Supplies: Hand saw, wooden spools, sandpaper

Step 1: Slowly saw a slit in the spool. Getting it started is the hardest part, go slow. Once you get past the edges it cuts very easily. There is probably a way to do this on a power saw, but I was too worried about cutting off my finger….and a hand saw fits in the house where it is air conditioned.

Step 2: Saw all the way to the middle and make the opening large enough to fit the mounted photos. Sand the wood down.

Vintage Wooden Spool Photo holders….one more way to avoid shopping with your kids when you need to display a photo! Of course you have to have wooden spools on hand!

Chris came home and didn’t notice the spools, but when I put a sweet potato on display he noticed that. I grow potatoes inside better than houseplants. I got the paperback book display from my grandpa’s neighbor. She was using it to hold books for a garage sale and told me she wouldn’t sell it. I mentioned my grandpa was her next door neighbor. The next time I was at my grandpa’s he said, “My neighbor left a piece of junk by the garage for you. Take it or I am throwing it away.” Score. My aunt made me a lap quilt…I love it.

And just because it is annoying to me to see glimpses of things and not the whole area….our new shelves (inspired by Anne-Claire Rohe’s). I am not done filing them…someday.

Well…as you Google Reader followers know….my blog is working and the hack has been cleaned…and WordPress Help Center did it earlier than estimated and without extra hours of charges. I can’t say enough about the incredible service that ProPhoto Blogs & WordPress Help Center offers. EVERYTIME I have ever had a need or a question they have promptly and kindly helped. So, I wanted to take the time to say “Thank You” to ProPhoto Blogs and WordPress Help Center. (if you smartly decide to purchase a ProPhoto blog template use this code for $10.00 off ASHCAM473)

We were so excited to see Google Reader working! (Mac PhotoBooth pics)

In other news, today my monthly Photo Design Project will be posted over at Design Aglow. For those that were a bit confused last month about what Design Aglow is….in the most basic sense it is a resource for photographers. When you order custom cards, announcements, and other fun boutique items from professional photographers those items are often purchased from Design Aglow or similar companies. Professional photographers then customize each product to fit their studio needs. You don’t have to be a professional photographer to purchase from Design Aglow, but for most items you do need to own and have a working knowledge of Photoshop.

If that doesn’t apply to you…you can still make most of my projects using other things. So come check out my Design Aglow diy post later today:

Thankfully, she had a good idea of what she wanted and I know just enough about wonky sewing that I could help her create a few things. It was fun…I’m thinking I need to make myself a bag now.

Here’s the very basic bag before & some fabric she brought over:

She picked out the fabric for the ruffles, I just sewed them. She also designed how the ruffles and flowers would go on the bag. Like I said, she has great style.

Flowers inspired by Julie’s.

I don’t remember my last year of elementary school backpack, but I am pretty confident it wasn’t this fun!

Since my sewing machine was already lugged down the stairs to the kitchen table I thought I’d sew a few new pillows for the living room. My Anthro dishtowel is now a pillowcase cover.

Don’t worry…no cutting involved!

I know it doesn’t really look like a playroom. My kids do basically three things: play outside, make messes at the kitchen table and play Legos. I could probably give away every other toy we own. I have tried play kitchens and stuff like that, but their only interest right now is in Legos, sword fighting and tent building when they are inside. I’m sure it will change sometime….so will this room.

I told the boys that this clock can tell them what kind of mood mommy is in. It is a $2.00 junk store find. I wanted to keep it as a clock, but the clock mechanism didn’t work and the new ones I bought wouldn’t fit. So I made something else.

My Dottie Angel inspired banner. It is made of scrap fabric, hankies and doilies. It adds a girly touch to the room.

If you are wondering where the toys are…they are in stacked bins in the closet. If you are thinking “for four kids that isn’t very many toys.”

There are a few more in other places in the house, but they don’t need much…other than 5,000.000 Lego pieces.

The burlap curtains behind the chair hide a tv and all the wii stuff….I like it hidden and tucked away. The closet has the toys.

