Our play area

 

 This is a project Ive been working on for awhile. No project in this house gets done quickly. I put in a lot of thought, theres some trial and error, pinteresting, and lots of lots of thinking.

We dont have a big house but I like the idea of a play area for Little Man, somewhere in the living area so he's with us. Inevitably most of the toys he's playing with end up in our living area but thats fine, then at the end of the day they're packed away here.

After much contemplation, I decided the Expedit would be the best major piece of storage furniture.

This way we can fit books, stand alone toys as well as his smaller toys like blocks, cars etc.

The top shelf is currently being used for some of my craft stuff as well as a box of his craft bits and pieces.

Because Im looking at budget options, I havent gone too matchy matchy and tried to use stuff from around the house.

I did purchase from Ikea the purple Skubb boxes on sale, the white Kassett boxes and the 2 green Drona cubes which were also on sale. (I just noticed however the Green doesnt seem to be available at the Adelaide branch anymore) All of these are quite size deceiving and managed to fit most of his toys and craft goods really easily.

The very top of the unit I have a couple of frames I found which I need to fill, some pencils, glue and pipe cleaners, in the Bee caddy is some extra playdough and paints and the blue box has lots of random computer items which I need to find a home for.

I was lucky enough to win a Scotch adhesive pack from Bianca over at  A Little Delightful. I pulled these out yesterday to hang some canvas prints in a spare corner of the room.

Underneath these Im going to add some Bekvam spice racks to hold some of his books. Im sure we've all seen this ikea hack idea.

About an hour after taking these shots, the Play canvas fell down. Twice. Seems those adhesives arent strong enough to hold it. So for now its off the wall.

Sorry for the crappy photo (still amateur in the photography front too!) but this is his little table set up where he can draw and play with playdough etc. It is a little on the small side so im looking at purchasing another Lack table and move it to the middle of the room. The train set on the rug is going to move after his birthday since we bought him one of those train tables (which im thinking will move next to the window).

I also need a bigger rug and then finish off the office space on the other side of the room.

Always lots to do which keeps me busy, although frustrated cos I want to do it all at once!

Cushions!!

This is a project ive been wanting to tackle for aaages! I bought a sewing machine a good few months back with the intention of tackling some sewing projects. But then it just sat in the office area staring at me with its intimidating needle eye until the other day I had enough motivation to open it and set the thing up.

It took one night of you-tubing and trial and error to work out how to thread the damn thing and once Id sorted that out, it went back into storage until I had another night of motivation to get it out again and actually start sewing.

First project was cushion covers! I only tried 2 and they're not really on the material I wanted to use around the house but it was a good practice run. I followed Jackie over at Teal and Lime Easy Envelope cushion cover video tutorial. Speaking from an absolute amateur, her video is really easy to follow so if I can do it, Im sure you can too!

Im stoked at the result. First i tried with the one type of fabric and then I thought id give the two tone a go. Both versions are found on the video.

I'm cushion cover mad now and I cant wait to do some more. I bought some more fabric yesterday that im hoping to give a go soon. Hopefully now Ive got over the first hurdle, I wont procrastinate so much!

Game storage

This project came about as a result of another project I'm working on for organising my paper clutter.

I needed the wicker box that these games were originally housed in, so I was on the hunt for replacement storage.

And I found it in the form of another wicket box found at Kmart.

We dont have many board games so this ended up being the perfect fit. It also houses the video game paraphernalia that you end up with when the man of the house loves his Playstation and Wii! 

ooh i just noticed the lid of the poker set popped off

The actual game discs are kept in another box in the TV unit.

I love that its functional but also nice to look at it. A key when I'm buying storage is that I like it to have multiple uses. This, for instance, could also house extra blankets, become a coffee table or a toy box. 

Now that parts done, I can move onto the next one. 'Office in a box' coming soon.

Busy day

As some of you may have read yesterday, I had a really productive day. I had the pleasure of an annual leave day (which incidently coincided with the Adelaide Cup long weekend, so woohoo, 4 day weekend for me!!). Ace was also in child care so i took advantage of a very rare day to myself.
Unfortunately it was a sticky 35C so not the best day for getting down and dirty with it (as some might say!) but I ploughed through since i had no choice.

I didnt get everything done i wanted to but some of the more important bits like doing a good ol' deep vacuum clean in and around the furniture. It really was quite disgusting and I had to empty the vacuum out a few more times than Id care to admit!

I also wiped down all of the blinds and skirting boards.

Now I wasn't a good blogger in that I didn't take photos of shame for you all to see but just imagine furniture that hardly or has never been moved since you moved in 4 years ago! Yeah, that!

Anyway I also did some baking and cooking in which I was more than happy to snap away....

Vanilla icecream in my icecream maker

Cheesy spring onion fritters

and also baked some brownies. I used this recipe which i found on pinterest. It was dead easy and turned out to be delicious. I sat down that evening with a coffee and smothered them in cream. Yum!

I also attached the spice rack i bought a few weeks ago but then never got round to pulling the drill out to attach. 

It was to help clear up this disaster corner of my pantry...

So today was the day but now that its up, I'm not so sure about it. 

The 'grill' design doesn't hold the little bottles that well so i might have to add a cardboard base to make it more stable. It also didn't hold everything I had, so i'll either buy another or maybe one of those Ikea ones.

Time went so quickly and before I knew it, it was pick up time.

I still have some more days up my sleeve to get stuck into some other projects if i feel like it however this weather is insisting on sticking around and it really isn't the most motivating!

