Balance Bike

Have you seen those cool balance bikes for young children?  They are two-wheel bikes with no pedals, so children use their feet for balance and for propulsion.  The idea is that they will learn to balance without training wheels, and thus be prepared to ride regular bikes earlier.  They're also tres chers.  For us, anyway.

So, I saw a tiny, very used bike at a garage sale and bought it for 2 bucks.  Yes, 2 dollars!  The chain was rusty, and one of the pedals was broken, but I didn't care since I was going to remove those anyway.

We stopped at walmart on the way home and my little girl picked out purple and yellow spray paint.  She said she wanted it to look like an Easter egg.  Okay. Sure.  Whatever you want, dear. :)

I forgot to take a picture of the bike before I started taking it apart, but you get the idea.

The before:

I took it apart as much as I could.  I removed the seat, the crank shaft, the chain, the wheels.  I then taped off everything else I couldn't take apart, including the spokes on the wheels.  I sanded it down, wiped it clean, and spray painted several coats of each color.

I used model car enamel paint to put some silver and yellow stars on the bike per my daughter's request.  I think they make it look a little more homemade, but possibly not in a bad way.

Then I stuck it all back together (well, except for the pedals...) and hurray! A Balance bike! Total cost: abt 10 bucks.  Go me!

Play Kitchen

I know it's been a long time since I said I was going to post pictures of my daughter's play kitchen, but here they are!  When we gave it to her, she had just turned 2, and a year later it is still a really great size for her and her friends.  I think about a year from now, I might have to do something to make it a little taller, but for now, it's still perfect.

The counter top and backsplash are made from the leftover linoleum countertop we had when we redid our kitchen.  There was a rectangle scrap we had from cutting out the hole for our sink, and that's what I used.  I imagine local countertop stores have tons of scraps of the same sort that they just throw out or sell really cheap.

I added wood veneer tape around the edges for a little more polished look (and to prevent splinters) and caulked the joint where the backsplash and counter met.

The burners were a pain in the patootie! It took me a long time to decide what to make them out of. I wandered every isle of Lowe's about seven times looking for something that would work, until I finally decided on PVC drain grates.  I had to cut the circular bottoms off of them, but I think it was well worth it.  I cut spirals out of red construction paper, glued them to squares of black construction paper, glued those to the back of the flat drain grates, and then glued the grates down onto the countertop with some sort of construction adhesive my husband had laying around the house.  So far, they've lasted fabulously.

If I were awesome, I'd have organized the food all tidy.  I guess I'm not. :)

Here's a picture of the cabinet upside so you can see the hole we cut for the "sink" and faucet.

The sink was a $6 metal bowl from target.

 

The faucet was a really nice one.  I asked one of the Lowe's attendants if I could have one of the display models.  I had noticed they had two carts full of display faucets that they appeared to be discarding.

Maybe I got ripped off, because they still charged me ten bucks for them when not ten minutes later, the lot of them probably went into the dumpster, but it's a really nice faucet and I love it.  It's a bathroom faucet, but in the context of a tiny kitchen fits right in.

We did get the present done in time to give it to her for Christmas, but we did end up staying up till the wee hours of the morning finishing it up!

Christmas Morning:

Before:

After:

Family Memory

Most of my siblings' families have settled pretty far apart, and with an upcoming reunion, I thought it would be a fun idea to make a family memory game featuring everyone's faces.

 

We liked it so much that we made them for both sides of the family.

The pink one is an envelope I made myself out of piece of card stock.  The yellow one is a manila folder I covered in paper.

Both are laminated with velcro closures.  Each person has two photos, each photo has its own color border and the back says "Do you know your family?"  Each photo is also laminated.

See that accordion action?  That's all me.

You can play it like traditional memory or you can organize the cards into families or you can play match-the-parent-to-the-kid.  It's pretty versatile, I think.

 

It's a good toy in light of the fact that our kids are going to actually be seeing all their cousins for the first time in a long time--maybe this way they will know some of their names! :)

Shirts! And a lot of them!

