Chore Sticks

I found these cute chore sticks.  You print out the files from her blog, cut and glue them to jumbo craft sticks.  I made these with some friends, so that helps to have people to talk to while cutting, and cutting, and cutting.  I found the clear jar at Wal-Mart in the kitchen area.  Then I just made a label out of vinyl.

I didn't end up wanting/needing all the chores, so I would suggest that you print out the files (I didn't want to cut and glue the blank ones for the back of the sticks, so I didn't print those pages) and mark off to the side which ones you want and count them up.  That will let you know how many craft sticks to buy.  For example, the files have chores for 3 different bathrooms (master, guest, and kids).  I only have 2 bathrooms in my house, so we didn't need the 3rd set. 

My kids are 2 and 4, so they can't do the majority of these.  But to get them excited, I have them each pick a stick or two and either I do it alone, or they help me - depending on the task.  Or I say "it says to clean up your room" when it really said to "wash windows" so that I can have them clean or keep busy...they can't read yet, so I can get away with a little fib for now.   :)  For some reason, they are happy about cleaning their rooms if the chore stick told them to.

Growth Chart Board

I've always wanted to make a growth chart, but hadn't found a style I was sure I wanted to make until a friend of mine asked me to cut the vinyl for her to make a growth chart.  So that was easy to just cut a second set for myself.  We were going off the idea seen online in several places where we use a 1"x8" that is 6' long and stain it or paint it and apply vinyl numbers and lines to mark the inches.

All the boards I've seen online just show the board before the kid's heights are marked on the board, so I kinda had to figure that part out by trial and error to get what I liked best.  I decided to make a line at the height and then add my kid's name and age. 

I've decided to mark my kids on their birthday (give or take a few days) so that I can have each mark a year apart.  I've always written down my children's height, weight, and other stats from all their annual doctor appointments, so I was able to go back to their birth weight that way even though I hadn't been measuring them and marking it down myself each year. 

I also hung a picture of each of my kids next to the chart...that I'll change out as they grow.

The challenge I had was how to hang it up...if I hung it up with the standard picture hangers you can attach, my kids would just bump it or tug on it and it would fall down.  Not safe...so I actually decided to hang it up on the wall that is next to the refrigerator.  Our fridge sidles up to a wall, so on the opposite side of that wall, we just screwed the board to the wall from the back.  We pulled the fridge out, attached 3 screws through the wall (top, middle, and bottom) to the back of the board.  Since that side of the wall is hidden by the fridge, I wasn't worried too much that the screw would be visible and just slid the fridge back in.

The only thing I didn't like about how this turned out was that every knot is more noticeable when you stain the wood. 

Bean Bag Toss Board

We made this last year, but for some reason, I didn't get around to painting it until a couple weeks ago.  I found this tutorial for making the board - with fold in legs so that it stores nice and compact in the garage.  Technically, all I did was find the tutorial and paint it.  My husband did all the cutting, sanding and assembling; but that's not important :)

With the nice weather we've been having, we just keep this on the back patio and the kids are having a great time playing with this.

One thing different we did - I felt like the board was too big for just one hole, so we cut 3 different sized holes.  And then I painted it blue with orange stripes for some fun detail.

Superhero Peg People

I made some superhero peg people for my son's birthday and also a set for one of his friends.

Spiderman, Green Lantern, Captain America, Robin, Batman, Superman

Here's a shot of how I painted the back/capes if anyone wants to try and make them too.

 And since Batman's head can't have the pointy ears, I just painted an upside down V so it would sorta look like the pointy ears.

St. Patrick's Mantle Projects

When I dug out my St. Patrick's Day box of decorations, I realized it was quite empty.  I didn't have much.  But thanks to pinterest and my to-do-list, I found a couple quick items to make to fill up the mantle.

Garland - i found this on pinterest, but i never found instructions or a template - just the couple of photos to go on, so I made a couple different sizes to see how they would turn out until I found the size I wanted.  Also, Jo-Ann's selection of green felt stinks.  They don't have a good lime green that's not neon.  So I splurged a little and got a nice green wool felt even though it wasn't the color I was hoping for (only got about 6 inches and still have 1/2 of it left, so you don't need a lot at all).  Then I just strung them on embroidery floss to hang them up.
 

Leprechaun hat - this was on my to-do-list from last year.  But I made it a bit different.  I didn't want it as thick as the 4x4 would make it, so I cut the brim from a 2x2 and the top from a 2x4.  Also, I added the ribbon/buckle to the top of the hat instead of the brim.

