Tales from the Top Bunk: Earning the Girl Scout Senior Room Makeover Badge

The Girl Scout Senior Room Makeover badge is so fun, and so worthwhile. I mean, doesn't it make a lot of sense that in a lot of cases, a kid who is now fourteen will want to change some things about her bedroom, or bathroom, or playroom, or any other personal space? I know that there are families who've moved, giving a kid an all-new space to decorate, or who regularly redecorate, anyway, but surely my kids are not the only kids who are still living in the exact same room that we moved them into eight years ago, sleeping on the exact same bunk beds.

Heck, I don't think the kids have even switched bunks in at least seven years!

At the same time, though, this badge seems like a challenging one to earn as a troop. Every kid's personal space is so... personal! Any project that you do as a group, whether it's canvas art or a mosaic picture frame or a throw pillow, isn't necessarily going to fit every kid's idea of what she wants in her own space, and learning to take ownership over choosing what goes in one's space--and therefore the responsibility of care and maintenance--over one's own space seems like the overarching point of the badge.

Nevertheless, for an individual kid--for MY individual kid, in particular--this Room Makeover badge was a perfect fit. I pulled it out last summer, actually (I pulled it up on my phone, even, crammed into the back seat of our little car with both Syd and Will, on the way to the airport to send them both off to Camp Grandma for a week), when Syd suggested that maybe she wanted some new things for her bedroom, and following the badge over the course of almost an entire year turned out to be a great way to guide Syd through the process of redecorating her personal space.

For Syd, the process of earning the Room Makeover badge was also different than is written in the badge book. The badge book has a specific skill set that it wants a kid to learn during the makeover process--she should be able to paint, sew, repurpose, and build, with a level of craftsmanship that makes her products attractive and usable. Well, Syd is my crafty kid, and she can already do all of that, and so instead of rehearsing every single skill and requiring her to create something that she didn't really want in her space, we focused on self-expression and, again, building that ownership over her space that also includes its care and maintenance.

Step 1: Gather ideas and inspiration.

Syd came to the table with some ideas about what she wanted in her top bunk personal space, and for everything else of course there's Pinterest, but for this particular step, I also wanted her to take a comparative, global view of what a teenager's personal space can consist of. Fortunately, there are several projects that accomplish exactly this and that are easily available to view. My favorite is this James Mollison book:

But if you can get by without the captions that contextualize every image, you can also see them here. This is a great book because not only do you see examples of shocking wealth, but you also see examples of shocking poverty, all through the lens of what that tends to look like when reflected by a child's sleeping space.

To get the same global perspective of older young adults' bedrooms, here's another good photo essay.

I also wanted an inter-generational perspective, so I found this epic set of photos of teenagers' bedrooms in the 1980s. For a funny look at complete unreality, here's another set of images of teenagers' bedrooms taken from teen films of the early 2000s, and another set from the 1990s--everyone had so much room!

And obviously, we couldn't finish up this topic without requiring that Matt tell Syd all about his own childhood bedroom (LEGOs for days! A Nintendo he bought with his own money!). As for me, I still have the rock-n-roll kitty cat poster that was the star of my bedroom for my entire childhood. It is my precious, and I will never consent to be parted from it.

Step 2: Paint something.

Nothing got painted. Not that I don't think that the space couldn't have used some freshening up, but Syd wasn't into the idea, so I let her focus on the plenty of projects that she WAS interested in.

Step 3: Sew or glue something.

So, indeed, nothing got painted, but Syd did a LOT of work on this step. The way that the kids' bunk beds are built (they're your bog-standard IKEA Kura set up upside-down, with a wooden sleeping platform built by Matt on the bottom solely so that Will can't grow up and tell everyone that her parents made her spend her entire childhood sleeping on a mattress on the literal floor), the top of the top bunk is basically at adult eye level, and so it's no wonder that someone whose sleeping space is at eye level would long for a nice curtain around her bed.

