Rock Box

My project of making a wooden sandbox is now complete.  I wanted to get rid of our sandbox because of its flimsy concave lid that filled with water.  And it was small but was about the biggest that would fit in the car.  So making one made sense.  And as much as I like to think I'm too sensible to care too much about what something looks like, I happen to love our beautiful backyard and there's no way a plastic sandbox could ever add to that.

I tried to keep it as cheap and simple as possible so the box is just made from 2x10s with landscaping fabric stapled to the bottom.  The lid was a little more tricky.  I used 2 2x4' panels of 1/4" plywood and put a hinge between them.  Making it hinged makes it much easier to manoeuvre.  Underneath the hinge I attached a strip of tarp to keep water from streaming in through the crack.  And around the edges of the lid I attached strips of wood to make a lip to keep it in the right spot (maybe I should have taken a few more pictures to show how I did my lid instead of just a million of Henry).  

We mostly just weather proofed the lid since it gets the most exposure and is a thin wood.  (Kevin and I both hate weatherproofing and staining and Kevin says the only time I ever want to use weather proofing is when I'm pregnant and have an excuse to make him do it for me.)  I am actually worried about the lid being so thin that it will crack but when I was shopping for it I was so preoccupied with making sure it wasn't too heavy that I didn't even think about that.  

And in the process of researching making a wooden sandbox I came across this post on Young House Love about the health hazards associated with chronic exposure to modern manufactured play sand.  It was something that I probably could have put into perspective and decided that the joys of a sandbox were worth the minuscule added risks.  But then I fell in love with the idea of a rock box like they made on Young House Love.  Henry had been playing in the sandbox a whole lot recently and so I had been sweeping up sand in the house a whole lot recently.  A rock box sounded lovely and clean.

So we found pea gravel at Lowe's and bought $50 worth (it was a little more expensive than the play sand and it is a big 4x4' rock box).  And on Sunday we removed the sandbox and replaced it with our awesome rock box.  Henry was so excited, his arms were flapping like crazy as Kevin poured the rocks.

So he seems to love the rock box.  We were nervous that he would miss sand.  He asked about his sandbox once after we'd been playing in the rock box for several hours but seemed fine with it when we told him that there was no more sandbox because now we had a rock box instead.  We had perfect weather on Sunday so we were out there just about all day playing with Henry.  His favourite thing was pretending to make chocolate chip cookies.

And doesn't the wooden box look so much nicer than a plastic thing in my beautiful backyard?

The Play Kitchen

We gave Henry this play kitchen for his birthday. He plays with it a bit once or twice a day. He sometimes needs some suggestions about what to do. And he mostly likes looking through the food and pretending to eat it.

There is a before picture of this cabinet that I made the kitchen from somewhere on the computer but since I started the project back in September I don't want to look through for it. But it was a TV cabinet that I turned on its side and changed up a bit. There was actually quite a bit of cutting and screwing - changing one big door into two, making that top shelf smaller to keep room for playing, adding shelves inside the oven and fridge, and cutting a hole for the sink. There was even some soldering as that was honestly the only way I could imagine to do the faucet affordably in a way that I liked - it is some elbows and short pieces of copper pipe soldered together. I stapled that fabric on the back to be the backsplash, that perfect fabric just happened to be in my stash of fabric.

And then searching for pots and pans and cutlery and crockery took awhile. We found most of it at thrift stores, I was especially pleased with the Sesame Street plates I found. And Kevin and I made some felt food as well (so fun when the husband wants to make crafts with me!). And I did buy some velcro cutting food. His favourites are the cutting food and the pasta.

And I managed to squeeze it into our kitchen. That was important for me because I had this image in my head of us cooking together each in our own kitchens which has actually happened a few times.

And now that huge project is over. It turned out to be a lot of work but all of it fun (except painting). It was just the perfect project, simple enough that I could just figure out how to do things on my own (with lots of insipration from google) but the culmination of all that work is a pretty big thing I think - a play kitchen with doors on hinges and knobs that turn and Henry knew just what it was as soon as he saw it. And after a week and a half of playing nothing is breaking yet!

A Sweater for Henry

I've been working on this sweater for Henry for about a month on and off and now it's finally ready. I used this 7-hour toddler sweater pattern but made it all in garter stitch just for something a bit interesting. I wasn't sure if I liked the garter stitch until I added the pockets - with the pockets it didn't look like such a blob. It's made from a thrift store pure wool that's a bit scratchy so I'm glad it turned out just big enough that it can be worn as more of a jacket over other sweaters, keeping that scratchy wool away from his skin.

And the most fun part was that I made the buttons! I made them from a stick I found in the backyard. I just put the stick in the vice, used a handsaw to slice small sections and then held the little buttons with my hand while drilling two holes for the thread. Then I did some minimal sanding. This was something I'd been meaning to try for ages and I'm so glad I did. Even though I thought it would be easy it was even easier than I had thought. I definitely want to do this again, am thinking I should gather some sticks for this purpose before winter comes.

Kevin's 27th Birthday

We celebrated Kevin's 27th birthday yesterday. We had a nice day. I cooked him a very special dinner of duck confit (from our local fancy grocery store), roasted garlic mashed potatoes, glazed dijon carrots, and a warm portobello mushroom salad.


We just relaxed for the rest of the evening, took Henry out for a walk and watched a movie.


And I did get his music room all ready in time for his birthday. We were lucky enough to be given a nice desk for the room from Kevin's aunt and uncle, very lucky since I had been planning on buying him one as part of his birthday present.


