Making a Sewing/craft Table

I have been putting my sewing machine on the computer desk to sew. No it is not fun but it beats having to clean it up every time nap time ends. So when I came across this Tutorial at Running with Scissors I knew it was about time I built a sewing/craft table. We already had an extra Bi-fold door in the garage so I thought I was in fat city. I bought the wood and built the base. I was SO excited when the base turned out as this is the first piece of furniture I have ever built!So you can only imagine my Horror, disgust, anger, frustration, embarrassment when I put the door on top of my table base only to realize that my door was smaller than the one in the tutorial and did not even cover my newly built base. I guess I thought of everything but to measure my door.I went back and forth on what to do. I had an old coffee table I could use the top of but I would still have to redo the base since the base was a door height in length (nearly 80 inches). The Hubs said "just go buy a piece of wood to go on top" but really that went against my "plan" to do it cheap and with what we had on hand.
Then I saw two heavy press board shelves that a neighbor had given us for garage shelving but that we ended up not needing. We had no use for them so TA DA my new table top. Sounds easy enough but the shelves had divots on each side so I have to saw each side and then try to match the two piece as close as possible so I wouldn't have a huge seam in the middle of my table. It was another gut wrenching experience. I always thought sawing a straight line would be so easy but I guess I need more work at it because it took me a long time to get the two pieces close to flush (that is right not even perfect.)
I did still make one big mistake. I was getting frustrated when attaching the top to the base. The screws were just not working and I could not figure out why (really lack of skill and knowledge was mainly to blame). So at one point I took a big nail and hammered it into the table. The only problem is I didn't countersink before doing this and after realizing my mistake I was not able to get it out so my table does have one little round nail head on the top hahaha. I also didn't know how to countersink nails so I left the nail heads exposed primed and painted it but then was talking to a friend who told me how to countersink so I did that and then had to repaint it. But then I put the wrong protective coating on it which turned it yellow so I had to sand it all down and paint it again.
Lets say it is far from perfect but for my first time building a piece of furniture I think I did pretty well with what I had!I only show you half the table because the other half has all my sewing and craft stuff piled all over crazily until I get a chance to finish projects and organize. Once I get things more organized and hopefully decorated I will take a picture!

Simple fun Halloween craft for Kids!

Even though I love the summer Fall is just a time of year that has a fun festive feel to it.
I hosted my Little Man's play school this last week and we made fun footprint ghosts.
It was super easy, was tons of fun, and is great for a memory book or the grandparents.
ALl you need is some non toxic white paint (I used Crayola finger paint), a brush (I used a sponge brush), a sharpie pen. I painted my "Boo"s but if you had a white milky pen it would make it way easier!
The kids love it too because when you paint their toes it tickles so they giggle and giggle!

Changing your toliet flush lever and cleaning your tank

Our toliets had plastic handles when we moved in. Two of them were already cracked and the third one recently joined them. I decided to try switching them out with some metal ones I found at home depot.They were only about $5 a piece and are better than the cracked ones but I'm not sure if I love them. (Although I'm not sure how important it is to love your toilet flush handle hahaha.) It wasn't near as hard as I thought and while I was at it I cleaned the toilet tank as well. I found this movie on Utube about how to clean it.
I had never done much as far as toilets go so this was a pretty fun "project"!

Drop Cloth Bed Skirt.

I have been wanting to make a bed skirt from Drop Cloth FOREVER. I wasn't sure what "Style" I wanted and making the first cut is always difficult for me so I have had the fabric since last spring but finally threw in the towel and jumped on the project. It took me a total of about 3 hours and I would say at least 30 minutes of it was spent dealing with some crazy thread that clogged my sewing Machine GRRRRR!
I used this tutorial: I used a bed skirt I already had just like she did. I made one deep pleat on each side, corners, and on the end.It is perfectly imperfect but I love it! Drop cloth gives you so much texture! Check it out!See the different colors in there I love it!
My room is still a huge work in progress that is why you are getting a limited shot of the bed.

"book page" Wreath

I have been seeing many Book Page Wreaths and decided I would make one. But when it came down to it I couldn't find a book hashed enough that I would feel ok ripping apart. So I went with plan B.
Have you ever ordered something small that comes in a huge box with TONS of Brown paper stuffed inside? Well this seems to be a trend but being frugal I couldn't just toss the brown paper in the garbage. And I guess I could recycle it but I have a two year old who loves to color so why do that! To say the least we had an OVER Abundance of Brown Paper in our house so I decided to make a wreath from it instead. I bought a wreath form at the dollar store (love that place for stuff like this!). I used a book to measure and cut the paper similar to the size of a book page. Then I took some black paint and swished it on the edges.I then headed over to this Lovely blog to get ideas from her tutorial:
And after 4 days of a huge mess and a ton of hot glue I ended up with this:
Not to shabby right for costing me all of $2 ($1 for the form and $1 worth of glue.)And a close up just to show all the fun roles and crinkles.I have to admit that I think I will like it MUCH better against a wall of Restoration Hardware Silver sage paint!:) But that is another project another day.

Simple A frame Tent for Kiddos

I recently made this Simple A frame tent using this tutorial.
Mine doesn't look as fancy and pretty as the tutorial post, but it is for a little man.
I had sewed a bunch of stained/ripped etc t shirts together to make one big sheet I could throw over the dinning room table as a tent. Reality is I'm often using the table for crafts or meals so it never really happened. In place of using a twin sheet I cut the huge "sheet" of pieced together t-shirts down and used it instead!
I also just tied the actual fabric around each leg since the fabric is stretchy. (or maybe I'm just too lazy to sew on some elastic rings hahaha.
This was a super simple project that has already been wonderful (aka entertained the kiddo).