It's a Banner Day

     I HEART banners.  I wanted to add something fun and a little funky to our basement classroom without spending an arm and a leg (or taking hours to cut, paste, or sew!)

     This cute little banner fit the bill perfectly.  Look closely- it's made from larger paint swatch cards!  I was in the hardware store waiting for my floor color to get mixed up and I saw the huge display of paint swatches and thought they were just gorgeous.  In between is just a smaller paint swatch.

     Even the twine was free- it was leftover from bringing home the hardboard I used to make the chalkboard.  I cut the pieces and punched holes in them while Napoleon decided to put them in a "pretty pattern".  Then we just threaded the twine through and hung them up.  Super simple and easy peasy.

Cost Breakdown:

Paint Swatches  FREE

Twine   FREE

Total  Cost: $0

Time Breakdown:

15 Minutes

I'm seriously in love with our basement classroom.  These banners just give such amazing cheer!

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Budget Friendly DIY Chalkboard

     I knew, without a doubt, when I saw the basement here that we would convert part of it to a classroom.  I also knew that I'd have to take advantage of all that gorgeous wall space to put up a chalkboard.
  Sure, if I owned the house, I could slap some chalkboard paint on a wall and be done with it.  But... I don't own this place.  I'm borrowing it.  So, a wall-mounted board of some kind it would have to be.  A search online showed quickly that chalkboards are EXPENSIVE. 

 

This 4 by 8 foot magnetic chalkboard from Staples.com is $429.99! 

     I started with this:

One sheet of hardboard- $7.25

     This is a four-foot wide by eight-foot long piece of hardboard.  Hardboard is a type of compressed paper/wood fiber.  It's generally about an eighth of an inch thick and feels like super-heavy cardboard.
We started by priming it with a coat of magnetic primer.

Painting with magnetic primer is tricky.  It could seriously be it's own blog post.  Suffice to say that you get a base with a ton of teeeeeeeeeny little metal shavings in- most of which will have settled to the bottom of the can.  After stirring, and stirring, and even more stirring, you'll have distributed most the metal shavings back into the base. After even more stirring you'll be able to start applying the primer to your board.  The instructions tell you to constantly stir the mixture.  This is a MUST.  The shavings settle quickly.  It also tells you to apply several thin coats.  I'll let you know now that it's almost impossible to apply a "thin" coat of this stuff.  Use really good quality sponge rollers for this- not cheap ones.  I'll also let you know that you don't want to pour more than a couple of tablespoons into your paint tray at a time and re-stir the paint every time you pour more.

I even got Napoleon in on the painting.  She's small enough she could sit on the board without warping it.

     After priming the board and letting it dry, we added four coats of spay-on chalkboard paint.  Do this in a well-ventilated area- PLEASE!

      To hang the board, I pulled out an eight foot long piece of molding.

The smudges were taken care of when I painted over the nail-heads.

After leveling the board, I discovered something really interesting.  Our floor was not level.  I don't mean it's a little-bit askew.  I came to realize that in the corners we have 8 foot ceilings and in the center of the floor we have 10 foot ceilings.  It made the entire chalkboard look like it's sloping downhill.  (Turns out I had to adjust it by eyeballing it instead of using a level.)  Nailed the molding into place and used it to prop up the chalkboard as I attached it to the wall.  (Note: The landlord gave me permission to nail it to the wall- otherwise, I would have used mirror clamps or even hung it like a giant picture frame with wire.)

The kids enjoyed "curing" the chalkboard paint.

   To cure the chalkboard paint, you simply rub the side of a piece of chalk all over it.  Wipe off, and you're done.  A perfectly usable chalkboard for a fraction of the cost.

Cost Break-Down: 

Hardboard  $7.25

Molding $9.78

Magnetic Primer $12 (with coupon)

Chalkboard Spray Paint   3 Cans @ $2 each (with coupon)

Rollers, dropcloth, nails, chalk   FREE

Total Cost: Approximately $35

Time Break-Down:

2 Hours Active Painting Time

24 Hours Inactive Painting Time

15 Minutes Installation 

5 Minutes Installation Touch-Up

Total Time: Approximately 2 Days

    I can't wait until the classroom is completely finished.  Chaos loves his new chalkboard and is excited to start second-grade in our new basement classroom.  Even better- I saved about 92% on the cost of a new chalkboard!

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Our House Of Joyful Noise

Curtain Solutions: Part 1

     This house has a ton of windows.  Seriously, from where I'm sitting, I can count 11 windows- and that's only TWO rooms.  Big windows, tiny windows, over-sized windows... you name it, there's a window for it here.

     I don't know about other renters out there, but if I had to buy ready-made curtains every time I moved, I'd have a closet filled with nothing but curtains.  It seems as if no two homes ever had the same size windows.  I've learned to get crafty when it comes to window coverings, though, and I'm going to present several ideas over the next month that you can use on your own windows.