Back when the room was a nursery my mom made these burlap curtains for me. Everytime she came over she’d check to see if I had hung them…I hadn’t. One day she called and was about 10 minutes away. I decided to figure out a way to get them hung before she got there. So I nailed clothespins to the wood frame…not sure that my mom liked it, but in my non-professional opinion I think it works great for a kid focused room.

Once upon a time the playroom was Littlest Brother’s room.

In the post earlier this week about redoing rooms I noticed many of you mentioned how you wish you could makeover rooms, but money keeps you back. It depends on your taste in regards to how much $ it takes. If designer labels and name brands are important, than ‘yes’ it would be very difficult to change up rooms on a regular basis. The bigger the changes the more $ it typically takes and sometimes it is hard to even come up with $5.00 to invest in a room – been there, understand that. However, for a large number of us giving a room a facelift can be done on a very small budget. The less money you spend usually means the more time you are going to spend. I thought I’d share a breakdown of a few of the things that went into changing this room from a nursery to a playroom. I got the hanging chair for a steal thanks to a friend, you can find them online new, Craigslist, garage sales and flea markets – just gotta be on the lookout.

Well there’s the glimpse at our playroom. It is small and simple. It has plenty of floor room for Legos and wrestling…which was the main need in this house!

On a side note PoppyTalk (one of my favorite blog for home inspiration…and many other types of inspiration) is doing a feature on our Book Party today.

Warning: if you visit PoppyTalk plan to stay a while!

I’m still working on details in the playroom. One thing I wanted to include was a spot to display pictures and artwork by the kids. Several years ago I bought a gold mirror from Garden Ridge and painted it black for our living room. It hasn’t been used in a long time so I decided to take the mirror out and give the frame a new life.

After removing the mirror, I painted the frame a bright yellow. Then I stapled chicken wire to the back side of the frame. When I bought the chicken wire from Atwoods the man working that department asked if I needed any pointers for my chicken coop. I told him I was making a frame for artwork. He shook his head and walked away.

To hold pictures to the chicken wire I hot glued small clothes pins to the back of some of my Charlie Harper memory cards. I let the boys pick out their favorite cards to use.

Super easy, super affordable and I think it is pretty practical and cute!

1. The invitations: I used one of my favorite Design Aglow templates for the base design (adding the Joyful Life Library logo). The invitations included a main invite page, a letter to parents explaining the ‘why’ behind the party, and a book plate for each child to include on the inside cover of their donated book. I wrapped the three pieces together with a strip of scrapbooking paper and sealed it with some masking tape. You can find colored masking tape on etsy…look for ‘japanese masking tape’.

2. The movie screen: We made this up as we went. Originally we borrowed a basic projector screen, but it just wasn’t big enough. We needed it to be cheap, so this is v1.o our screen. I bought two paint drop cloths for $5.00each from Walmart. We layered those drop clothes and stapled them to two 2x4x12 boards. We then stood the boards on one end and used tent spikes and rope to secure it. Chris tied some slip knots and the stakes were hammered into the ground – the boards were not in the ground at all. Being married to an Eagle Scout comes in handy when you need a good knot! It wasn’t windy, so that saved us from a lot of headache. We did grab some chopsticks and poke holes all over it to help a bit.

Our next version is going to be with cloth and nicely cut holes to help with wind.

3. The food: Popcorn in cute boxes from Hobby Lobby.

4. The bugs: My dad has a fogging machine, so we fogged the whole area several times before the event started. I think a lot of the guests still used bug spray and there were still some bugs.

5. Book reading: We read books for a little over 30 minutes. Chris read some and a few of our guests read some as well. 30 minutes was too long, I think the kids got a little restless…at least a lot of the boys did!

6. The movie: A classic 3o minute Cat & The Hat

7. The projector: We borrowed it.

I think that sums up most of it. It was pretty simple and required very little planning. Hopefully everyone had a good time.

And just because….my niece. Sweetness.

My boys love to read. As a mom I know the joy that reading brings to my kids. Hospital stays are rough and the simple act of reading a new book can bring so much joy to a child and a parent. After reading Heather’s blog I thought my boys could get really excited about having a party to collect books for children in the hospital. So that is what we did.

