My Kids Were Possessed – So I Made the Best of It!

A few weeks ago my girls and I all had the day off.  Thing 2 had recently been making noises about wanting to purge her toys.  This scared me a bit, so whenever she said something like that, I would slowly back away so as not to let whatever was possessing her know I was on to it.

Anyway, on this particular Friday, I decided to make the most of Thing 2’s sickness and I suggested we clean out the playroom.  She immediately agreed and off we went.  I first suggested that we take everything out of the play room so we could then bring back in only the things she really enjoys.  She was like a machine: back and forth, pulling things out of the room.  And all the while, she had a smile on her face!  Who IS this girl?  In fact, she was having so much fun, that Thing 1 joined in the fun.

This is what the play room looked like when we started:

Pretty sad, huh?  It had been getting worse and worse and, eventually, I just gave up asking them to clean it because I knew it was going to take a backhoe anyway.

After everything was out, the girls decided what they wanted to bring back in.  I sweetened the pot a bit by telling them that, since they really enjoy doing art projects the most, we could use the proceeds from whatever we sell to make this the most awesome art room ever.  That helped.  I also told them that, if they reduced their stuffed animal supply by half, I’d give them each $5 extra dollars to buy more art supplies for the room.

I’m happy to say that this is what got left out of the room:

(It doesn’t look like much, but it actually represents a fair bit of stuff.  AND notice the bin full of stuffed animals that are going to find a new home!)

I’m not happy to say that that pile is still sitting in my dining room.  I want to sell the stuff, but it’s not garage sale season and Craiglist-ing all this stuff will be such a pain!

Here’s what the play room looks like once again:

But, the best part of this process is that, about 3/4 of the way through cleaning the play room, I got a brainstorm about how to rearrange their bedroom so it wouldn’t be so crowded.  I came running down the stairs and said, “I just had THE BEST IDEA for your room!  But I’m not going to tell you until we finish cleaning the play room!”  I am not lying when I tell you that they jumped up and down!  And then, I swear this is true, one of them said, “This is fun!”

Stay tuned to see the amazing bedroom transformation!

Art Wall Tips

Thank you all for the kind words you left about my kids’ play room!  They were so wonderful to read!

As I mentioned in that post, I stepped outside of the box (for me) and decided to behave like a grown up and actually do some preparation when hanging the frames for my kids’ art wall.

This is a big deal for me.  “Preparation” is a dirty word in my book.  “That’s not my bag, baby.”  And that’s why my husband was surprised when I used a level on our kitchen wall vinyl and why I don’t tape when I paint (heck, I don’t even change my clothes when I paint).

But, I’ve been trying really hard lately to do a little prep before I jump in with both feet in the hopes that it will make my projects go smoother (or at least have even better results).  It’s hard for me.  Very hard.

So, you know it must be good when I say that making templates for your wall gallery is worth the time and effort. 

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The day I finally decided to do work on this wall, I ran to my local Goodwill and got as many frames as I could find for under $2.00.  Then I ran home and painted them as fast as I could.  (On a side note, I swear I must be the worst spray painter of all time.  I have no patience (see above) and I end up getting my coats too thick and then I get runs and blotches and such.  But, “It doesn’t have to be perfect to be beautiful” as the Nester says, which very nicely sums up my philosophy on projects, so onward!)

Once they were painted, I traced each frame onto butcher paper and cut out the template. 

• Tip 1: I numbered each of the frames on the back and copied that number onto the templates so that once I had the best arrangement on the wall, I’d know which frame matched to which template.
  
• Tip 2: I also marked on the templates where the nail would go for each frame.  If you’re using picture hooks, make sure you mark where you’ll actually put the nail, as opposed to where the bottom of the picture hook will sit.

My husband came home right about the time I was finishing the templates and was impressed with my forethought, though he did scoff just a little when I complained that it had taken me a whole HALF AN HOUR to do it.

Once I had the templates, I laid them out on the floor until I found a design I liked.  Then I taped them to the wall in that pattern.  It wasn’t quite right, so I moved the templates around until I found something that worked.

Then I got out my fine measurement tool (my cell phone – what?!) to make sure that the frames were evenly spaced (sort of).

