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Together Again
Last week, Erin and her family came for a visit and stayed Tuesday through Friday with us in New York. Then on Friday, we all made the long trip to Erin’s house for the weekend.
Here are our latest adventures:
When Erin and I get together, it’s always a good time. It usually involves garbage picking, speaking only in fake accents, and a couple glasses of wine. This trip pretty much followed suite. Erin and I recruited our husbands one evening to watch the little kidos as we took her 9 year old daughter on her first
trashtreasure hunt.For Erin’s daughter, we hit the jackpot. We found an adorable white wagon, a pink folding papason chair, and a teal lava lamp. She was so excited and we all had such a blast together.
I was extremely excited when we came across a couch that appeared to be in excellent condition. Erin and I, without hesitation, agreed that we were not going to be able to get this couch in the small car we were driving. So, we headed back home and
beggedasked our husbands to pick up the couch in one of our larger vehicles. Like the wonderful amazing men that they are, they drove to the sofa’s roadside location and loaded it up.
Once they got it back, we all realized that sometimes things are too good to be true. What looked like a great piece of furniture that would clean up just nice turned out to be a disgusting sofa bed infested with mice. None of us were lucky enough to physically see these furry little rodents, but the droppings that were left behind was enough proof. Yuck!
In the morning, after the guys had already left for work, I told Erin that this thing needed to go. After several attempts to lift this bad boy to the curb and us not even getting it an inch off the ground, we slid this beast down the driveway, across the sidewalk, and left it roadside just in time for Mr./Ms. Garbage Man. Buh-bye creepy repulsive couch!
On Thursday, Erin and I decided to spurge and get a babysitter to watch all four of our kids. Luckily, I have a pretty fantastic babysitter that was up for the challenge. During our child-free break, we enjoyed a quiet lunch together, went antique shopping, and checked out some amazing furniture pieces at a local store from our blog friend, Brepurposed. She’s so talented.
On Saturday, when were all at Erin’s, we met up with our parents at the zoo. Overall, this trip was a success. The kid’s each went on a pony ride and loved it.
Everyone enjoyed seeing the animals and hanging out with each other.
Finally before heading back to New York, Erin and I were able to squeeze in a much needed photo shoot. If you remember, way back in November Erin and I tried to get a few pictures together for the blog. Man, did they turn out bad! If you want to see for yourself, check out this post, Two Sisters, Bad Photos. This time they weren’t too shabby. Come see our about page to view a new pic of us.
We really enjoyed our time spent together and agree that it doesn’t happen nearly enough. How did you spend your weekend?
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Ruler Succulent Planter & Back to School Blog Hop
It’s almost time for school to start and that means everyone with kids is scrambling to buy school supplies, get some new clothes, and figure out who this year’s teacher will be. To make things easier, we’ve come up with a fun idea for an easy teacher gift to kick the year off on a good note.
But, since this is a Back to School Blog Hop, we’ve joined up with a great group of bloggers to share even more projects and printables to help the start of the school year be more organized and go off without a hitch. Check out all of the awesome ideas at the bottom of this post.
So, for this project, we hacked into our stash of extra wooden rulers (left over from our Ruler Drum Shade.) What? You don’t have a superfluous supply of rulers? No worries. You can get them for relatively cheap at pretty much any store that offer school supplies. Here’s what we used to make our Ruler Succulent Planter:
– Three 12 inch wooden rulers
– Needle nose pliers
– Hack saw
– Wood glue
– Large C clamp
– Scissors
– Sand paper
– One gallon freezer bag
– Small succulent
– Potting soilUse the pliers to remove the plastic or metal straight edge piece from one side of the rulers. (You can try to pull them out with your fingers/nails, but I was having no such luck.) Cut each edging piece into approximately 3 inch sections with scissors.
With the hack saw, cut each ruler into quarters (also in 3 inch sections.)
