Latch Board

It is a goal of mine to make a present for Liam for his birthday and Christmas. His birthday one, was his felt board and for Christmas it was his latch board. One of my friend's turned me onto them by showing me some on their Pinterest board. I decided that would be perfect with my kid that loves that type of thing. Of course I first found ones that I would love to copy. I found some great ideas.

http://www.thephotographerswife.com/latch-board-activity-toy-kids-diy/

 

 https://jabaayave.wordpress.com/2013/02/03/diy-latch-board/

 

http://www.younghouselove.com/2013/01/last-minute-latch/

 

http://makebakeandlove.blogspot.com/2014/07/diy-latch-board-for-emerson.html

 

http://www.tealandlime.com/2011/12/diy-latches-board-kids-gift/

 

http://runninglawyer.blogspot.com/2013/08/diy-lock-and-hinge-board-for-toddlers.html

I then made a list of all the pieces I wanted for Liam's board, and got pictures of them because I do not know the actual names of most latches. I picked about 10 different ones. I was trying to keep the project cheap so I decided to go to our local Habitat for Humanity ReStore to get all of the supplies.  I went down there and was thrilled to find everything I needed and after heading up to the register, I found out that they also have pieces of wood, so I went back to the back of the store and found the perfect size board and a smaller piece for my doors to be cut out of. The only thing they didn't have was the color of paint I wanted so I went to Lowes and $6 later, I had my 2 different colors of paint for the board and the doors. When I got home I took everything carefully out of the packaging and put all the screws and whatnot in ziploc bags around the board so I didn't lose them and arranged everything on the board and took pictures.

I took pictures because I was not installing any of the latches myself and so this way made it faster. I painted it all with 2 coats of paint, taking advantage of the fact was hubby was out of town and we didn't have 2 cars in the garage.

I had asked my dad to help me put it all together, so the next day I brought it all over to my parent's house, luckily Liam decided to fall asleep right then so we didn't have to make my mom watch him. It took us about an hour and a half total to attach all the pieces. I am so glad that I had my dad to help me because some of the pieces needed adjusting to make them work, or to be oiled and some of the screws were too long and went all the way through the board so he grinded them down so they wouldn't poke Liam. I had to repaint some spots because the grinding machine thing destroyed the paint in a few places.

Overall I am very pleased with how it turned out, it wasn't very expensive (it totaled about $46) and Liam seems to love it too.  I am not completely done yet, I plan on put carabiners on the handles, put a mirror or vinyl animal underneath the doors, and put locks on the eye hook and the other lock thing.  But it is pretty close to done and Liam doesn't know the difference, it will just be more exciting when new things get randomly added.

Fun Day Recap and New Year Resolutions

Mondays are normally laundry day but since my hubby went out of town on Monday and needed clean clothes for the trip I did laundry the day before, which means my Monday off was completely free. I am part of the local Free 2 Feed group which is a breastfeeding support group. I had only gone once before (considering I am not even breastfeeding Liam anymore) but since I was free, I figured I would go. We showed up late because it is hard to get a child and myself ready and out the door by 9. So we left at like 9:30. I ended up just hanging out and chatting with one of my friends there while our children attempted to play with other kids.

After that we went and got lunch at Kneaders. The kids were getting wild and we were counting down the minutes until our next activity, the Children's Museum, where we can just let them run wild and play.

So we headed over to the Children's Museum and find out that on Monday they are only open for members and only from 2PM to 8PM. Well since it was noon, we were just screwed. We decided to go over to the library which was next door. We were meeting another friend so she and her kid met us over there. The kids colored for a bit, and then we happened to be there right before storytime so we stayed for that. Liam is not great at sitting still so he spent the majority of the storytime under the chairs and sitting right in front of the book.

After storytime the kids were done, they were tired so we all split up and headed home, me with 2 kids now because I offered to watch my friend's kid so that she could go to an appointment. Liam conked out in the car and then proceeded to nap for 3 and a half hours, he was so out. The rest of the day was spent relaxing and just playing at home.

Now New Year's happened last week and hubby and I were talking and decided that I am going to lose weight this year. I gained a lot when I had Liam and never really lost it. I am wanting to get back to at least my pre-pregnancy weight before I have another kid, that way when I gain weight with that pregnancy I am not gaining more weight on top of what I have already gained. I am going to try and do a combination of eating less and working out. I like most Americans am used to eating large portions so I am going to attempt to cut what I eat in half. I also am going to try and eliminate soda, and majorly cut back on candy and junk food, which are my weaknesses. I am not going to completely clean eating or anything but trying to better with moderation.

Working out I have done on and off during last year and even when I was working out 3 days a week, I still wasn't losing any weight, which is discouraging. So I am going to alter how I working out. I love the classes at my gym, so Monday through Thursday (not necessarily every day) I will go to classes with my mom and then on the weekends I will go and do true cardio by doing the eliptical or the stationary bike for 30 to 45 minutes. And because I hate working out and need motivation, if I work out 4 times a week for a month, my hubby agreed to give me a $25 gift to where ever I want. So that is the plan, we will see how it goes.