I gave Syd a pretty generous (for me, lol!) budget for her room makeover, mostly because it'd been so long since she'd had anything new for her room, but also because if taking ownership over her own space DOES lead her to take responsibility for its care and maintenance, then I am all for that! So I let Syd pick out a really lovely gauze, told her to research how wide the curtain should be (here's the answer to that!), and purchased the yardage that she told me to.

Syd and Matt scavenged a curtain rod from the garage (why do we have a curtain rod in the garage? Where did it come from? When did I have curtains that I do not now have?), and Syd measured its circumference to get the measurement of the channel she'd need to sew in her fabric to accommodate it. We went back and forth about tabs and grommets and clips and other reasonable ways to hang curtains (can you tell what team I was on?), but Syd was adamant that she wanted her curtain mounted the way that she wanted it mounted, so I settled for making sure she knew what the other options were, and then left her to it.

I DID win the "Do I really need to pre-wash my fabric?" battle, though. To the claim of "I don't need to make sure the curtain is pre-shrunk because I'm never going to ever wash it," I countered with "Oh yes you WILL wash it!"

To be fair, though, I don't think the child has ever seen me wash a curtain before...

Syd's other dream curtain attribute was twinkle lights. I mean, if you're going to have a gauzy curtain, you practically require twinkle lights, yes?

Unfortunately, it's never Christmas when you need it to be, so we had to rely on Amazon for twinkle lights, and I don't know if we just had bad luck, or if there really is some kind of national twinkle light racket going on, but the first two sets of twinkle lights that Syd picked out were absolute trash and had to be returned. Eventually, we seem to have scored with these sound-activated twinkle lights. They work for a change (even though Syd has already had to repair the wiring after her murderbrat got ahold of them...), they're just the length, size, and color that she wanted (because apparently warm white and cool white are different whites and this difference is important), and they blink in time to her music. I would have sold my mother to have had something like that at her age!

And actually, Syd did help Matt build a wall bracket for one end of the curtain rod--oh, and she painted it, too! She DID paint something!--and she helped him install it, so I guess she technically completed other parts of the badge that I didn't even count because I'm mean.

Step 4: Redo something. 

We played around with some ideas for this step, but ultimately, nothing stuck out as something Syd definitely wanted to do to her space.

Step 5: Build something.

The other thing that Syd really wanted to DIY for her space was a light-up photo wall. She found another super long set of twinkle lights that she could drape back and forth across the wall next to her bed--

--and it even came with adorable teeny clothespins for photos.

If only she had a bunch of teeny photos!

Matt showed Syd how to upload the photos from her ipod to a graphic design program and tile them onto a canvas, and Syd made me several 4" x 6" prints' worth of teeny photos that I printed for her.

When the photos arrived, Syd cut them out and pinned them up, and I think they look so cheerful and adorable in her space:



Because I can't even tell you when the last time I'd bought my kids new bedding was, and one of the things that Syd wanted in her room WAS new bedding to match her decor, it's a good thing she'd already earned the Girl Scout Cadette Comparison Shopping badge, and was quite capable of setting up her own criteria and searching for the best sheets for her price point. I was less enthusiastic about letting her also pick out a blanket, because OMG we already have so many blankets, and I feel like I do nothing but make more quilts every year, but apparently we do not have any blankets, nor any quilts, in Syd's specific top bunk color scheme, and fine, I might as well make up for eight years of never buying the kid a thing for her room all in one go.

And also a pillow that cost more than I thought it should. How much do y'all think is a reasonable amount of money to spend on a pillow? Is it thirty dollars?

Story time: When I was a teenager, I got a job pretty much as soon as I could drive, and a lot of the reason was so that I could have ownership over my own possessions, especially my clothes. I was both a fat kid and raised by my grandparents, and I spent my entire childhood either being stuffed into whatever hand-me-downs from my older cousin that I could be stuffed into or wearing clothes that my grandmother picked out or sewed for me. From the former, there were a lot of itchy dresses and corduroy pants (fun fact: fat kids HATE corduroy pants!). From the latter, there were things like polyester granny panties exactly the same as the ones my own grandmother wore, and one-size denim jumpers, the pattern for which started off as the pattern to make my junior high choir concert uniform but Mamma thought it was cute and should be immortalized in denim.