I just have a couple standard candles and change out the ribbons for the different holidays - that way I don't need a bunch of candles - just 3 or 4 to change out colors with.

Spring Stacker

Here's my Spring/Easter Stacker.

Wood is a 2x2 cut to 4", 5.5" and 7"

Fonts:
sunshine - smiley monster
raindrops - dreamed about you
springtime - pharmacy

Valentine's Stacker

Here's my Valentine's Day Stacker...

pic from my phone, so the colors are a bit brighter than actual colors.  But I opted to go with all pink shades of paper instead of red - I love the middle paper - it's actually a raspberry sherbet color...not neon like the pic is showing.  I also made a glitter heart for the top stacker ... cause glitter is just fun!

Here's the fonts I used:
Love - Smiley Monster
Hugs & Kisses - Thinking of You
Be My Valentine - O{Photo} Shoot!

Box of Princesses

I have loved painting peg people - here were some previous ones I did for my son.  But when I saw this idea by Lil Blue Boo, I decided to do another round of peg people.  I ended up making 3 sets...that's 24 dolls to paint.  It took about 2 weeks of nap times to do this - but it was fun. 

**Just an apology about my photos for a while.  Our house got broken into last week and one of the things they stole was our way awesome camera - a Nikon D80 :(  so my pictures for the forseeable future will be from my phone - which isn't anywhere near as good quality as my camera was.  Luckily, I had emptied the memory stick a couple days before we were robbed (all except for the photos of these peg dolls - so I had to get my friend to send me pics of the finished set with the lunch box since I had already given it away.)

My 6 year old niece was the initial recipient of these, and then I decided that I wanted to make a set for my 2 year old and a friend's 2 year old as well.  But the 2" dolls are a bit of a choking hazard to that age.  So I saw the set from Homemade by Jill and she found some 3.5" dolls online.  Both the 2 year olds love Tinkerbell, so I added her in - even though she's not technically a "princess."  I'm so grumpy about my stolen pictures.  My phone pics don't do these justice - Snow White turned out awesome, and I painted Rapunzel's hair with a metallic gold/yellow since her hair glows when she sings :)

Here you can see the back of the dolls - to get the hair details I did.  No one posted how they did the hair in the back, so it took a while to figure out how to get some of them to look just right.

Also, here's a pic of one of each size in my hand so you can see the size difference.

**I found the lunch box at Jo-Anns and just added the white and yellow vinyl to the front.  I also lined the inside with felt so that the dolls didn't get as bumped around and so that it's a bit quieter

Dress Up Rack

I found this idea a year and a half ago and fell in love with it immediately.  My husband built it for us in June, and it's been sitting in my room waiting until the beginning of this month so we could give it to my daughter for her birthday.  It's great to have it out where she can use it, and even better to have it out of my room and get some space back. 

I made her some dress-up outfits for Christmas, so it's not as bare and sad looking as in this photo.

And as you can see, she loves to stand in the box to hang the clothes up.

Craft Day

When I was younger, my mom would get together with her mom and sisters and have a craft day in December that lasted ALL DAY.  Once I was in college, they decided to let their daughters join in.  So it's been a few years now and our group is growing - my grandma, aunts, mom, sister, and girl cousins and the girls that are married/dating my brothers and boy cousins. 

We get to have fun crafts and eat yummy snacks/goodies all day.  Here are a couple of the crafts that we did - different people in the group teach us how to make a craft, or a food or one year my aunt taught us how to make balloon animals.  It's so much fun to get together and to see how everyone's craft can turn out so differently from eachother.

Winter soap - this was the project I brought for everyone to make - a different version of the Halloween Soap.

2x2 Simple Nativity - my mom taught this one to the group - I'm not sure where she found the idea, but she saw it online and found all the pieces at different stores and put together her own kits for us to make at our craft day.  Everyone painted their different colors or didn't paint them at all and left them natural.  It was fun to see the different styles everyone made out of the same kit.

Autumn blocks

I made a "summer" version last year like this and decided to try an "autumn" one.  Me and a friend had a craft/play date (hi Megan!!) where we crafted and the kids played.  We only got the blocks painted and paper cut out before we had to stop for nap times, so we both finished them up at home.  Here are mine:

I cut the wood blocks to random sizes (the tallest is 5.25") and the whole thing ends up being about 22" long.  And then I just sized the letters in Sure Cuts-A-Lot to fit the blocks. 