Next, we attached two pieces of ruler together. To do this, evenly divide the ruler sections into two groups. We will call them group A and group B. Re-insert the cut edging pieces into group A. Add a line of wood glue along the side where the plastic or metal edging piece was on group B and then push A and B together. The straight edge piece will then be in the middle of the two ruler pieces, which will help make everything a bit sturdier.
Add some more of the wood glue to the side of one of the sections and then use the C clamp to hold a second piece on to create a 90 degree angle. (If this is getting too confusing, just refer to the photos.) Do this for all 4 sides and the bottom piece of the planter to make an open top box.
While we were waiting for the glue to dry, my daughter and I ran to the store to grab a little succulent. Here she is picking out her favorite.
Ok, back to the project.
Once the planter is all put together and dry, cut a large square out of the corner of the freezer bag with scissors and insert this new “bag” into the planter. Trim any excess off, so that the top of the bag is just below the edge of the box.
Then all that is left is to add some potting soil and plant your cute little succulent.
I know this process sounds pretty wordy, but the planter was really easy to make.
And it will make the cutest little back to school teacher gift, especially since we threw in this witty little flag.
We love that this succulent will be easy for my daughter’s teacher take care of and add a little life to her desk or window in the process. What are your favorite gifts for teachers, besides the obvious, but delicious, apple?
Want more? Check out these 15 great back to school ideas! 
1. Elizabeth Joan Designs 2. Making It In The Mountains 3. Stripes and Polka Dots
4. For My Love Of 5. Home. Made. Interest. 6. Restless Arrow
7. Little Red Brick House 8. Little House Of Four 9. Cuddles and Chaos
10. Our House Now A Home 11. Kent Heartstrings 12. The DIY Mommy
13. Curly Crafty Mom 14. Houseologie 15. Canary Street Crafts_____________________________________________________________________ You may also like:
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Dining Chairs Update
When you have chairs that look like this…
You know they are in desperate need of a make over. I was so embarrassed to even have anyone at my house. I was tempted a of couple times to move these chairs out of my kitchen and bring in others while entertaining, but thought my friends have kids too, so they would understand. Right?
Recovering the seats was my initial plan, but I thought painting them may be a better solution to my messy kid problem. (Sure, I blame it on the kids, but I have been known to spill a drink or two myself.) This way I could just wipe them down when dribbles happen. Here’s the process I went though to make this change.
First, I removed the seats, cushions, and covers from each chair.
Next, I applied primer and a couple coats of white semi gloss paint, and waited for all of that to dry. For this process, I just used a good ol’ brush. No fancy spray paint here.
Finally, I reassembled the chairs. They may not be quite as comfy as before, but they will look prettier longer.
What do you think? This was just a quick and easy update to my disgusting seat cushion problem. I am really excited about this new change.
Do you have messy kid problems too? If so, how do you solve them?
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Organize Your Organized Toys
Alright, I may sound kind of crazy here, but this is a post about organizing toys that are already organized. I know, it sounds nuts, but hear me out.
We have several IKEA Drona fabric bins for toy storage in the playroom. These bins are awesomely huge and hold tons of stuff. When it comes to small toys, it does gets hard to sift though everything just to find what you are looking for. To make our lives easier, I came up with a solution to organize the bins and keep sets of toys together.
Here’s what I did:
First, I sorted the toys and piled like toys and sets together.
Next, I put each grouping into a smaller plastic container.
I stocked up on mine at the dollar store. I bought clear ones, so my boys could see what was inside of them. My two year old loves to pick off stickers, so labeling them was out of the question for us. the bonus is these are pretty easy for the kids to open on their own.
The odd-ball toys that just don’t fit in a specific grouping were placed together in a shoe box sized container.
Then, I organized the tubs inside the fabric bins.
Tada! Now when my little men are wanting to play with Jake and The Neverland Pirates, we don’t have to spend time searching around for the entire crew.
The boys are loving these smaller containers to carry around and are doing a pretty good job of cleaning up after themselves too. I call it a win for everyone!
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