The Switch

I am the mother of 4 young children who are still in the "bedtime routine" mode.

As is typical with most young ones, the dark is not their friend.

But, their parents LOVE the dark.

My husband came up with a solution that I think puts him in the genius category: A Dimmer Switch

Full disclosure: I thought he was weird when he first suggested putting a dimmer switch on the hallway light. Dimmers were for setting the mood, whether it was eating dinner at the dining room table or watching a movie in the family room. But he did it anyway, and I love it!

When the kids are first put to bed, we turn on the hallway light all the way on.

BUT...once they fall asleep, we dim the hallway light down. There's just enough light that if they wake up, they can find their way to the bathroom (or our room). But it's dark enough that the hallway light doesn't bother the adults that aren't scared of the dark.

Is that a "Bright Idea" or a "Dim Idea"?

Because Super Heros need a place for their cape....

In case you don't know this, now is a great time to hit the thrift stores! Folks have donated to clear their closets for all of the new stuff from Santa. Plus it's a great way to beat cabin fever. It gets the kids out, it doesn't break the bank if I buy a $.50 plastic boat and it keeps an extremely busy 4 1/2 year old occupied for part of the day. (Plus I don't feel bad if I donate it right back a couple of weeks later!)

So thanks to these little escapes to the thrift stores, my project pile has grown! Fun and exciting things are coming your way!

Let's start with this little thing....

It was kind of a mess. It had bright, splotchy, pink paint. And whoever painted it must have done it on newspaper because there was paper stuck to it. But it was half off of $.69 and I had an idea!



I sanded the paint blobs and newspaper off. And then I gave it a coat of primer to try to hide some of the bright pink. And I used my paint pyramids. My brilliant husband got me these for Christmas! Are these perfect for my spray paint addiction or what?!



So after I primed it and sprayed it an off white.



I took it apart....



Modge Podged....



And look how pretty! Perfect for my daughter's room!



I used Command Adhesive strips to hang it. I didn't want to put holes in the door and with the strips I can move it up or down as much as I want.



Now my super hero child has a place to hang her cape and her ever-important purse, that has to go everywhere we go, has a peg as well!

Happy Friday!

Door Draft Blocker

So I totally missed last week, but we were Oh-so-busy. I figured you were all, too...so you'd forgive me. I actually had a very cute craft for last week, but just couldn't find the time to sit and blog about it, so I'm saving it for next year. :)

Today's idea came out of necessity. While we love the new house, we don't love the little draft that comes through the front door. This is how the husband has taken care of it:

Kind of creative...right? Yeah, so he asked me to come up with a nicer solution. So I looked around. There were some really creative door draft blockers (or whatever the name of this contraption is), there were dogs and snakes and other fun animals, but I'm a simple gal that likes the look of simplicity and also likes to make simple things so I just made this...

There's a perfectly good explanation for the white at the end of this door draft blocker thingy...but I'll explain later.

So, you will need fabric that is about 2-3 inches longer than the width of the door and at least 8 inches wide (the one shown at the bottom of my door was a 12 inch wide piece because there is a riser on the bottom of the door frame and the draft comes in above that so I needed a pretty big draft blocker).
You'll also need a sewing machine, needle and thread, scissors, a chopstick or pencil and a bag (or more) of kitty litter.

I've done it before with rice, but I read somewhere that if you did it with rice or beans, it would attract "pests" so one suggestion was kitty litter and it was cheap. It was $1.50 for this bag.

Cut your piece and then pin right sides together to form a long tube. You will sew down the long side and down one short side (you have to leave a side open to turn the tube around and fill it up). Please note that these pictures are of the first one I made where the fabric was 7 inches wide. After filling it up, I realized that it wasn't tall enough for the raised bottom of the door frame, so I had to cut a different tube that was from a piece of fabric 12 inches wide. So that's why these pictures the tube looks so skinny and the final one looks so fat!

I sewed a double stitch because in case one of the stitches came loose, I wanted a back up stitch so I didn't have kitty litter all over the place.

I used the chopstick to turn the tube right-side-out and also to poke out the corners so they are crisp.

Now it's time to fill it up. If you are like me, you didn't want to use your kitchen funnel to fill the tube up with kitty litter, so I cut the top off of a 2-liter bottle and used it to funnel the kitty litter in. I cut the bottom of the 2-liter bottle to use as the scooper as well.

When it's full you tuck in the edges and hand-sew it shut. I don't have a picture of this because I haven't hand-sewed mine yet. For my large and in charge draft blocker, one bag of kitty litter wasn't enough, so I just knotted the end until I can run to the store.

But for now, our rug is folded up and there is no drafty air coming in. And now that my sewing machine is out, I can fix all the clothing items that I said I would "get to" sometime.

And for those of you who were interested in what our christmas card display described in this post looked like this year, here it is:

Happy New Year!