Lego Shelves

My sons are Lego fanatics.

Our house runneth over with Legos.  Legos are all they ask for at Christmas, birthdays, and when they want to spend money earned from jobs.  With four boys, that equals a lot of Legos. In order to prevent all of their creations from ending up like this.....

We built shelves away from little hands.  I look at this bucket and think of the hundreds of dollars sitting in a bucket from my first son.  It's all good though, because this is where they come up with their own creations. Which is the beauty of Legos!

We love this "City Lego" line too much to see it end up in pieces. The boys love pulling all of the sets down and playing with them. Hours and hours of fun!  So, with the help of my second Lego loving son, we put together simple shelves over this past Christmas break to give the Legos a home.  

We used inexpensive black shelf brackets from Home Depot and (1x8) pine boards.  We love the deep boards, they work well to hold the large Lego sets. My son helped me stain each board with a grey stain from Minwax. We put the brackets up and secured each board with screws.  Super easy! 

My sons love the shelves.  They are the official designated spot in the house to proudly display (& protect) all Legos....spoiled boys I tell you! How about you?  Do you have any great Lego storage ideas? 

We found this clever idea of how to store and organize Lego directions at meredithanderic.blogspot.com. I put my son to work on that project too!

Nicole and I are getting together tomorrow to work on a few Spring projects.  We are so ready for Spring!

Love....Is For The Birds....

Happy Valentines Day!!!

I just had to share my daughter's fun Valentines today.

They were so funny to do and easy!

Over the last couple of years I have become a devoted fan to photo Valentines.

Not only are they personalized but they are so easy to do.

Picasa makes it easy to add the text right onto the picture and all you have to do is hit print!

Our little ducks which are not so little now were this year's theme

and we've been thinking up funny sayings since school started of what to say.

"Be Mine, Valentine....or my Heart will QUACK!"

We hole punched 2 little holes on the side and slipped a heart lollipop in place.

Next project was her funny Valentine box.

I didn't get great pictures of how it worked.  This year all the kids in the district are learning about

simple machines and had to incorporate them into their boxes.

I told Candace we needed a whole post on simple machine ideas because there

are none out there.  Well, at least no pictures and I need pictures!

The back had a lever (like a see saw).  We cut a small hole and threaded a shim

in so that the mouth would open to eat the Valentines.

Then a thousand little squares of tissue paper later (to hide the square box shapes)

I had a very happy little girl and some really weird looks from people as we drove to school.

We hope you have a wonderful Valentine's Day!

Now....off to the school parties~

Love Bugs

Is anyone else scrambling to make Valentines to hand out at school? A couple of weeks ago I found this adorable paper at the craft store and knew that Valentine butterflies were in my future.

The paper is Paper Note by American Crafts. The whole paper line is really fun!

I wanted to attach them to a treat with the clothespins. I was able to put a few treats in a little snack size bag and clip the butterfly on. I've seen several butterfly ideas for snacks around on the Internet and knew these would work perfectly! I cut out several designs of butterflies that were patterned in the paper and glued them onto wooden clothespins. I painted the clothespins in different colors to match the papers and used really thin jewelry wire as antennas that were attached with a dab of hot glue.

The wings are glued to one side of the inside of the clothespin.

To create a bit of movement make sure to bend slightly the top wings up and the bottom wings down.

Aren't they so fun?  I love how these beautiful papers and designs can "come to life" so to speak
with just a little glue and love.  Yes, cheesy, but it is for Valentine's day....:)

The hardest part was making up the template. Here's a shot of the ones I used, yes, they were eyeballed and cut out of notebook paper that was in front of me. I would probably recommend using card stock or card board from a cereal box~it would ease the tracing.

Having all boys I can only get away with this with my youngest who is 3.

He didn't care as long as there were treats attached.

Now only 3 more ideas to come up with.....

Tomorrow Nicole has her daughter's duck themed Valentines to share, you won't want to miss out on them~they are hilarious. Good luck all you procrastinators~we're in the same boat, but at least we have Downton Abbey to watch while we work!

WYLTC? Crafty Sisters Chevron Heart Flower Garden Stakes

It's our turn today over at Wood You Like To Craft with this month's theme of Chevron and we are sharing a simple Valentine's Day wood craft you'll want to add to your "to do" list! ~ Come on over and take a peek!

Wood You Like To Craft Is Back!!!

Our wonderful little group of Wood Crafters from Wood You Like To Craft
took a much needed hiatus for the last couple of months.
With babies being born and moving across the country it was a much needed hiatus as you can imagine.
Well this week we are all back~so in case you've missed it so far our theme this month was chosen by Melinda from Under My Umbrella and it was CHEVRON!

Monday Melinda started us all off with her cute Chevron frame:

Tuesday was Krystal from Sassy Sanctuary with her sweet LOVE letters:
Wednesday is Wendy from Craft Goodies with her fun and easy Chevron accented frame:

Tomorrow we'll be doing Chevron Crafty Sister style~so make sure to come back to visit and check out the full tutorials at Wood You Like To Craft!

Love Shack!

Yup, I said Love Shack!  It's fitting though right?
A couple of weeks ago I was enlightening my daughter on all things of my youth including all the crazy songs that our little brother and I would sing at the top of our lungs as we drove around our yard on the 3 wheeler. I've completely dated myself haven't I?  I'm sure our neighbors thought we were completely nuts.
Well I still want to dance every time I hear the song and want to call my brother and sing it to him over the phone.  I'm sure he's glad when those calls go straight to voice mail.:)

Well Candace and I always love playing around with Valentine candies and I got the best Gingerbread house mold before Christmas that I never got a chance to use.  It's a Pampered Chef mold from 20 years ago!  (Thank you Ebay!)
We decided to use sugar cookie dough instead of gingerbread and it worked great.
Be forewarned though~it takes a lot of dough!  One single batch of our Mom's Famous Sugar Cookie dough makes one house.  Make sure to cook the dough a bit longer so it's nice and brown around the corner and will be extra strong for the house.  I cooked mine about 12 minutes each.

 Gather some great treats!  Keeping them separated in a muffin tin worked great!  The hardest part was keeping Daddy's hands out!

The frosting is the most crucial part!  You have to have some serious "glue" and I always get nervous about the kids licking their fingers with raw egg white in Royal Icing.  You will love Wilton's Meringue Powder!  It contains pasteurized dried egg whites and it's so easy to use.
The recipe is quick and easy too!

Wilton's Royal Icing
3 Tablespoons Wilton Meringue Powder
4 cups sifted powdered sugar
6 Tablespoons of water

Beat all ingredients at low speed 7-10 minutes until icing forms peaks.  Makes about 3 cups.

One batch was enough for us to put together 2 houses.  The frosting dried rock hard and fast!
This was such a fun project to do and the kids had so much fun!

Now to fill up the Valentine advent calendar and get out the rest of the Valentine decorations I procrastinated getting out.....

If you are looking for some fun Valentine printable freebies make sure to check out some cute subway art
for every season by Elise at Halloween Costumes.com

                                                 
and......if you're in the mood for some B-52's.....click the picture!
Happy 1st of February!