Crafty Goodness

At the end of the day, when the dust has settled, the house is quiet and I have a beverage of choice in hand, my mind generally turns to some crafty project or other that I have been contemplating. Tonight is no exception, but I thought long and hard about starting anything after the crazy day I had.

Most days I roll with the chaos. I think any parent worth their cheerios knows schedules are pipe dreams and that once the alarm buzzes anything goes. Today the alarm didn't buzz, kids wore the wrong clothes to the school with a uniform policy, other kids made it out of the house shoeless prompting a quick walmart run, I spent a gazillion dollars in tolls before 8am and went home twice before I got everyone dropped off. Of course after a morning like that I should have been rewarded with a random email from my boss telling me I'm so great I should take the day off, hit the spa and come back refreshed tomorrow, but instead the phone rang. As I was walking out of my Doctors appointment I got a call that my baby had spiked a fever and was being booted from daycare for 24 hours or more. And off we go again.  I won't beat a dead horse...the whole day went like that, you get the point.

Suffice it to say that by the time we left the pediatricians and waited through the carpool line, I was determined to rescue this day with something fun. So we hit Michaels and Hobby Lobby, grabbed some spray paint specially made for plastics (which happend to be on clearance...cha ching!) and headed home.  That was at 4pm. I didn't get the house settled down and get ready to paint until 9, but who's counting.

So project pictures coming tomorrow, but let me just say I'm taking the Fisher Price Little Tykes car to a whole new place for my little girl. I always feel bad when she gets a tired, faded hand me down that her big brother has outgrown. I don't want to be wasteful and really hate having two of something so spray paint and a crafty momma to the rescue.

I was inspired by a mini cooper and an awesome robin's egg blue color! Come back tomorrow, you won't want to miss this transformation.

My inspiration!

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If you need it, build it! :)

We have "market days" coming up at Alex's school and we needed to create a "farmer's market" style stall for the kiddos. We have a table and are going all out on the table cloth but I wanted a neat attention getting sign, so I called my Dad, asked his advice and headed off to the nearest Lowes.

On Dad's recommendation I got PVC pipe, connectors and end caps, came home, measured, sawed and voila...$11 and 15 minutes later I had the frame for my sign for this and many future projects.

Here is a quick do it yourself, step-by-step tutorial!

Assemble your items. I had the saw, tape measure and sharpie already, but everything else here cost $10.24. That and a little time and we have a very multifunction piece that should work for the preschool for a while!



Measure your PVC pipe and mark the height and width you want your stand to be. I did 7 feet high and 7 feet wide, so I cut all three pieces of my PVC pipe to seven feet.


Use a hack saw and cut the PVC pipe at your measured marks. The PVC pipe cuts easily, just be sure your cut ends go into the connectors so you don't scratch yourself.


Get your connectors ready. From here on out it's like putting legos together!


Use your short brace pieces and connect them to the sides of your T connector. The top of the T will hold your tall stand pieces.



Add your elbow connectors to connect your side and top pieces:



Alex helped put the finishing touches on. Here he is adding end caps to our stand:


The finished product! We're going to wrap it in brown crepe paper to make trees and decorate it with fall leaves, and hang a Shoreline Market Days banner across it, pictures coming soon!