It wasn't cute, and it shouldn't have been immortalized in denim.

ANYWAY, even when I had my own money I wasn't a big spender. I mostly bought stuff like cotton panties and concert T-shirts from concerts I didn't go to (I STILL have my Pink Floyd concert T-shirt from Russia; it's as soft as butter and thin as tissue paper, and I'll probably be buried in it one day). I never felt like I spent any kind of big money, and yet every time I came home with a shopping bag my grandfather, who was, to be fair, himself raised during the Great Depression, absolutely grilled me about what I'd bought and how much it cost. And no matter what it was or how much I'd spent, when I told him the number he'd always suck in his breath and be disappointed at my excess.

Like, after a while I started lying, even, just saying some ridiculously low number that you couldn't possibly buy a pair of jeans or whatever for, even at Wal-mart, and he'd still do it. For him, it was more the principle of the thing--he didn't want me to spend my hard-earned money frivolously (or, possibly, at all...). For me, though, it started to feel like maybe I didn't deserve a $12 Russian concert T-shirt, or a $16 pair of jeans, or a $4 pack of cotton panties. Which is not something that Pappa would have ever believed, himself, but I feel like kids internalize stuff that you bitch about, even if you're not bitching at them, necessarily. And maybe, you know, I don't want Syd to feel like she doesn't deserve a $30 memory foam pillow just because her parents sleep on pillows so old I don't even know how long we've had them.

Actually, our pillows kind of suck. Maybe I deserve a $30 memory foam pillow, too! Unless that's a ridiculous amount to spend on a pillow? Which brings me back to my original point, which is that I have no idea how much is appropriate to spend on a pillow, and $30 feels like a lot, but I can afford it and therefore I'm not going to bitch about it to Syd. Instead, I'll just bitch about it for six paragraphs to you, because you're my safe space for bitching about stuff.

So even though this Senior Room Makeover badge didn't come together quite the way it does in the badge book, I think Syd (and I!) got a lot out of it. Syd got a chance to really think about what she wants her space to look like now that she's a teenager, and she learned how to make that vision a reality for herself. She got some nice, new bedding that she was definitely in need, of, anyway, and it was good timing for developing a routine for the care and maintenance of her belongings.

Please let me know for future reference how much is appropriate to spend on a pillow.

DIY Wooden Headboard for under $60

This article was originally published here on Crafting a Green World in 2016.

Guess what we did over winter break?

I don't have a "before photo," so just imagine that prior to building our DIY wooden headboard, our bed was basically consisted of a mattress on top of a platform.

Super classy, right?

I really like the look of a giant, rustic, wooden headboard, but I don't have access to antique barnwood or other salvaged wood, I'm not comfortable with keeping pallet wood that close to my head, even if it's well sanded and well sealed, and I didn't want to pay for or really even use fake but easy-to-apply laminate. That left us with using new, though natural, materials, from our local big-box hardware store.

With those supplies, plus a little jiggering around, we figured out how to get the look that I wanted in a single day for less than sixty dollars--and that includes buying the wood stain, which you may not necessarily need to do.

DIY Wooden Headboard

Here's what we used:

• two shelving unit end frames. These are wooden frames with metal brackets, designed to allow you to add your own shelves. You'll be turning these on their sides and stacking them, so that you'll have a large frame that's about 6 feet wide and four feet tall. People want to get rid of these all the time--we actually had one randomly sitting in our garage--so you could try to find one at your local ReStore or on Freecycle before you buy it new. It won't matter if it's in poor condition, as it won't be visible. 
• tongue and groove wooden planks. These are plain, unfinished wooden planks with tongue and groove edges so that you can line them up nicely. By using these, I had to give up on the staggered look that I'd wanted, but the ease of placing them perfectly and making the job quicker and simpler was worth it. We used seven of these for our headboard, although one is completely covered by the mattress, so we could have skipped that one and saved a few bucks.
• screwdriver, drill, and drill bits. You'll need to screw the end frames into the wall, and the wooden planks into the end frames. 
• water-based stain (optional). For some reason, I find that whatever stain I buy, it always looks much darker than I think it will, so I generally go a couple of shades lighter when I choose it.