My last resolution is going to be for my home. I want to be more organized, certain areas of our house are a mess and I want to clean them up and try and make it so they don't get that messy again. Obviously it will be a work in progress considering I am hopeful to move this year and then we will get to start over.

Those are all I have got. I will give some updates to how I do on them throughout the year.

Posting Again, and New Project

So I know I haven't posted for a long time, I was going to do monthly pictures but then I got hit by a car and by the time I got back on my feet, I felt like I was way too late and just decided that one year of pictures was good enough.

Now I am just wanting to post just to kind of keep a diary of my life. The projects I am working on, the things I do with Liam and our family, and it will force me to take more pictures of everything and to do more fun things so that I have things to post about. I don't plan on having any schedule but I will try to post once a week, maybe.... we'll see.

I have been doing projects at work lately. I made a felt board for Liam and had so much fun picking out the projects and making them all. I ended up doing a build your own snowman, where everything is removable execept the eyes and the mouth, so he can put all the pieces back where he wants them to go.

Then I did a bunch of Christmas shapes. I figured it would help with new words and learning about Christmas and honestly they were just so cute and fun I couldn't help myself. That is how I ended up with 14 of them.

The next ones I did were the 5 Little Snowflakes. There is a cute poem/ rhyme that goes with them.

One little snowflake with nothing to do,
Along came another and then there were…two!
Two little snowflakes laughing with me,
Along came another and then there were…three!
Three little snowflakes looking for some more,
Along came another and then there were…four!
Four little snowflakes dancing a jive,
Along came another and then there were…five!
Five little snowflakes, having so much fun!
Out came the sun, and then there were none!

So I did the 5 different snowflakes which were kind of crappy to make considering I didn't think through cutting the holes in the middle of the felt but I figured out that if I cut through a piece of the snowflake to get to the center to cut the piece out and as long as I glued carefully, it is barely noticeable. Also it is for a 2 year old that doesn't really care.

Last but not least, I did a Christmas tree with different color shapes for him to decorate it with. But it didn't seem Christmasy enough so I decided to have Christmas lights on each one (in a different color of course) to give it some more holiday cheer.

Making the board was the easiest part of the whole project, I just stapled a piece of felt onto a canvas and voila, felt board. There will be no picture of that though because since I have done it, my child decided to draw on it with chocolate milk and I haven't had a chance to clean it yet.

I eventually plan on getting a cute trunk thing from Michaels (already found it, $19.99) and paint it for him to keep all the baggies of felt pieces in but I wanted to make sure that he liked them first before I spent more money.

About 3 weeks before Christmas I started seeing some cute advent calenders on blogs I read and it got me thinking, I could make one of those. Of course not for this year but if I start it now, I know it will be done in time for next year. And next year he might understand what is going on a bit more. So I started Googling and found all sorts of wonderful inspiration.
　

http://eatpraycreate.com/2012/11/felt-christmas-tree-advent-calendar.html 

 

http://projectsforyournest.blogspot.com/search/label/Christmas%20advent%20calendar 

 

 http://www.makelifelovely.com/2012/12/diy-felt-advent-calendar.html

 

http://www.familyeverafterblog.com/2011/11/sew-along-part-1-pottery-barn-advent.html

 

As I looked at these and read how they did it, I kept seeing that a lot of them talked about how they handstitched everything, now I can sew by hand but I am not necessarily very good at it. It is the knots and tying off that gets me. Normally when I have that sort of stuff to do, I make my mom help me but then on one of the inspiration ones they had a stitching tutorial. (http://projectsforyournest.blogspot.com/2009/10/stitch-101-basics.html) So I decided to give it a shot and handstitch all of the pockets.

They didn't do only Christmas colors for the pockets so I tried to do a variety. I got my missing colors, cut out my pockets and arranged them so I didn't have similar colors next to eachother. I then picked out a font (well I emailed my roomate asking for a good font), printed out the numbers, cut them out and stitched them onto my pockets.

　
Then I looked at my list of ideas for decorating the pockets and assigned one to each pocket. Which was harder then I thought it would be because I would assign 2 pictures to one number and not realize it, so I would have to go back though and see what I messed up. This is my final list.

1.Candy canes
2. Gingerbread man
3. Ornament
4. Stocking
5. Wreath
6. Christmas lights
7. Birthday cake
8. Snowflake
9. Bell
10. Starry night
11. Star
12. Holly
13. Ice skates
14. Presents
15. Poinsetta
16. Snowman
17. Penguin
18. Sleigh
19. Ornament 2
20. Reindeer
21. Mittens
22. Stocking 2
23.Christmas tree
24. Snowy night
25. Santa

That is all I have done so far, as I get further I will update more. I know this project will take forever so it might be a bit but I will get it done before next Christmas.