Font used:  Pharmacy (found on dafont.com)

Autumn or Thanksgiving Stacker

I made another stacker.  This time, it is an autumn/Thanksgiving themed one.  I love how it turned out.

I cut the blocks at 4", 5.5", and 7"

Fonts:
Harvest:  Impact (can't remember where I found it)
Falling Leaves:  Waterfalls
Pumpkin Pie:  Smiley Monster

2x4 Candy Corn

I saw something like this last year, but I couldn't remember where.  Then I saw this post at Someday Crafts for 2x4 candy corn and it was definitely something I wanted to make right away.  Problem was, I'm still a bit scared to use the miter saw since I almost snapped off my finger earlier this year, so I had to wait until my husband got home to cut them out. 

I ended up making a bunch - some for the ladies I visit teach, my mom, sister, and mother-in-law.  And I had a craft/play date with a friend where we made some projects while the kids played.  I also ended up keeping a couple for myself.

It was easy to paint several during the kiddos nap times as well.  I always think it looks weird to put yellow on the bottom for candy corn- it seems like it should be orange, but I looked up pics of the candy online to double check.  But I think they look cute either way.

Halloween Stacker

I've always liked the stackers tied with ribbon, but I never made one before.  Here's my first attempt at one - and just in time for Halloween

I cut 2x2's into 4", 5", and 6" lengths, painted them and mod podged paper down.

I always like it when people list the fonts they used so I can try and recreate things... so here they are:

Spiders - FrankenDork
Candy Corn - Mail Ray Stuff
Pumpkins - Harrington

My favorite free font site is http://www.dafont.com/.  I like that you can type what your sample text into the text field so that as your searching for fonts, it will display your words in the selected text as they would look on your project.

Peg People

I won a giveaway on Simple Simon & Co. a few months ago where I got 3 peg princesses...My daughter loves to carry them around, but I hadn't seen the wood pieces around anywhere so they didn't make my to-do-list.  Then, I stumbled upon this post with Star Wars and Harry Potter peg people and was determined to find them to make some of my own. 

JoAnns has the girl shaped peg people that have a dress shaped body, but Michael's had the boy shaped ones that are straight from the neck down.

Here are mine:

They took 3 days of naps to paint . . . and I found them quite addicting.  The pirate seems out of place since the rest are "characters."  I think my favorite is Robin.  You can't tell from the picture, but the back and sides are yellow for his cape.   I started with Harry since I was copying the image from the post above, but then I ventured out and made some of my own.

Patriotic Plaque

I saw this idea yesterday at Eighteen25 and loved it instantly!  I liked that it was numbers - most of my decor is shapes or words.

But, I decided to "use what you have and make it work"...so I used a scrap piece of wood instead of a canvas since I have plenty of wood piled up in the garage and my husband thinks I'm crazy for saving everything that's left over from his building projects - he thinks I'll never go through it all - I'll show him.  Starting with this project!

I love me some wood number/letters, but I don't love the prices - the small numbers are about $2 each...so $8 if I bought all 4...and I don't have them on hand.  But I do have glitter and craft foam.  So I cut numbers out of craft foam and applied glitter and glue! 

2x2 Wood Firecrackers

I found these while blog hopping and went to my wood stash and immediately marked them to cut...my husband is my designated wood cutter nowadays since I almost cut my finger off making wood clovers in March.  So I had to wait till he got home from work to finish these.

I cut my 2x2's at 4.5", 6", and 7.5" for those who want dimensions.

I used a mixture of vinyl and painting to get the details.  I used the outside of the vinly for the USA letters as a stencil and painted in the letters with blue paint on the cream firecracker since the vinyl wouldn't show up on that light of paint. 

I attached my rope differently since I didn't want the tail exposed at the top, and I wanted it to stick straight up.  So....I hammered a thin nail through the top of each block and pulled the nail out.  Then I found a long pin and threaded it through the rope piece and stuck it in the hole.  So the pin holds it upright and no exposed tail.

I made 2 sets - one for the mantle and one for the shelf by the entryway.

"Hoppy Spring" blocks

Here are some blocks I made (with the help of my husband - I snapped my fingernail back when I was cutting the shamrocks when one of the blocks flipped up...so now I'm a bit hesitant to use the miter saw again.  I can still feel the nail bending backwards when I think about using the saw)...some day I'll use it again on my own!

Anyway, the blocks are cut to 2.25" wide and all different heights with "pharmacy" font sized to fit the block.