So all I had to do was rearrange the furniture we already had down there and make and put up the shelves of course.


These shelves go all around the room with just 2 breaks at the window and the door. They hold Kevin's beer bottle collection which he started less than 2 years ago and is currently at around 150 bottles. Of course he has now tried just about everything presently available for sale in Ontario so the collection's rate of growth is slowing.

I tried to make the shelves very simply and cheaply while still looking good. So I cut 2x4s to length, rounded the edges where they meet the door and window using the jig saw, painted them white, and mounted them by screwing small corner brackets (which I also painted white) to the studs. I used the same method as here.


And there is room for the collection to grow (though Kevin has already been talking about a second row!).

Kevin's Shelves

I need to get around to taking pictures of what I've been sewing so I can update this blog. But for now, here is one picture of the shelving I've been making for Kevin's beer bottle collection that I got up yesterday. I used a similar method similar to the $6 shelves. I will post more pictures when I've painted the screw heads and done up the room a bit. The goal is to turn the basement bedroom into a pleasant music room for Kevin in time for his birthday in a couple weeks.


And here are some recent pictures of the toddler. He went through a week and a half of very bad teething pains but now those are gone and we're all appreciating having this perfect happy toddler back.

Custom Built Furniture

I finished up a piece of furniture I've been working on for awhile this weekend. It fills that awkward space created by having the TV cabinet in the corner at an angle. And it gives us a tiny shelf, a little more space for puting toys away. And the top is a shelf/seat in a pinch. It also has a little triangular shelf up top to fill in the triangular gap (I am realizing at this point that my pictures are a bit lacking oh well) which gives us just a little extra surface space that Henry can't reach (a bit pointless to put his little toy horse up there but I'm sure it will come in handy for other things later).

I made it out of an old Ikea slat bed that I rescued from my neighbour's garbage, some leftover pine laminate for the shelf, a wrecked coffee table top for the seat, scrap 2x4 for the structural pieces, and an old trench coat lining for the fabric. All I had to buy was the foam for the seat. And I ruined any chance of it being considered a bit 'eco-friendly' by slathering it in stain and urethane that I had to buy as well. While I was breathing in the fumes while staining I did vow that I would look into more environmentally friendly methods for the next thing I make. Might have to stick with painted furniture.

I'm very pleased with how it turned out. I wasn't sure that any kind of furniture would be able to fill that funny corner without looking crowded. And I think I came up with something simple enough that I could make look good and something quite useful. Henry's toys are just slightly more 'put away' when they're thrown in the basket on the shelf as opposed to a basket on the floor. And I think I totally pulled off the shelf/seat.

Henry likes it too.

Trivet

Today I finally finished the giant trivet that I started working on back before the holidays. We have a beautiful teak dining table so we are always careful not to put hot (or even warm!) things directly on it. So it's usually a mess of mismatch trivets. So I wanted to make one trivet big enough to hold all (or almost all) the hot pots for one meal. So I made this:


You can tell I'm quite pleased with how it turned out because I've included 4 pictures of one simple trivet. I got the idea from Ken Burton's Table Saw Book but made it larger to fulfill my vision. I chose 9" x 24". And like always I just used some scrap 2 x 4 s and my table saw. Then stained and varnished it so I think it looks like a quite nice trivet rather than a hunk of structural lumber on the dining table.

And here it is in action, we had fajitas for dinner tonight and it held all 3 of our hot dishes. Perfect!

Homemade Christmas Gifts Part 2

These are the gifts I made for Kevin and Henry this year.


This is my masterpiece that I started making for Kevin in October. It was a lot of work and used all my skills: sewing, embroidery, painting, woodworking. I was inspired by a painting we saw in an expensive baby shop that Kevin loved. The painting cost $300 and I thought I can recreate that. But since I'm not really a painter I thought I'd do it with fabric. All I painted was the Earth just using regular acrylic paint. It was really fun to figure out how to put it together as I went along. Briefly, here is how I made it. Maybe Kevin will even read it and gain a new appreciation for my work of art.

1.Got a piece of canvas (quite loosely woven to allow for easy embroidery), sprayed it black with fabric spray paint.
2.Using gold thread in my sewing machine, sewed on the lines representing the orbits.
3.Found various circular objects in my home the right size for each planet and the sun and traced them. Cut two circles for each planet, sewed them together, turned and top stitched them onto the fabric. (That is how I do applique, prefer it to other methods and feel it's much sturdier.)
I did add some embellishment to some of the planets like that big swirl on Jupiter and some sewn lines on Venus.
4.Sewed on small buttons to represent the dwarf planets.
5.Did A LOT of embroidery for the labels.
6.Using wood from 2x4s, made a wooden frame.
7.Stapled the fabric onto the frame.

And the other presents I made for them were matching slippers and PJ pants. For Kevin's slippers I used this pattern that I bought years ago, he needed new ones because the ones I made him originally were finally worn out. And this time I used some scrap yoga mat material that Len's Mill Store was selling for the sole so they are extra comfy. For the bottom of the sole I use fake suede upholstery fabric and that held up very well. On Henry's I added some vinyl to the sole to make them non-slip. For Henry's slipper pattern I just copied his Robeez. In these photos he is wearing just one slipper, we seem to have left the other one at Nana's.


And for the pants I just traced some of their existing pants, Indietutes has great instructions for that here. I put seam pockets in for Kevin because I know he hates pants without pockets. And the material is just a flannel sheet that the thrift store had for 50 cents and it has dogs and cats snuggling each other so I had to use it for something.