1. Lay everything out to make sure that you like it. There's no cutting involved in this project, so you really can lay your entire headboard out on the floor to make sure that the pieces will go together the way that you want and that you like the look. 

2. Stain the wood planks. My kids helped me with this step, and although I was a little afraid that they'd do a wonky job, fortunately stain is very forgiving.

And yes, as our headboard that stain looks at least two shades darker than it does in this photo.

I did not seal the planks, and I may live to regret that, but it saved me a lot of time, they look fine, and really, how much wear and tear can a headboard possibly get? Don't answer that if you're gonna be gross. 

3. Screw the frames to the wall. Matt set the bottom of the bottom frame just above the top of our platform, so that the platform could still sit flush to the wall (and he found my Fitbit! I thought that I'd lost that thing forever!), leveled it, and screwed it into the studs. Remember, you're setting these frames sideways, so that each one is six feet long and two feet tall. Once the bottom frame is in, the top frame can sit right on top of it--just double check that it's level before you screw it into the studs.

4. Screw the wood planks into the frame. Although you have to be mindful of those metal brackets, you can otherwise just screw the planks into the wooden frame. I also did not fill in the screw holes, and although I was a little afraid that the screws might catch my hair, they're far enough to either side and inset enough that they don't. You can see in the photo above that these planks extend just far enough to each side of the frame that we were able to hide a power strip on each side--of course, all the crap that we plugged into each power strip has wires sticking out, but it still looks better than it did before. 

Three years on, the headboard still looks brand-new, so I'm super smugly satisfied that I didn't bother to seal it. The rest of our bedroom is still pretty janky, but maybe in another three or four years I'll be in the mood to update something else...

We Built an In-Home Ballet Studio for our Young Ballerina

The genesis of this project/home remodel was the PVC pipe ballet barre that Matt and the older kid made for the younger kid for Christmas last year. I suggested it as a present because I thought that she would love it, and she did, but...

...apparently, if you give a ballerina a ballet barre, she'll ask for a full-length, wall-mounted mirror to go with it.

It took me a few months to casually suss out the logistics, but finally, in consultation with the younger kid and Matt, we decided that--well, remember those wall-mounted shelves that Matt made?

I'd insisted that the shelves shouldn't go all the way to the adjacent wall because we have yet another door to the outside there (we have FIVE doors to the outside in our strange, not-really-that-large house) and I thought it would be weird if the door knocked into the shelves when it opened.

Well, it turns out that if you actually don't care about that at all, you've given yourself another full six feet of wall to work with!

BUT you're going to have to empty those shelves--

--unscrew them from the floor and wall, and move them.

They're maybe a teensy bit wobbly now, but don't tell Matt.

I was excited about emptying the shelves, because that's where we keep board games, puzzles, and floor toys, and now that I've got these great, big girls, I expected that I'd be able to get rid of just absolute loads of games and toys. After all, these big girls don't still play Secret Garden and Professor Noggin, do they?

They do.

They don't still want Lincoln Logs and Kapla blocks and marble runs readily accessible, do they?

They do.

They're not still interested in building race car tracks and zipping their Darda cars through them, are they?

Actually, they're not, they say, and so I have it on my to-do list to ebay that giant Rubbermaid bin full of Darda tracks, but even those got one last huzzah:

We bought two of these 60"x36" mirrors, and with much terror and uncertainty about the quality of our walls, Matt mounted them in our brand-new swath of wall space:

He's got my stash cushion foam there to pad the mirrors while we were fiddling with them. I really should use up the rest of that cushion foam and free up some closet space, but then what would we do if we wanted to mount more giant mirrors?

 

When they were mounted, all we had to do was move the kid's ballet barre in front of it, and she's all set!

It's a great place to pester Jones, the world's crankiest kitten:

And it's also a good spot for some impromptu ballet practice, because of course technique class and jazz class aren't nearly enough dancing for one Saturday!

