the car wash

We got invited to a birthday party for one of my preschool students.  I'll never pass up birthday cake and cute friend (plus he has the sweetest family) so we were happy to go.   This little friend of mine is super into car washes.  He loves car washes in a crazy way.

His parents built him a car wash based off plans from family fun magazine.  We were all very impressed and I thought you'd like to see just how cool it turned out.   These are taken with Bee's camera.  I didn't think to take one.  Glad one of us is on the ball. 

The bar in front opens out for the car to go through. 

Here's the sign out front. 

All the signs were made from foam paper and attached with velcro.

Lou and my newly 4 year old friend ran through the wash several times. 

A garden hose is connected to the pvc pipes and there are holes drilled in to allow the spray to come out. 

The boys ran it without the water going before turning it on. 

This photo sort of shows the spray coming.  It comes out in several spots in different directions.  

His dad is an engineer and his mom was a school teacher, which I think explains the cool construction and the overall cuteness and addition of special details.  

I can't wait to show you what we got hubby for Father's Day.  I finally got the grandpa gifts in the mail today.... the day before.  Guess they're going to be late.

the new gobble game

It's actually called Gobblet, we have been calling it gobble it up game. This is the junior version and is tons of fun. This was a gift from my Grandma, but she doesn't know it.  It was wrapped when she got it and she passed it on to us.  There's a story there.

It's like tic-tac-toe, but on your turn you can either place a piece or gobble your opponents piece, if you have a bigger one than you want to gobble. 

Lou is good, but sometimes he doesn't win.  He gets a little grumpy.

We're still working on good sportsmanship.

Sometimes he wins.

And gets really happy. 

Again, we are working on good sportsmanship.

This is a fun game for the kiddos, but there's strategy that can come into play, so hubby and I have been enjoying it too.  There is a 'regular' version too, but I can't imagine making this any harder.   It looks like it is available from Amazon, and probably lots of other places too.   

What's your favorite game this summer?

chalkboard and other uses for cabinet doors

I'm pretty excited about this project.

I've gotten my hands on a bunch of cabinet doors.  Actually, my neighbor Abbey has gotten her hands on bunches and bunches of them and shared some with me and some other friends. 

I've made two projects with them and have two more planned.  The first project was a chalkboard.  My friend Melissa (another one who has gotten her hands on a few of these doors) has made up some really cute chalkboards as gifts.  They were adorable so I decided to make some of my own.

Melissa hooked me up with some of the scrabble trays that she picked up on ebay.  They make fantastic chalk trays. The chalkboard paint paints on easily and only needs two or so coats.  I got mine for $10 at Walmart.

I painted this one up plain white and added some fabric flowers.

The fabric matches the pillows in the living room.  I should say pillow in the living room.  I have planned out 5 pillows, but have made up only 1.  It's been months, I've kind of moved on. 

The kids like for me to write on it our to-do for the day.   Apparently this day consisted of a trip to Joanns, the pool supply store and the library.  We live on the edge.

We used another door for Lou's own chalkboard.  He painted it blue and orange.

And Bee painted hers purple and pink. 

We've looked into lots of different ways to make erasers.  This wool felted flower has turned out to work pretty well.  It's leftover from this crochet project. 

It's working pretty well.  This day must have been more productive,  looks like Lou is erasing: go get ice cream, go to mission store, go to Josie's house, have supper, swim. 

I made up one for Abbey as a thank you for the doors. I'm having so much fun with them, I might need more.

Here's the other project I've done.  I nailed two to the wall above Lou's bed.  Instant headboard.

I have hubby assigned to help with my two other projects this weekend.  Hopefully I'll have something to show for it next week.

mid week thrifting

We took last week off from garage sales. We had planned to have out own sale, but I wanted to spend Saturday morning in the garden. The weeds were getting the best of me. These muddy knees are happy knees. 

Instead, I stopped by the thrift shop mid week.  I picked up these two pieces of fabric that were labeled 'table cloths.'   They are about 1 1/3 yd squares and will be great for cutting up. I think they were $1 each, maybe $1.50.   I couldn't get everything to add up right in my head after I got in the car to leave. I might have overpaid for something or been charged twice.  I'm not sure how it worked out.