I've been making t-shirts and onesies as birthday presents, baby shower gifts, and Christmas presents for a while.  I take lots of time to very little time to design them depending on how well I know the kid.  Is that ugly?  I hope not.  And frankly, with my skills it probably doesn't make any difference how much time I spend designing them; they'll all turn out about the same.

Here's a couple for Baby Caitlyn:
(The colors on the blue one look weird in the picture, but they were cute in the RL (real life).  What?

I think the arrow is pretty funny if I do say so myself.  It's not pointing to the Gerber baby on the label, but rather to Caitlyn's face.  In theory.

Here's one for Rachel's 1st birthday:

And the back:

All ready to be wrapped:

The problem with these presents is that I'm usually in such a hurry to get to the party that I take the worst pictures! :)

I spent a pretty long time drawing these toe-shoes for a little girl who loves dancing. What is it that compels me to draw what is probably available as free clipart online? I don't know. But I did, and I think they turned out pretty cute.

Gavin's Soccer shirt:

The bottom:

I did this same concept with a baseball and bat, and it turned out pretty cute too.

Simple little Milla shirt:

Sorry about the wrinkles in all these pictures.  It was late at night and I just wanted to go to bed!  The shirts looked absolutely marvelous when folded. :)

And one I made for my brother with a permanent name badge on the front:

The back had a prospective logo for a business/restaurant idea he has with which he will someday make bank.  Maybe he'll give me a share or two for making him this awesome shirt.

I have a couple others more recently made or to make that I'll post after I send them off.  It really is fun to make these shirts.  I hope that they are enjoyed!

Play Kitchen: Painting

After sanding and cleaning the cabinets very well, I painted them all with a coat of primer.  I skipped one of the doors for some reason, and I can tell you that I'm definitely a fan of primer.  It makes everything look so much better.

After the primer, I did about 2 coats of cheap walmart paint before I gave up and used some paint from Kwalls.  I did not buy paint for anything in this project. I only used what was on hand.

Play Kitchen: Sanding

Sanding, and Sanding, and more sanding.  Whew!

I used paint stripper for one cabinet, but gave up on that and used elbow grease for the doors and the other cabinet.  I guess only time will tell which was the better choice.  I'll know if the paint chips off or scratches more easily which one to do next time. (Wait, next time??)

I sanded everything with our little power sander, mostly just enough to get the shiny varnish off.

One side of the shorter cabinet is going to be the oven, which means I need the door to hinge at the bottom on not on the side.  The hinges on these cabinets are really weird, so I had these big holes to fill on this side.  I used drywall mud we had leftover from our basement to fill them in.  When they were dry I sanded them flat.  It took a couple of coats, but I eventually got it. 

This also meant I needed to fill in the original handle holes on the door.  Easy!

Next up:  primer!

The Dollhouse

I was blessed to be able to keep this curio holder from my grandmother's house where we lived for almost a year.  I have a lot of memories of this little cabinet and the room where it was hung.  It will always be something special.

I struggled a bit with the idea of changing it at all, but I thought that it would be exactly my grandmother's style to make something new out of things you already had.  She was incredibly frugal and produced the most beautiful works of art in several mediums.  She was pretty cool--if only I could match up a little.  Anyway, I miss her.

So here's what it became:

I spent quite a while designing each room on Illustrator (with the help of some free clipart).  I learned A LOT!   I've still got the files if anybody wants a copy.  Then I printed them out and glued them in with my good friend Elmer.

Get ready for 100 Billion pictures.  Here they go:

My daughter's first home has hardwood floors and stainless steel appliances.  Nice. :)

It's not finished.  I need to touch up the paint, trim the edges, caulk the cracks between the floors and the walls, and the spray the whole thing with some sort of sealant.  It didn't seem like that much before I listed it all...

What do you think?  My daughter loves it.  She does not care one tiny bit that the furniture can't be rearranged or you can't open the fridge.  She did, however, giggle when I showed her the teddy bear in the girl's bedroom and when she noticed the winter coats in the mudroom.  She's got a great imagination and has a collection of random little figurines ranging from elephants to pirates who abide here.  I love her and hope she enjoys this for a long time.