We sent invitations to some of the older boys close friends. The party included a movie outside so the time was pretty late….too late to invite our younger kids’ friends. It was a little late for everyone, but we encouraged the kids to come in their pjs and bring a blanket.

The kids got bookplates with their invitations. The bookplates were signed and placed in the donated books.

Our evening included reading books and watching The Cat & The Hat.

Disclaimer: There are laws concerning showing movies…there is a difference in public and private viewing. You will want to read on that before you show a movie to a large group. You can do a basic search on google for more info.

Cute girls ready for a movie. I kept asking them if they wanted to take off their fleece robes since it was 90+ outside. Fashion before comfort.

Checking out all the books that were donated. I really love that this little guy’s book is upside down.

We had a bag with extra bookplates in case guests brought more than one book to donate.

A few bedtime stories before it got dark enough for the movie.

The sword made more than one appearance. During the movie I saw it on the screen…he figured out how to block the projector with it.

It was a good, hot, Oklahoma night. There are things I’ll change next time, but for a first run I think & hope everyone had a great time. I’ll post some details on the “how” of everything tomorrow. Sometimes I think we assume that doing charitable acts requires great personal sacrifice or is just hard. Really I think it can be as simple as knowing what you enjoy and using those things to benefit others. Having a bunch of friends over to eat popcorn and watch a movie in our field was far from a personal sacrifice or some kind of big great deed – it was a fun night with friends.

When the idea first popped in my non-stop brain I ran it by a few friends. I even picked the date based on when they could come, just to be sure someone would be there other than just my family. I have such great supportive friends. I am thankful for girlfriends that encourage me in my random ideas and show up with their families to support mine. I want my kids to grow up with it being second nature to combine what they love with ways to help others, but it starts with me being intentional to demonstrate it…and having supportive friends makes that possible.

So THANK YOU to those of you that came, endured a little too many bedtime stories, and donated books. We are so grateful.

FireCrackers visor is from Twirling Betty. It is one size fits all and it does…if you look back at the CafeMom tour I did, you’ll notice I am wearing it in the picture outside of Big Brother giving me a hug. I wear it a lot…she is a year old and we are already sharing! Her shoes are from Gracious May (I wish we could share those).

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Thanks for all the congratulations comments yesterday. My niece has won us all over. It has been such a fun journey to watch my sister become a mom….I have been an aunt on Chris’ side since the day I married him. We had the cutest ringbearer and flower girls in our wedding…my nieces and nephew…who have all grown into such cool kids/teenagers. Several of them came over last week to do a little crafting. The girls had ideas for necklaces they wanted to make and needed someone who had Mod Podge and scrapbooking paper. I, of course, could fulfill that need.

I don’t really think of preteen/teen crafts, so I thought I’d share what they made for those of you that have older kids. The basic idea is to attach a washer to a stretchy necklace. Once you have that base you can create all kinds of things to attach to the washer using magnets.

Here are most of their supplies, I am not sure where they got them all.

Step 1: To make the necklace base you just tie a washer to the stretchy bands.

Step 2: Fill the pop bottle caps with a little Mod Podge and start layering stuff in it. The girls used paper, stickers and drew with markers. You could use all kinds of things. Once they ran out of pop bottle caps I cut Starbucks sleeves into circles and they glued stuff to those too.

Step 3: Attach magnets to the back of the pop bottle lids or Starbucks sleeves. The magnets below have a sticker back. You can also use smaller, stronger magnets for a better hold. Just glue them on.

I made some chocolate chip cookies for our little crafting party. All the boys had been upstairs playing Legos, but magically appeared as soon as the cookies were set on the table. They had radar noses detecting the smell. As soon as they finished eating, they disappeared upstairs again.

The necklaces on the left are the bottle caps, the ones on the right are made from the coffee sleeves.

And just so you know…there will be lots of baby appearances on the blog in the coming days.

Here we are on day 2. We only saw each other briefly, but I think she likes me. If she doesn’t like cooking with her mom, she can come craft with me.

It used to make me sad how seeing a newborn makes your own baby seem so grown up suddenly. I’m good with my girl not being a newborn. It is going to be fun to have another baby in the family and it is going to be fun watching my sweet little girl grow.