3 Things Thursday

source

On Sunday night Husby and I had tickets to see one of our favourite bands so we decided to make a night of it and booked a hotel room in the city as well. This meant Little Man stayed with his Mamma (my mum). First night away....and he was fine! He even gave Mamma a sleep in :)
It was a great night, being able to relax , have a few drinks and not have to worry about driving home to relieve a babysitter. I did miss him like crazy though. Funny how youre body clock changes so easily. Despite having a late checkout, we were both up initially around 6am but managed to 'sleep in' until 8:30am. Then we had to get up.

OUR SLAB IS DOWN!

This is the long awaited slab in which our new shed will be built upon.
We already have a pretty big shed but we'll be turning that into the 'man cave/band room' and this will be the site for my our shed. Cant wait to be able to chuck nicely put away Husbys band gear.
I pre-warn those who want to marry musicians: Make sure you have a large enough house in order to store all of their crap!!
The shed will be up this weekend. Never been so excited about a shed before!

Im happy with these baskets I bought on clearance at Target. Bargain at $20 for the 4 pack and $10 for the oval shaped.
Not sure of where they'll end up but couldnt pass them up at that price.

Holidays update

So I'm halfway through my holidays now and I have achieved some of what I wanted.

I documented what I was hoping to achieve during my break in this post.

One thing I really wanted to do, was finally get round to painting my side tables.

This has been a long time coming project of mine and, as it was, took a couple of days to finish in between coats. I ended up doing 2x undercoats and 2x top coats.

They went from this..

To this..

To this!

There is a 3rd table to the set which I am still contemplating what colour. All I knew at the time was I really wanted a teal blue and yellow table.

I will reveal soon what I've chosen. Oh the suspense!

In case your interested, the colours I chose were: Dulux Zuni

and Dulux Pale Buttercup 

I also need to buy some clear lacquer as being wall paint, its not that tough for everyday use. 

Whilst I had the painting gear out, I gave the Ikea Bekvam stool a makeover with Zuni. Again, this will also  need a clear lacquer coating.

Ive also done plenty of baking and cooking, most of which has ended up in our bellies and not the freezer! Grrrr! Oh well, lucky I love to cook!

And I finished off a couple of crafty projects I had on the go.

In my final week Ill be heading to Ikea to grab some furniture for the playroom/office, tidy the linen closet and pantry, head to Bunnings for some more paint supplies, oh and squeeze mothers day somewhere in there too!

And s promised, there have also been  a few trips to the playground! 

                           

3 Things Thursday

3 Things im loving this week are...

Unless you have been hiding under a rock, or just not noticing my contstant HOLIDAY updates on FB, you would know Im VERY excited to be having a small break from the rat race!! Just some time to spend with my family and doing the things I love to do like bake and craft and update stuff around the house.

One mission I have just accomplished, was painting 2 out of the 3 side table set I have. Now just pondering what the 3rd colour will be....

And lastly I got my couches and rug cleaned yesterday. The state of them has been driving me nutso lately and then I saw on one of those deal sites, a carpet cleaning package for $69! I just asked the company if I could swap the 4 rooms to these 3 pieces. We only have 2 carpeted rooms anyway!

So that's a little of what's been happening. Exciting stuff round these parts ya know!

3 Things Thursday (Friday edition)

Oopsie already forgotten my 3 Things on Thursday posting due to Anzac Day yesterday!

Here's my top 3 from the past week...

1. This is one of the trays I bought from the op shop seen here, painted and added some cute patterned paper. I tried to find a small piece of glass to protect the paper but couldn't find one that would fit. However this works ok for now. Good thing is, the paper is easily swapped around.

2. Yesterday we did a mini clean out. This room is one big space divided by the front door, with the other side being our lounge. I want to turn this bit into a playroom/office but at the moment it stores Husbys music equipment. Behind where the drums are used to be my grandmas dresser/armoire. This has now been moved into the dining room and this space will now house possibly a 4x4 expedit for toy storage. Once our new shed is up all the music junk precious stuff will be moved into our old shed which will turn into the band room. Phew, if you didn't get that, don't worry i'm sure Ill blog about it as things happen.

3. You have most likely seen these plates in the lastest Target catalogue and yep, I had to have some. Although it was hard to stop at these 4!  I love anything owls so these were perfect!

Easter 2013

I had such great intentions to get this post up on Monday but like most of the Easter weekend, I didn't get much achieved that I wanted too. Except if you call having a carefree, relaxing weekend and spending time with my family a good achievement, then I did well!

Anyway, I thought I'd cater for those people who are still longing for some post Easter pics including my random decorations (dont have that many built up in my collection yet), tablescaping and some pics of Chocolate!

Easter Sunday is family day and since I love any chance to decorate and entertain, Im often the hostess. Yay!

But first, the night before I quickly fashioned some bunny feet out of white paper and pink leftover scrapbooking paper, which led to Master A's gifts.

Since he's not quite 2, we didn't indulge in too much chocolate. Instead giving him some Little People eggs, Charley Bear PJ's which will hopefully last through winter, a wind up egg, and a little chocolate bunny which i sorta packaged up in the bee bucket.

 For lunch we had my parents, brother, SIL and MIL, so just a small gathering.

I had little cupcakes in each of their bowls, moreso for presentation to begin with and then they came out later for dessert!

I added on my buffet Master A's Easter related soft toys. Ironically the Peter Rabbit and duck toys were given by his grandparents when he was born.

I made some Easter biscuits also. Someone said they look like playdough on top!

I trust you all had a chocolate filled Easter and much loved time with your familes.