Here’s what I ended up with:

I then stared at the wall for a day or so to make sure I was happy with the pattern.  When nothing was happening FOR A WHOLE DAY OR SO, I decided that it was good enough for who it’s for and started hanging the frames.

• Tip 3: If you’re painting your frames, you might want to figure out some way to label which inserts go with which frames to make it easier to put them all back together again.  (I actually did think of this before I took the frames apart and decided to just stack the inserts in order of the frame numbers, but the stack fell over and my organization went kaput.)
  
• Tip 4: Leave your paper templates up while you hang the frames so you can make sure that you hung the frames where you intended them to go.
  
• Bonus Tip: If you have nail holes on your wall that you need to touch up, do that and re-paint BEFORE you put up your templates.  If you do it WHILE your templates are already hanging there, the paper may end up sticking to your wall in an unsightly manner.  (I’m just sayin’.)

I did have to move a few nails, but it was nothing compared to what the wall would have looked like had I gone with my instincts and just started putting frames up where I thought they should go.

And here’s how it ended up:

                

I’m quite pleased with it and I really think it brightens the room!

• Tip 5: Start your kids on making artwork for this wall as soon as you start the project, so you don’t have to badger them for days after you’re done to give you something to hang.  (Or, you could actually go through all the artwork that is stored away and use it, but where’s the fun in that?)

 

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Play Room and Day Bed Reveal

They’re done!  The day bed and the play room are (mostly) done! 

I actually used the comforter from my bed and the pillows from my girls’ beds, so the bedrooms look a bit of a mess, but hey, maybe I’ll decide to keep it this way and get a new comforter for MY room!

Let me give you a tour.  You’ve seen the day bed, but here it is again.  Doesn’t it look nice?

Mr. Harry sure thinks so…

I also grabbed the curtains from the girls’ room and the little boxes that used to hang in my kitchen.  Those boxes were definitely a Eureka! moment.  I was driving down the road, chewing on what I could put there when I realized that the boxes were sitting in the garage doing nothing, but if I were to hang them in the play room, I would have a great little place to put all the girls’ 3-dimensional art work and doo-dads!

  

And, speaking of art work!  I finished the art wall.  Generally, Thing 1 produces reams of art work each day, but I actually had to harangue her a bit to actually get the wall filled in (and you can see there are actually still two frames empty).

    

Usually, when I hang frames, I just eyeball it and move them around until I like where they end up.  Which leaves a lot of holes in the wall.  This time, I actually did the responsible, mature thing and created templates and taped them to the wall.  This turned out to be a really smart thing to do because my original plan turned out to require drastic re-working. 

I’ve seen a few bloggers do the template thing, but I might just post on it myself because I ran into a few gotchas that might be good to share.

In addition to the art work, I put up baby pictures of each of us.  Aren’t we cute?

You may have noticed that you’ve only really seen one side of the room.  The left wall has a white board and a chalk board.  I still have some things I want to do with that, so that’s not going to be shared yet.

The wall opposite the bed holds this:     Notice that the door doesn’t shut all the way?  That’s because it looks like this on the inside:

Actually, it was even worse on the inside.  I had to remove a bunch of stuff to even be able to open the doors.  I think that’s going to be next week’s project.  Should be fun!

But that’s messy.  Let’s finish with something nicer…

 

Ahhh…ready for my sister’s visit.

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You’ve Made Your Bed – Now Lie in It!

Just thought I’d give an update on our progress with the day bed that my girls and I have been working on.  It’s taken a while to get this far because I’ve tried to wait for when they’re available so that they can paint too.  Today, I just said, “To heck with it!” and finished the painting.

Of course, I’m not actually totally done.  I still think the trim could use one more coat, but I was so tired of the house being torn apart that I ignored that little fact and spent the rest of the day putting the play room back together.
So, here’s what the play room looked like before we started the bed:

This messy state is pretty common for it lately.  I think something exploded in there and no one had the wherewithal to clean it up, so it just stayed that way.

Once we’d built the bed, we pulled everything out of the play room and put it into the living room (the tiiiny living room) so we could bring the bed in and paint it inside.  I thought I had a picture of the living room piled high with crap toys, but I guess I don’t. 

