Make Your Own Dry-Erase Board {DIY Art}

 

You know how when you're singing and there's no time to breathe and you justrunoutofbreath before the line is over?

No? Hmm.

How about when you think that flight of stairs is a piece of cake, you'll just run up it... only by the time you're half way up you're slowing and after a couple more steps you're regretting that piece of cake you ate for lunch.

Or when you jump in with both feet and you're excited and fired up about, say, a blog topic, and you realize that it's a lot to write on the same topic for a month and instead of motivating you to finish up the last spaces in your new home, it overwhelms you to the point that by the end of the month you're hardly blogging at all...

Guilty.

I'm the kind of girl who has a hard time letting go. I want things done the way I want them done, so I stink at delegating. My oldest is getting fairly decent at washing dishes and he likes to do it, yet I usually am the one standing at the sink because they need to be done the right way. Gag. My husband is awesome at cleaning bathrooms but I usually do it because he works outside the home and chores around the home are my half of the bargain. Sigh. 

Anyway, I'm not trying to throw a "Biggest Loser" party, just using a little humor to excuse myself from my October promise of 31 Days of DIY Art. It's mid November. I. Will. Finish. 

Ok, so about the Dry-Erase Boards. I have two because they are that easy. My menu board and my calendar are based on the same idea. They've been around for several years now, finding themselves at home in our kitchen in Iowa, our dining room in Ohio and back in the kitchen in Nebraska.

Here's the basic how-to: Find a large framed picture with glass that you no longer like or never did like in the first place. Or look for a large frame with glass at a thrift store. Take it all apart. Paint the frame the color you wish it to be. Toss the picture, or just add burlap or another fabric of your choice under the glass. For the menu board, I added circles with letter stickers to spell out "MENU" and small tags with letters for the day of the week. In the calendar frame, I included a large white piece of paper so my calendar doodles would show up.

*I've successfully used permanent marker (aka: Sharpie) to write on my boards for years, it's just harder to scrub off. Windex helps. Dry-erase markers are easier to erase, sometimes to a fault.

You could use one of these boards for a Christmas count-down, for a grocery list, or an on-going to-do list. They're super fun and easy to do!

Well, I made it, limping, to Day 27. The race may be over, but I'm still running, baby!

Our Kitchen {Tour}

It seems like it wasn't very long ago that I was sharing with you our kitchen in our rental house in Ohio. It was a white kitchen and I added a chalkboard wall and backsplash which made it very photogenic. This kitchen is not. Not white, not photogenic, but it's a functioning kitchen with sufficient storage.

Here she is!

I really like the layout of a U-shaped kitchen. It could be a little wider U, but other than some strategic "dancing" in the morning when both Gary and I are making breakfast, it functions just fine. Let's back up and give you a real tour, starting with the breakfast nook, for lack of a better term.

This space is very narrow, so our table is pushed up against the wall. It works fine, like the kitchen, but I'm constantly wondering how to do it differently.

The chair on the left end sticks out into the walkway while the chair on the right is against the window wall. The table can't be pulled out from the wall or there wouldn't be room to walk around the table to get to the back door or the kitchen. The back door also prohibits the table from being in the corner. So against the wall it is!

Just for some perspective, this is how the dining area looks from the living room. Usually with the ruins of Ancient Egypt in the foreground.

On the left is the back door, the one our family uses most. I've created a spot to catch our mail and corral our keys and things by hanging the white organizer on the front of the cabinet.

After I took these pictures, I vowed to find a better place to hang the ever more prolific work of our resident artist. The fridge just looks messy!

You'll recognize several things on my counters if you've been around awhile. The calendar will be elaborated on soon, while I babbled about the silverware storage here. I try to keep up with making granola as it's so simple and good for you and filling, not to mention an easy breakfast to make! We don't eat any cold cereal anymore except for home made granola (which I was able to make gluten free and is sweetened with honey!).

I used some double-sized tape to hang the silver platter on the wall, while the African spoon knife and fork are artifacts from Gary's dad's time there in the 60s.

Does anyone else think it's ironic that I won't keep every-day appliances on the counter, but I make room for things like picture frames or pretty containers of fruit? As much as I love my food processor, it's just not pretty! Nor my blender...

This long angle makes the counter look huge! It's not, but it is nice to have this much counter for, say, making granola!

I've actually been updating my menu board lately! Amazing! I love the texture of the two wooden cutting boards. They're the only ones we have and we use them a lot! I almost got rid of my cake stand but told myself I could find a use for it, so it stayed. The bananas are grateful.

Next to the sink is our probiotic station. And dish soap. I used a shallow white serving platter to define the area and keep the counter clean. We make both milk kefir and water kefir.

On the other side of the sink is a tight little corner which I find great for prepping veggies before I cook them. Despite that large work zone on the left side of the kitchen, I'm usually crammed in the corner with my cutting board and veggies. :)

So that is where the magic happens! I'll share with you some of the ways I've organized this kitchen in another post. I'd also like to share some ideas for what I'd do if the space was ours to renovate. It's not--this is a rental--but our landlord plans to completely re-do the kitchen after our lease and before she signs another one. The irony is not lost on me!

What's in your kitchen?

Insta-Friday! {August}

I love Insta-Friday. I'm not great at linking up to other blogs that participate, and for the last few months I haven't been cataloging my Instagram pictures here, but I've finally had some time to download, sort and collage my snapshots. I want to share them here because it's a great way to summarize ordinary life. I look back and realize how stinking blessed I am, how cute my kids are, how quickly time passes... And how I look like Wonder Woman. Ok, not LOOK look, but seem. Appear. Come-across-as. You know?