I'd like to add some framed prints and signed programs to the kid's studio area, but I'm hesitant to put anything above the mirror that could even remotely be nudged off of the wall by pounding ballerina feet, and there's not enough room on either side of the mirror, darn it.

Perhaps a couple of posters could go above the mirror, or a stenciled quote...

Let me know if you think of something suitable!

DIY: Rainbow-Painted Pegboard To Organize a Teen Crafting Space

Will can occasionally muscle a puzzle onto the kids' shared playroom table, but mostly it's Syd's domain, held by the simple means of attrition. How can a kid stretch out a 1,000-piece puzzle or a coloring book and her pencils when another kid already has the entire table covered in fourteen different slime recipes, all halfway done and half-spilled across each other? And the one bit that doesn't have slime has Perler beads and polymer clay AND a bunch of paint tubes and a wet canvas?

It's madness, and hugely messy, but Syd adores her space, and spends much of each day at that table, listening to audiobooks or YouTube video tutorials of even more weird crafts, crafting her heart out and happy as a clam.

Last summer, in an attempt to contain at least some of the mess (and, more importantly, to keep Syd off of MY work table as much as possible!), I created a couple of giant pegboard organizers for the walls adjacent to that table.

I bought a small and a large pegboard, and taped them into seven sections--the best thing about pegboard is that you can just count holes to make your measurements. The green stripe is going to be slightly narrower than the others, though. That is never not going to bother me.

If I had this project to do over again, I think that I would have bought real paint. They have these "sample" sizes of paint that you can buy that are like just a cup's worth; those and small paint rollers would have been soooo much easier to use, and I wouldn't have had to do so much taping off.

Oh, well. With the spray paint that I used, I had to tape off the area that I wasn't painting, for every single stripe, and it was terribly tedious:

And it got spray paint overspray all over the driveway, but y'all know that has NEVER been something that I've been concerned about.

I think it turned out quite lovely, even if my poor photography skills mean that you can't see how nice the purple stripe looks. Bossy blue washes out shrinking violet!

Matt mounted the pegboards for me, and the next step of the process involved more purchases than I prefer, and the revelation that there exist in the world TWO DIFFERENT SIZES OF PEGBOARD HOLES. So there we went, returning half our purchases and trading them in for a slightly different size.

We've actually had this setup in place for almost a year now, and while it doesn't look as tidy as I'd dreamed, it does contain the mess and chaos and nonsense and keep it off the table and the floor... mostly:

She's organizing her glitter stash in rainbow order, obviously.

That right there is everything that you need to make slime or polymer clay creations, or repaint Monster High dolls or squishies.

Next up: wouldn't it be nice to organize and contain all of the American Girl doll mess and chaos and nonsense?

How to Make a Decoupaged Wooden Plaque Jewelry Holder

I freelance over at Crafting a Green World, an eco-friendly crafting blog. Every now and then, on a non-regular basis, I'll share one of my favorite tutorials with you..

...such as this one! I originally published this decoupaged wooden plaque jewelry holder over here on Crafting a Green World.


 

Want a lovely way to display a few special pieces of jewelry without having to make even more room on your crowded dresser? Why not hang them from this handmade, decoupaged jewelry holder made from a wooden plaque? Here's what you'll need to make this super cute--and super useful!--project:

• Wooden plaque. You can buy these new from craft stores, although you'll want to be aware of the provenance of store-bought wood. An even better option is a thrifted wood plaque--I dare you to find someone's old commemorative award plaque and make it over!
• Acrylic paint. Both craft and artist's acrylics work for this project. Use whatever you like!
• Paper to decoupage. For this particular set of wooden plaque jewelry holders, I'm using comic book pages (in case you haven't figured it out yet, I loooove to craft with comic books!). Scrapbook paper is another great choice, especially as it tends to be acid-free, but I wouldn't let a worry about archival-quality paper confine you from the really cool paper of your choice.
• Mod Podge and paintbrush. This is all the glue you'll need for all parts of the project. Mod Podge rocks!
• Cup hooks. These little hooks are cheap to buy and easy to screw into your plaque.