Step 1: Gather a bunch of random supplies. Most of these are from Lemon Poppy Shoppe…since I am doing a giveaway there this week I thought it would be nice to have some ideas of how you can use scrapbooking supplies if you aren’t a scrapbooker. (I’ve heard people refer to themselves as a “Scrapper”…is that the new term? I’m Scrappy, but not a Scrapper.) I would also like to know when scrapbooking supplies began including such amazing ribbons? I have been in the dark for far too long.

Step 2: Pick a ribbon to be your base. Cut it long enough to fold over a bit on the top and bottom, fold and hot glue the ends over

Step 3: Hot glue ribbon to plain hair clips

Step 4: Pick out random pieces to make the look you want. I used 2 types of ribbon, crochet flower, and a bit of a feather.

Step 5: Hot glue all the pieces together and then glue it all to the hair clip

Step 6: Make a cute little card to hold the clips if you are giving them as a gift. I used scrap cardboard, a paint chip, part of a paper doily, masking tape, and stamps.

Step 7: Admire your girlie clips.

This is kind of what it would like in FireCracker’s hair…she doesn’t have enough for it to stay in place where it should go…you get the idea.

The boys were in goof ball moods.

The last time (May 09) they modeled her hair stuff, she hadn’t been born yet….Big Brother looking like Chunk from The Goonies…but in a bow.

The Lemon Poppy Shoppe and Expressions Vinyl giveaways end tonight. Scroll down to Monday and Tuesdays posts to enter. Just to give you an idea of what Lemon Poppy Shoppe has, here are some of the goodies I got there:

Step 1: Big Brother picked out a bright blue shirt and I wanted to tone it down just a bit. Before I began the design portion of this project I soaked the shirt in bleach water for a bit. It didn’t do a whole lot, but it did take the edge off the brightness.

Step 2: Pick your design. If you have a CriCut machine it can perfectly cut vinyl…so yeah for those of you that own them and boo for those of us that don’t. In my head I wanted something similar to Chris’ old boy scout t-shirts…just a simple graphic. At first I was going to use the road sign graphic for camping, but then I went okie.

Step 3: Decide how big you want the graphic to be

Step 4: Cut out a pattern for your graphic

Step 5: Flip your graphic over and trace it on the vinyl portion of the heat transfer paper. The paper has two sides, one is very glossy and one is more matte. The matte side will be the one to adhere to the shirt, the glossy side will be the one that touches your iron. You will now use an exacto knife to cut out the design. You want to only cut the vinyl layer, not the glossy base.

Step 6: Using your exacto knife remove all the excess vinyl so you are left just with your design

Step 7: Flip the graphic over so the vinyl is touching the fabric and the glossy side is up

Step 8: On a medium, no steam setting use firm pressure to iron on the design.

Step 9: Peel off the glossy top. The discoloration on this shirt is water from leaning over to pet a stingray. You know…normal stuff for an okie.

Step 10: Attempt to get your 4 year old to pose in his new shirt (which he LOVES). I purposely let him wear it to the Aquarium with his cousins…thinking I would for sure get a great candid shot of him in it. I tried.

In unrelated news, his sister loved the aquarium. She looked tiny in the shark tunnel and she tried her best to catch a shrimp.

She also liked the turtles. I will say the Oklahoma portion of the Aquarium was a great reminder why I don’t swim in lakes.

Alligator Gar. No thank you.

My brother-in-law noodles. No thank you. I totally stole this picture off my sister’s blog…here is the post of what she made with that catfish. She cooks. I craft.

(Noodling means he stuck his hand in a hole in a dirty lake and pulled that fish out bare handed by sticking his arm down its throat. Seriously. SERIOUSLY)

Some of the cousins. I have 4 nephews and 4 neices on Chris side. They are a fun bunch.

FireCracker kept up with the big girls just fine.

And on our way towards the car I finally got him to semi cooperate. My design isn’t for everyone, you could do all kinds of crazy things with yours…in 15 minutes or less.

The heat transfer vinyl is from Expressions Vinyl…the $25.00 giveaway ends tomorrow. Scroll down to Tuesday’s post to enter.

For those of you with a CriCut, here is a great video tutorial.