Maybe I need to work on the reality perspective a little, but what do I have to complain about, really?

Ok, moving on.

Or back. Waaaaaay back.

To August, as you may have guessed from the title of this post.

In August we moved from Ohio to Nebraska. Long story. We're in Lincoln, to be specific, and are so thankful to be here, even if we didn't see it coming.

We got to Lincoln with no housing lined up, so we camped out at a motel for a few days. There was lots of driving around looking for rentals, eating out, afternoons spent napping and swimming at the motel. Our boys were such troopers!

We signed papers on our rental property, moved out of the motel, and waited for our lease to come through so we could get the keys... because it was the last day our moving truck would keep our stuff! It was down to the minute! Ok, I'm sure they wouldn't have taken it to the dump, but it would have cost us more to have them store it longer. It was also Thursday we wanted to at least have beds and a kitchen by Sabbath.

Did I mention it was a million and six degrees? Ok, so maybe *only* in the high 90s, but that is no weather to move in! And it was just Gary and me. And the boys, of course, but that's not much for heavy lifting. We down-sized a ton in Ohio, but we still have a lot of stuff! A nice neighbor volunteered his help and Gary went to the local college and got a team of undergrads to help too. #sothankful

We were settled enough to relax on Sabbath, first with a bike ride to the local lake, then a nice meal with that neighbor who helped. The pictures of the boys at Sabbath School were from the second Sabbath here.

 By the end of the next week, things were beginning to look like home. We spent quality time at the local laundromat (only once before we bought used machines off of craigslist), found Starbucks at Target just a mile from the house, got to know some nearby parks, found Trader Joe's (where the ABC cookies were found) unpacked books, set up the living room, and Gary made us hammock beds. Whew!

August was a whirlwind month! Thanks so much for enjoying the memories with me!

Wedding Anniversary Sign {DIY Art}

Two of my closest friends from my life in Las Vegas got married this weekend. That's two weddings, two happy brides, and of course their happy husbands.

For one of the lucky-in-love ladies, I made an anniversary sign. I posted this sneakpeak on Facebook when I finished it and she swooned. Swooned!

I have to admit, I love how it turned out. Kinda awesome when that happens! 

I started by sanding my section of 1X6. It's about 10" long. No, the pen, chapstick and nail clippers are not the tools I used--ha! I was using those to put the font in perspective. It happened to be one of the only pictures I took of the sign, and with my cell phone late at night... It was such a busy week I completely neglected to take real pictures!

Anyway, after the sanding, I planned to paste down some pretty patterned paper. I had asked the bride what her wedding colors were and she said black, white and champagne. Fancy! I ended up not liking the plain paper, pattern and all, so I ripped it in strips and mod-podged it on. Then I sanded the edges of the paper to make everything nice and smooth.

Next, I cut out 5" letters of the couple's last name with my Cricut in white vinyl. This font is super skinny and really hard to get the letters to lay straight, but I think they ended up being pretty straight. I then cut the wedding anniversary date in 1 1/2" letters from black vinyl using a straighter font which was much easier to work with!  

 I'm so pleased with how this turned out that I listed it as an example of customized signs in my Etsy shop. You can order one if you don't have the inclination to make one yourself!

We might be 7 days into November, but it's Day 26 of my 31-Day Series for October. We'll get there!

A Day at the Orchard!

This post is for the grandmas and grandpas out there. Specifically the ones related to the cute little buggers in the following pictures, but you borrowed ones and anyone else who's curious is welcome to join along on our little adventure to the apple orchard!

Edited: I completely meant to include these three pictures from my cell phone in this post! Cute little cuties!!! They each posed themselves at this cute display up by the barn.

 
A couple weeks ago we were invited to join a group of homeschooling moms and their kids to go apple picking at Martin's Hillside Orchard near Lincoln, NE. It was a cold day, but so very pretty too!

Who's the king of the mountain?! The boys had so much fun climbing up this hay bale mountain!

There was some apple picking, of course. These are Jonathan apples, being picked by my Jonathan. :) I remember before he was born and after we'd picked his name, we decided not to tell anyone what the name was until Jonathan was born. We were saying goodbye to Gary's parent's after a weekend at their house and they were probing for hints on the baby's name. We called him Nebuchadnezzar, by the way. Anyway, short story long... we were standing quite near a box of Jonathan apples, trying really hard not to look that direction, or have the parents look over there and ask if that was the name!!!

There was lots of apple eating too. I'm not sure how many each of the boys ate, but it seemed every time I looked, they had one in their hands!

There is nothing better than a crisp, cold apple picked straight from the tree and enjoyed outside!

We wandered over to the Yellow Delicious and those had to be tested as well.

The orchard also had a corn maze, hay bale towers, a rope swing, picnic tables, and this sandbox with dry corn instead of sand.

Yes, Jonathan is pretending to eat it. No, I can't imagine why. He also managed to bring home a handful in his pocket. The part that didn't go through the wash is now in a Lego "storehouse" where the story of Joseph is regularly reenacted.

The boys enjoyed lunch on top of a hay bale. I enjoyed lunch at the picnic table with the moms while one of their awesome daughters helped the boys open bags and manage juice boxes. Love her!

We bought a few pounds of apples, made a couple crisps as well as some pancake topping, and the rest are being used as a fall display on the kitchen table. Sadly, our display is dwindling as apples make awesome snacks! 

The time at the orchard passed so quickly we never did make it over to the pumpkin patch!