Planked wall and lots of progress

A lot has been going on in this house lately, just not a lot of blogging.  School is back in full force for me and I am determined to keep it in high gear.  The hubby and I have been doing a lot to our house in the meantime.  I love all of the planked walls popping up throughout the blogging world and Pinterest.  We decided to make a feature wall using this style.

I followed a method similar to The House of Smiths.  They give a great tutorial of how they created this look.  I also used the underlayment and had Home Depot cut it in strips of 6”.  I will say that this did not always create the straightest cuts on my strips.  

We purchased this Ryobi Air Strike brad nailer for the project.  I have already found other uses for it and find it was a great purchase.

I learned a lot on this project and know now what I would have done differently.  My seam does not lie in the center of the wall and I was not able to achieve a seamless look.  I would now pay better attention to the centering of the seam.  You live, you learn.  Did the wall turn out perfectly? No.  Would I go back and change it now? No.  Its not perfect, but then again neither am I and so it is fitting.  I still absolutely love it and the impact it had on the room.

A work in progress…I’ll be back with more pictures of the changes going in on in our home!

 

Thanks for stopping by and happy crafting!

Erin

Fall Door Decor

 

I can’t believe that Thanksgiving is next week!  I feel like Halloween hit and we fast forwarded to Thanksgiving.  I didn’t get nearly half of the fall decorating done that I was thinking of and it will soon be time to put up Christmas décor.  One of my neighbors has already had his Christmas lights up for over a week and has been turning them on.  They are a little “Griswoldy”, but I guess the world could always use more cheer.  I’m hoping this year my husband will go all out with our lights, but we’ll see.  I don’t envy him getting up on the roof. 

One of the projects I did get to was this fall crate.  It was one of the projects for craft night, but we didn’t have enough time for it.  So I worked on it myself.

I wished we would have had time to work on these because I love how it turned out.  I bought the crates at Michael’s and stained it with the stain I had leftover from my side table. 

I used word processor and the font Blue Plate Special to create the wording.  I traced it onto the crate using graphite paper.   After painting the lettering, I used my sander to distress it a little.

I bundled up the corn stalks from my garden box and added a few things I found in my fall decorations.  I was certainly feeling ready for some hayrides and all things fall. 

This is one of my most favorite times of the year and I’m not quite ready to see it go.  The trees have lost almost all of their beautiful leaves and snow has already hit our valley.  This time of year will be one of the many blessings I will express thankfulness for this Thanksgiving.

Thanks for stopping by and happy crafting!

Erin

Calendar Activities

 

Hi, welcome back!  I hope you enjoyed my Thanksgiving Countdown calendar. I realized after my post yesterday, how much dust was on the table beneath these tags!  Oh my, time to break out some dusting spray. 

My children are 3 and 5, so these activities were created with them in mind.  You could easily adapt them for any age.  Here is a list of some the activities I used:

1. For Our Eyes- Watch a special Thanksgiving show together

2. We are kind to others- Think of something fun to do/give to others

3. For Our Teeth- Go to the dentist to keep our teeth healthy

4. For Good Food- Go the grocery store and pick out a food you haven’t tried

5. For Our Car-Go on a special outing

6. For Our Country- Recite the pledge of allegiance

7. For the Seasons- Go out and explore the falling leaves

8. For Our House- Play a cleaning game

9. For Turkeys- Make paper turkeys

10. For Our Cousins- Draw a picture and send it to our cousins

11. For Pies- Bake and deliver pies to people

12. For Our Soldiers- Send leftover Halloween candy to our troops

13. For Our Legs- Go outside and run and jump

14. For Books- Read some Thanksgiving books

15. For Our Computer- Send an email to someone we love

16. For Our Ears- Play some fun music

17. For Our Toys- Take some of the toys we haven’t been playing with to Goodwill to give to other kids

18. For Our Heavenly Father- Go on a nature walk and notice all of God’s creations

19. For Our Brother- Do something nice for our brother and be extra nice to him all day

20. For Pictures- Take a family picture

21. For Our Grandparents- Call them and tell them “I love you”

22. For Our Sister- Do something nice for our sister and be extra nice to her all day

23. For Daddy- Do something nice for daddy and be extra nice to him all day

24. For Each Other- Play a game together

25. For Our Hands- Do some finger painting

26. For Mommy- Do something nice for mommy and be extra nice to her all day

27. For Our Kitchen- Bake something fun together in the kitchen

28. For Our Friends- Make a special visit to some friends

29. For Prayer- Say a prayer before Thanksgiving dinner thanking God for all we have.

 

Well, thanks for stopping by and happy crafting!  I hope that you, too, can find these many blessings in your lives!

Erin

Thanksgiving Countdown Calendar

I want to foster in my children thankful, giving hearts.  I decided that I wanted them to spend more time during the holiday seasons focusing on all that we have to be thankful for.  I made this Thanksgiving Countdown calendar as a way of focusing on a few of the many things the Lord has blessed us with.  I came up with a small activity for each day to help my children recognize these blessings.

The board was purchased at Michaels and the elements were created using my Silhouette.  If you don’t have a Silhouette, you could easily create this with mini envelopes, scrapbooking paper and stickers. 

I used Microsoft word to create the activity cards and distressed the edges. I added the ribbon to make sure the cards were easy to pull out for little hands.  My son is very excited about the calendar this year and asks to do it each morning. This morning’s activity was a little less exciting for him as it was “We are Thankful for our Toys.”  For this activity, I ask each child to go through their toys and find some that they are no longer playing with.  We will then donate them.  We spent time this morning discussing how blessed we are that Mommy and Daddy have the ability to buy them toys and how we need to share those blessing with other less fortunate children.

Stop by tomorrow for a list of some of the activities I chose for our Thanksgiving Countdown.

Thanks for stopping by and happy crafting!

Erin