DIY Curtains for an Over-Sized Window

     Our living room has a ginormous picture window.  The dimensions are 9 foot 8 inches wide by 6 foot high.  Add in that it's a foot and a half off the floor, and that's a whole lot of space to cover.  Luckily, the landlord left us some sheers in the right size.  Personally, I was content to stick with sheers for a while... then IT happened.

Forgive me for recycling a picture, but I TOLD you this road was the view out my front door.  I wasn't kidding.  I was standing next to my mailbox when I snapped this.

     See that?  It's a road... directly across the street from my living room.  Why is this a problem?  Well, let me draw you a mental image.  Imagine it's late at night and with the kids already in bed, you're enjoying a night at home watching TV on the couch.  You're already in your nightie and stretching out to enjoy some quiet time with the Hubs and the latest episode of Top Chef.  Then you realize the folks pulling out of the street across from your couch can TOTALLY see you making out with your Hubby through those sheer little things you'd called curtains.  Yeah, not cool.

     I scoured the stores looking for curtains large enough to cover the space, but comparable sizes were running over $50 per panel.  We're talking AT LEAST A HUNDRED BUCKS- all to get some measure of privacy.  I finally wandered through Target and doubled back as something caught my eye:

It's even red and golden yellow- two of my favorite colors!

    Hmmm... it's big enough to cover half the window easily.  The price is awesome ($15).  I've got a plan.

     Score!  These are less than $5 per set!

As the top layer to the sheers, it's so cute!

    Putting it all together is a cinch!  If you can open a clothespin, you can use these curtain hangers.  I put them along one of the already hemmed edges, then, simply thread the curtains onto the curtain rod.

Cost:
2 Tablecloths @ $15/each
2 Bags of Clips @ $4.89/each

Total: $39.78
Total Time: 5 minutes



     The best part to me is that, while I own two sewing machines, I didn't have to break either one out!

Custom Storage Jars

Starch and Sucrose: My kitchen-nerd is a closet chemist.

  

     I've been seeing labeled storage jars all over blog-land.  When I saw these large two-gallon glass jars for a mere $7 each I knew my inner kitchen chemist would take over on labeling.

     Since I don't own one of those nifty Silhouette Machines, I did the labeling the old fashioned way- with contact paper and a craft knife.  I actually was able to use a document program on my computer to size the words, then printed them off.  Being careful to tightly layer the printed words over my contact paper, I just cut through all the layers to have my letters.

     Total Cost: 2 jars @ 7 dollars each, Wood Grain Contact paper @ Free (left overs from lining cabinets)= $14
     Total Time: 15 minutes.

     Now I'm contemplating my utensil jar with it's bare white walls.  It screams out for a matching label- I just need to find a nerdy word for "utensils".







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What've I "Bin" Up To?

     It's such a pretty day outside today, I decided to check out my backyard to measure out some future projects.  With the kids happily ensconced in pretending to be Mr. Potato-Head (with Big Bro trying to talk Little Bro out of the plastic eye glasses and yellow mustache) I stepped outside.

     I'm so pleased with how the back yard is turning out.  Last week, it looked like this:

Somewhere out there is a clothesline.  It's hard to find since the hay field behind the house took over my back yard.

      Luckily, one of my friends offered to mow my lawn for really cheap.  Normally, I don't like to let anyone else mow my lawn (Hello?  It's cheaper to mow the lawn than pay a gym membership + I LOVE mowing the lawn!) but my fibromyalgia has been flaring just a little too much for me to battle the tall grass.  So, this is my lawn today:

Lots of grass clippings to rake up!  Oh! Look!  A clothesline!

     Since I can now walk through my backyard without wading through waist-deep grass, I decided it was time to do something about all the grass clippings.  So, I pulled together a little compost bin for less than $10!

The supplies: One roll of chicken wire ($4.98), one pack of zip-ties ($1), and three sets of garden stakes (@$1 each).

First, unroll your chicken wire and zip-tie the edges together to make a circular cage..  This is half-inch mesh since the neighbors have little dogs.  I just put it in an area that my kids have been dumping the grass-clippings from the lawn mower and other larger food-waste like watermelon rinds.

Second, use the garden stakes to hold the bottom of the bin to the ground so animals don't flip it over.  (Again, this is mostly because my neighbor's dogs have been rooting through the previously un-caged compost heap.) 

You can leave this without a lid or make a frame of chicken wire for the top.  Me?  I've got an old wooden pallet laying in my front yard that I'm going to stack on top.  It'll allow my kids to dump scraps and grass clippings in between the slats, but not allow dogs in.

     How long did this take me?  About ten minutes.  The funny thing is that the paper on the chicken wire is compostable as well- so I tossed it in.  (That's the blue stuff showing in the bin.)  Now I have a place for grass clippings, shredded paper, and all the potato skins and corn cobs I'll have left-over from cooking for  picnics this summer- Happy Composting, Y'all!

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