Long sleeve shirts were $1.  I picked up three.  I might have looked around a bit more but my little man was not in a shopping mood.  He was making it pretty difficult for me and less enjoyable for other shoppers as well.  We paid and left quickly.

So the plan is to try to have our own sale this weekend. We would like the garage to function as a garage again so there's not more putting it off.

other camp out ideas

I promise this will be the last camp out party related post.  During my research for activities for the party, I came across several other ideas that I liked, but I wasn't able to use, mostly because the boys at our party were 4ish.  Here are some of the other ideas:

Mosquito Game – Give each player a sheet of dot stickers (preferably red!) that will represent mosquito bites. Throughout the evening, try to get rid of your stickers by giving the others players “mosquito bites”! Do this by secretly placing stickers on other players. Be careful…if you are caught you have to keep your mosquito bite sticker. The first player to get rid of their stickers is the winner!

walking stick craft-  Here's one we do at the nature center.  We give the kids regular stickers and foam stickers to decorate 1/2 inch pvc pipe.  These sticks are then used as walking sticks.  These are about 3 feet lengths but you could sure adjust that for different sized kiddos.

This pipe is gray and one of the other instructors there calls it conduit.  I don't know if it's different in anything other than color from the white PVC piping.  It's really sturdy and does make a good walking stick.

Flashlight tag-  If you get flashed with the light and you are it.

sleeping bag races- Have kids hop into sleeping bags or pillowcases and race potato sack style.

run to dress up-  Have a backpack full of clothes at one end and have kids race down and dress up in the camp clothes and race to another spot where they remove the camp wear and the next kiddo races to put them on.

camp out thank yous

I finally got the thank you notes for Lou's camp out birthday party done.  I messed around with several styles and  they all ended up different.  Here's several. 

I think the ones with the trees are my favorite.  I sewed scraps from fabric we used in party projects onto blank cards as tents.  Plain and simple. 

trading up

I think I traded up. We had two rows full of lettuce that were starting to get a little bit bitter and needed eaten up faster than the we could, even with the rabbits help.

The kids helped me cut all that was left.  We have two more rows of this that aren't all the way ready to eat, but it's been so hot I don't know that they'll taste good at all.   We ended up with 5 gallon bags of lettuce.  We could only use 1, especially knowing we had more in the garden for the next week.

We delivered the other bags to neighbors. Look at what one of the neighbors sent over later as a thank you.  I think we traded up.  1 gallon lettuce for 1 slab ribs.  They were delicious!  This good trade made for a good dinner, ribs and a large salad.

Here's what else we've been picking.  For several days in a row we were picking about 10 times this amount each afternoon.  We seem to be over the rush and are picking about this amount every day 1 1/2 cups of berries.  The strawberries have more flowers, but I think they are done blooming.  It's hot hot hot here and they surely won't do well anymore.  

My sunny 241 bag

A few days ago, I showed this picture of some cloth napkins I picked up at a garage sale.   I loved the sunny happy quality of the orange and yellow flowers.  I immediately thought of a bag I'd seen online and wondered if there was enough fabric there to make it. 

This is the 241 tote bag from noodlehead.  It was a nice pattern to work with and was well written with nice pictures to follow. The floral fabric is made from 3 1/2 cloth napkins and the yellow fabric is a piece my grandma sent me home with last week. The pattern calls for an interfacing, but both the napkins and the yellow fabric were a little thicker so I went without.  They did fine without the interfacing.  I added two pockets to the inside.  Next time I use this pattern, I'll add 4.  I like a little bag with my pockets.

I added 1 vintage yellow button from my collection but have since added 2 more.  I love playing in my button jar.  I'm not sure about all three of them on there, but I'm leaving it for now.

Keeping it real:  most of the time my bag sits on the white bench just inside our door.... on top of a letter to be mailed, a newspaper article I wanted to mail to my brother that's been there for 3 months, a trail map from the nature center and a library book that's 2 days overdue.

I had such a giggle when I shared the picture of the cloth napkins originally.  I said that I had already made something really fun and summery out of it.  One of my sweet and funny readers and new blog friend Jess-hak commented:  "Love the orange and yellow fabric, you should post what you made out of it....unless it's inappropriate ;)"    Oh my I giggled all evening.  I'm not sure what she envisioned that I could have made out of it.  That made me giggle even more. Well Jess, I hope you find my bag fun and summery and totally appropriate.