Suffice it to say, it was awful.  And, luckily, that’s the room you see when you walk up to our front door, so everyone who visited us got to see it.  It stayed that way for about two weeks.

As I said, today I could stand it no longer, so I went through the piles in the living room and just started throwing junk into the garbage or the give-away pile.  I did it exactly the way you’re not supposed to: I did not ask my kids’ input.  I’ve tried that before and everything ends up being so special that they can’t bear to give anything up.  Not even that broken Bart Simpson toy from McDonald’s that hasn’t seen the light of day for 6 months.

So, I did it myself while the kids played in the other room.  I came up with a large bag of garbage, a bag of recycled artwork, and a dining table laden with presents for Goodwill.
After Thing 1 came home from school, we headed to Target to get a few more of those awesome collapsible boxes.  And, of course, we had to stop by TCBY.  I mean, it was right there!

Luckily enough, Sleep Country USA’s Outlet shop was right next to TCBY, so we stopped in to get an idea of how much a decent twin mattress would cost.  As luck would have it, they had a floor model marked down quite a bit.  I asked him if he would mark it down even more.  He would.  So we bought it!  One more thing off my list!

When we got home, we dumped the remaining toys into our new bins, moved around the furniture several times, and jumped for joy.  (Literally, you would not believe how excited the girls are for their “new” play room".)
So, after all that, here’s the current state of the play room:

This room is pretty small, so I can’t get much of it in any one shot, plus this is the only corner that is currently presentable, but look how everything has a place!  Isn’t it beautiful?

Here’s a close(er)-up of our handiwork:

I’ve still got many things to do in this room (including labeling all the boxes and hanging frames on the big wall to hold kid art), but having our front room free of toys is a wonderful thing.  I am content.

Girls' Project - The Making of a Daybed

My sister and her baby are coming for a visit next month and it's been weighing on my mind that we don't actually have anywhere for her to sleep.  I've been considering all the options (from our inflatable bed to displacing Thing 1 and Thing 2 for a week) and I haven't liked any of them.

One thing I have been liking, however, is this PB knock-off daybed from Knock-off Wood.  That little beauty has been hopping around in my brain for several weeks now.  I've been trying to figure out the best place to put something like that, but there were really only a few options:

• The office - that idea was nixed immediately. Our office is crammed full of stuff and we didn't want to lose the use of our computers whenever anyone visited (even if that is a rare occurrence)
• The living room - there is technically room there to put in a sleeper sofa, but there are huge windows out to our front porch. There would be no privacy at all.  
• The play room - Dingdingdingding! The room is also cramped, but it has a door and a closet and it's right next to a bathroom.

Here's the room in question.  It's a bit messy now (as it usually is) and we'd have to do some serious purging to make sure this room is still pleasant after the addition of a bed.  I'm thinking the bed would go under the window:

Once that decision was made in my head, I continued to ruminate for another week or two.  Yesterday I decided it was high time to stop thinking about it and start doing it!  I grabbed Thing 2 and told her my idea and showed her the pictures.  She was mildly interested, but when I told her I wanted it to be a project that we did together, she lit up! 

We got to work figuring out our supplies list then headed over to our local hardware store to buy some wood!  We ended up getting three sheets of very nice 4' x 8' birch plywood and, while it probably would have fit into our van uncut, we decided to have the nice people there do some of the large cuts for us (so we wouldn't have too!).  That turned out to be a stroke of good luck because the cuts we did at home took forever!  We were definitely following the measure twice, cut once formula (though it was more like measure four times, cut once).  We wanted to make sure our boxes were perfectly square, so we were very careful.

Once the wood was cut, it was time for the girls to get involved.  They already knew how to glue, but I believe this is the first time they'd ever used a drill to drill holes or screw something together.

By the end of the day, we had one of the boxes put together (the bed is just going to be three boxes, all screwed together) and, I must say, it looks very nice!

It was also very nice to be able to work on a project with the girls.  Sometimes, when I'm working on a big project, they'll complain that I'm always busy, so it was a good thing to be able to include them on this.

Of course, now I have to wait until they get home from school before I can do anymore work on it!