sincerely yours, dena

When we go to the beach we always write the date and the beach name in the sand and take a picture. That way when it comes time to scrapbook we can introduce the pages within the picture. It’s especially fun when it’s my nephew Eric’s first time on the beach.

Man!!! I’ve hit the baby age… I feel like I’m making a congrats card every week. These paper diapers are making great mileage!

These flowers make a huge difference when decorating for a party. I made these a few years ago for a “Mexican Themed Baby Shower” at work. They are going to get some more mileage this summer at a bridal shower I’m helping throw.

Idea for “She who must not be named“

While drinking my tea this morning I caught myself looking at this shadow box I made 3 years ago. It’s got a pict and beach findings from our first trip to a Maine Beach with Rubbles. It was fun to compare the Rubman then to the massive beast he is now. 3 years and about 70 lbs later, he looks a little different. I’m going to go hunting for a similar shadow box and make another collage with a more recent photo.

One of my favorite holidays is Easter. I remember as a kid how much fun it was to hunt for my basket early Easter Morning. I still carry on the tradition, kids, adults and pets. This year we had 2 house guests that got to share in the fun. I’m not afraid to hid in challenging places. Everybody knows who’s basket is who’s by the picture on it. Rubbles found his basket first this year.

These are really easy to make. I went to Target and bought a bag of cloth diapers. At my local fabric store, Mariner’s Compass, they sell little mini scraps for $2.99. Just a quick straight sew after turning the sides under and a little embrodiery of the baby’s last name initial and you got a cute burpie rag that is ready for spit up.

I have a dog. I have a black dog. With owning a dog comes the piles of dog hair that I endlessly sweep up around my house. Being the suckers that we are, the dog sleeps in the bed. Keeping the bed clean from hair is a useless battle. I should have bought stock in those lint rollers. I gave up and got smart. Now I roll an extra bed sheet at the foot of the bed. When it’s time for bed, I roll the sheet to cover the bed spread and the dog and the dog hair get contained on the sheet. When I make the bed in the morning I roll the sheet back to the foot of the bed. It’s so much easier to wash/shake a bed sheet than the comforter not to mention less expensive!

I did a lot of web trolling before embarking on this project. I knew the magnetic paint had been well test and well received. The white board paint on the other hand has had mixed reviews and some alarming blog entries. Some whiteboard paint has to be wiped off within 24 hours or it becomes permanent. One web suggestion was to use shower fiberglass. Since I wanted a magnetic version, that wasn’t an option for me. In Lowe’s paint department I found a version put out by Rustoleum. I’m happy with the results but if you are going to homegrow your whiteboard I suggest you read the following tips first.

Tips:

• Sand the wall. Sand it good, sand it real good.
• Lots of coats. The paint can lies. It says 3-4 coats and they are full of crap. I put 10 coats of magnetic paint on. The stronger your magnets are the better.
• You are under a time constraint. You have 2 hours to paint once you mix the white board paint together. Don’t make the same mistake I did and in the last 15 mins cake the paint on and walk away. Cake the paint on and check it every 2 mins and roll over it with a relatively dry roller to avoid dripping.

• Trim it out. Because the paint lines will never have clean edges (no matter how good a taper you are) it’s good to paint and fire up some trim around your board. I used leftover door trim I found in the basement.
• Ink Jet printable magnetic paper is expensive. To save money, save the magnets that come for free on top of phonebooks. Sticker paper is a whole lot cheaper, print on it and stick it to the freebie magnet. You can use the magnets for every month things like: the days of the week, month name and reoccurring events (trash day) so you don’t have to rewrite it every month.
• Hide all permanent markers. Guest are idiots and don’t read before they write. Mitigate your risk by not keeping any other markers but dry erase near by. Once I feel capable of drawing straight lines I’ll use a permanent marker to draw in my calendar grid.

My nephew Eric (Edog) and I had some fun crafting with finger paint. Once he went to bed, I cut hearts out of his masterpieces and put together valentines for his parents to send out. A few weeks later I got my valentine in the mail personalized with his picture. Once he’s able, I plan on naming him the Chief Executive of the Finger Painting painting division of SYD.