Remake Your Kids' Art: Finger Painting Bunting

Doesn't your heart sink when your kiddo goes to throw something in the recycling and sees their old art work in there? They get so offended and it breaks my heart.

So I am posting about things to do with your kiddo's art projects, since so far it seems ok if we chop them up and reuse them.

Preston loves to paint and finger paint. So we found a bunting template online simply by googling it and cut out Mr. P's finger paintings. We used hot glue and twine, gluing the back top of the flags to the twine.

Give it a whirl.

To learn about the Dictionary P go here.

Or to learn how to mount photos on canvas go here.

Happy repurposing!!

An organized baby girl closet!

As promised in my last post, I'm ready to share a project that we worked pretty hard on! The closet system for our nursery. 

I just LOVE how it turned out!

Did I mention that we did all of this for under $80?! 

To purchase something prefabricated would have been $120+!

As usual, we got to work pretty quickly, because when there are free time and materials we must get to work. There is mess in the first before shots from my bonus daughters as this was their room before we decided to make it the nursery. 

Before we get too deep, here is the before shot:

It was your typical builder grade closet with one bar the full length of the closet and a shelf at the top that you could only pile stuff on top of one another to fill. We ripped that out pretty quickly before we remembered to take our before shot, but I'm sure you get the gist. 

I did some research and started a pinterest board for kids' bedroom and closet inspiration.

I sat down with a trusty mechanical pencil and lined notebook paper and wrote out what we needed to accommodate in this closet. For example, we have a tiny house and this is the best closet to house the vacuum, so it was necessary to build a specific place for the vacuum cleaner. Other things were onesies, swaddle blankets and sleep sacks, pants of various sizes etc. 

I started getting hand me downs at an alarming rate and so grateful I was since it kicked our butts into gear! I sketched out an idea of what would work for us in this space. The sketch is embarrassing... I'm great at many things but drawing and even just sketching out is not one of those things

We measured the closet space and adapted my sketch to the measurements to make it work.

Here is a shot during the process: 

The details:

We used these simple plastic shoe boxes on the shelves. 

Since baby socks are so tiny and tend to get scattered all over the place I also didn't want to waste a whole drawer for these. 

We still have a shelf (reused) at the top of the closet, it is just more compact. I put swaddle blankets, the breast pump and two sleeping bags up there. Probably more of a temporary storage solution at the moment, but it works loads better than the last shelf with too much room.

I separated the clothes by size which is a tedious and exhausting task!

I used the closet hanging tabs that we'd purchased when Mr P was tiny, but I'm not the biggest fan. So I used the different levels of dowels to create a better visual separation.

0-3 month clothes on the bottom and 3-6 and 6-9 month clothing on top. 

I have a storage container in the garage filled with 9+ months clothes, but I figure by then I'll be ready to go through clothing again!

We incorporated this dresser that we found on the side of the road then painted. All I really did was add the fabric flowers I made behind the drawer pulls.

Off to the left up top we added pre drilled melamine to accommodate the navy baskets from Dollar Tree. If we choose to switch things up later, we can simply move the pegs and the shelves. 

Lastly, at the bottom I wanted to be able to contain laundry and toys.

I purchased two laundry baskets from Ikea, they were $4.99 each. After researching we designed this space for the two to nestle in here side by side. 

The one one the left will hold dirty clothes and the one on the right will house baby toys.

We took the doors off since you couldn't see the whole closet or get to the middle of it. We added a dowel kit to the top just under the track and these thrifted curtains that are Pottery Barn! They were only $7.99 for the pair! Now we can close it up or open it all the way up to get to the things we need!

This is the smallest bedroom in the house and needed to have the most organized closet to make sure that life with all four kids at home this summer will run smoothly!

All I have to do is make labels for all of the baskets and bins so that when mommy brain sets in I have a system of checks and balances!

One more look at it:

The girls and Mr P will be sharing a room for the summer! 

Stay tuned on how we will make that work!

Hope baby girl's closet inspires you!

Flashback: Preston's Nursery

These past few weeks have been spent sorting, purging, soaking, washing, and building in preparation for the arrival of our baby girl. I'll be posting a series of the multitude of projects that we have been working on for her room and there will be plenty of before and afters. 

I have also been working on Preston's big boy room, and I got to thinking that I never did a post about his nursery. So, today is a little flashback to about this time (pregnancy timeline wise ~28 weeks) when we were expecting Mr. P!

I'll certainly have to dig around to find before photos of this room, but I'll tell you it was sherbet orange and mauve when we moved in. Ew. A couple gallons of paint, some chair rail installation, and a couple Billy Bookcases later this is what we came up with!

This weekend our little man will move into his big boy bed! I can not believe that he will be 2.5 years old on Sunday. It's so true that time flies when you're having fun!