.

Armed with my bag of red/white/pink fabric I joined E and her giant piles of felt, fabric, and trims. Now, though I do consider myself pretty crafty, the only garlands I've ever made have been paper chains at Christmas. I was feeling rather clueless as to where to even begin. So I sat back and observed as E got started on hers.


This is what she came up with. I love how she used the ribbon-- each heart is separate and then they can be chained together by tying the ribbons. And I also love the pinked edges. So cute!

Once I saw how hers was coming together, I got brave enough to get going on my own.


Somewhere in the center of the crafty chaos, you can see the start of my garland. Instead of ribbon, I went with a continuous strand of white rick rack. Each heart includes a backing fabric (I used the same fabric for each heart), two layers of felt or fleece (depending on what was closest at hand), and then a top fabric. To hold all the layers together, I used a decorative stitch around the perimeter of each heart (each one is different).

Fun fact: in doing this project, I realized I do not have a single heart-print fabric in my rather expansive stash. Crazy! Fortunately, E was happy to share a few of hers with me.

My garland finished around 9 feet long. I decided to hang it in my kitchen, over the pantry.


Right now it's being held up by tape. I might try using little tacks or nails at some point in the future. But overall, I'm pretty pleased with the happy little hearts.

Many thanks to E who helped me along, offering sage advice, materials, and great company. Yay for crafty friends!