A Time to Refinish a Desk

Remember these? I love these old desks. There was a time I wished I had been called to home school just so I could say I had a reason to buy 5! But thankfully God blesses me above and beyond what I deserve and provided this one to us for free! It was quite worn and ugly looking and it was only recently that I realized I could do something about that...paint it! (Remember from earlier posts my recent obsession with painting?). Since Gabe is so excited about preschool at home I knew I wanted it to go in his room so I began looking through old paint cans to see if I had any left over from when we painted he and Will's bedroom...and I did! I painted the metal blue and the wood white. I thought I had taken a picture of what it looked like before but I can't find it so am not sure what happened. I am really bummed about that because the difference a coat (or 4) of paint made is incredible! 

Since I am doing a patriotic/Sept.11 theme in their room I took a flag we had received at a birthday party and glued it on the back of the seat to make it fit the theme. I'm really happy with how it turned out and with the fact it cost me $0.00 to do this! 

***I thought it would be a good idea to embellish the front with some patriotic themed scrapbooking paper I had in a scalloped shape. I didn't think this through because it took them about 2 mins. to start picking it off. I think I am going to have to modge podge it on and am hoping that will work and not make it look awful. This is an idea that in hindsight wish I had abandoned!***

A Time for Painting

I have been introduced to a little thing called Pinterest and it has not only been a wonderful avenue to waste time but also of great inspiration. After one day of being on I had plans for just about every inch of space in our house. That is when I began painting everything in sight! My husband joked that he would come home one day to find I had spray painted our suburban.


The first thing I really wanted to do was from an idea I saw on a blog called Less Than Perfect Life of Bliss. I scoured my house and attic for frames I wasn't using. I then located as much leftover paint from various projects and got to work. I have also seen in "blog land" people doing different things with letters of the alphabet and  I really liked those ideas too so I decided to combine the two ideas. I found unfinished letters at Ocean State Job Lots for $1 each and just picked random letters. Then I painted...and I painted....and I painted. The end result was this

It's not quite finished as there is still about a foot or so of this wall left to fill and I still need to find some of the kids art work to hang in the frames. I don't know if you can tell but the larger frames have a nail on the top of the inside of the frame that I hung a butterfly clip from to hang the artwork. The smaller frames are too small to hang art work but I know one of these days I will find the perfect idea for them on Pinterest...yes, the website is just that good! The picture doesn't do this space justice. It's super adorable in person.

A Time for Rice

How cool does this rice look? I saw this idea  at Share & Remember and knew I had to make some. If you remember, awhile back I posted HERE how my kids love to play in beans so I knew they would love this too. 

All I did was take a clear "under the bed" storage bin that I had and wasn't using as my container to store it. It's big enough that 2 can play in it easily and it has a lid for when we are not using it. Then I measured 1 cup of rice and put it in a ziploc bag. Then I measured 1 tbs. of food coloring (I played around with the colors to get different shades) and dumped that in the plastic bag. Then I measured 2 tbs of rubbing alcohol and put it in the bag. I then sealed the bag and began coating the rice in the colored liquid. When we did this is was during a week we had no sun so I let in dry in the bags for about a day, then dumped it all in the bin and let it air out on the porch. The reason I did this is because I found the alcohol to smell really strong so before I let the kids play in it I wanted to get some of the smell out. 


I foresee a lot of our winter days consumed with playing in the rice! And since I am working on colors with Will (identifying and speaking) this is a great activity to make the "work" of that fun for him.  

A Time for Pumpkin Snickerdoodle Whoopie Pies

Last week I made some pumpkin puree with the pumpkins we managed to grow in our garden. After a friend posted this recipe for Pumpkin Snickerdoodle cookies, I couldn't get the idea of them out of my mind. I really wanted to make her recipe but I didn't have everything I needed to make it so I searched online for one that I could make that night. I found one here and realized once they were made that they would make perfect whoopie pies! Since I was making chocolate ones for Ben today I decided to make these cookies again and have both kinds of whoopie pies. I then found a recipe for the filling that I like at this website. What I like about this filling recipe is that it's not too sweet and very light and does not use Fluff.


Make the filling while you let the cookies cool. Once it is ready, start filling the underside of one cookie with filling then place another cookie on top...then you're done!!


As you can see from the picture, everyone in our family, right down to the littlest one, loved them!