1. Paint the sides of the wooden plaque. If you're upcycling a wooden plaque that has previously been sealed or varnished, you'll likely have to prime the plaque, or at least sand it before you can paint it the color of your choice. You only need to paint the sides, as the front will be covered by your paper, but there's no harm in painting onto the top edge, as I did.

  

2. Fussy-cut the image for the front of the plaque. To get the correct template for the front of the plaque, I lay a piece of paper--usually, the paper that I'll be using--over the front of the plaque, and then press my fingernail along the edge of the plaque, creasing the paper in its exact outline. When that is done, all I have to do is cut along the creases, and I'll have a perfect template of the plaque's front! Make sure that the placement of any design on your paper is exactly where you'd like it to sit on the plaque before you cut.

3. Glue the paper to the front of the plaque. Paint a thin layer of Mod Podge onto the plaque, and then place the paper. Wipe away any excess glue from the edges of the plaque.

  

4. Screw in the cup hook. Store-bought wood plaque blanks are made of wood so soft that you can easily screw a cup hook in by hand. If you're upcycling a plaque made from harder wood, pre-drill the hole, then screw the hook in by hand.

  

5. Seal the paper with several layers of Mod Podge. Mod Podge will seal the surface of the paper, make it wipeable, and, if you choose the glossy kind, make it shiny!

  

 I LOVE the way that these decoupaged plaques look as jewelry holders; group them and hold all of your necklaces and bracelets, or just mount one or two among the rest of your wall art and turn your very favorite pieces into your new favorite display!

How to Make a Super-Easy, No-Sew Pillow Cover

One of our planned family activities over winter break was a day trip to IKEA. Everyone loves IKEA, right? I mean, surely there is nobody, whether you're a hipster or a Gen-Xer or a Millennial, who could possibly hate affordable, clean-lined, Swedish interior design.

Surely, right?

You can definitely go overboard on it--I remember a decade ago visiting the rental house of a couple of friends for the first time. I walked in, looked around, and was all, "So... you guys like IKEA, huh?"

"I KNOOOOWWWWW!!!!" Molly wailed miserably. It was... a little much. Nobody really expects to walk into an Indiana student rental and find an Icelandic living room, you know? But everyone I know has some IKEA shit in their homes, and it's all pretty awesome.

And considering that the rest of the furnishings in our own house come from 1) our local university's surplus goods store, 2) the street, or 3) our own hands, and it shows, IKEA is a major step up for us.

On a related note, Matt found this sweet vintage music cabinet thing just sitting out by a dumpster the other day! It's hanging out in our garage for two weeks to make sure it doesn't have bedbugs, but then we're totally bringing it inside. Friends, when I was in college I slept on a second-hand mattress that my friend gave me when he moved, and HE found it by a dumpster before he slept on it for four years. Do. Not. Judge. Me.

So our trip to IKEA was supposed to result in a new mattress for one kid and a new computer/schoolwork station for both kids (all of which we found and Matt and I did not divorce over sawhorse-style table legs, although it was a close thing, and I got completely disoriented approximately 30 feet into the store and never really did find my bearings again), but all *I* really wanted were wooden magazine files to hold our comic book collection--classy, I know--and a shit-ton of throw pillows to hide our ugly yet comfortable couch that we bought from our local university's surplus goods store approximately 12 years ago, and who KNOWS how long the university used it in one of their dorm lounges, or how many students sat on it and did weird things on it?

I've replaced all the cushions, but trust me: you want my janky denim slipcovers and all the throw pillows you can fit on it.

Pillows are SUPER cheap at IKEA! I bought four 20"x 20" pillows and two 12"x 24" pillows, knowing that I can go back for more if I want, and I'm totally going to go back for more! The pillow covers, now, they were NOT super cheap, but if there is one thing that I have in spades, it is the fabric in my stash to make pillow covers out of.

And the fabric that I have the most of in stash these days is fleece, leftover from the making of mermaid tails and shark blankets.

This no-sew pillow cover, made from fleece, actually takes longer to tie than it would to sew it, but the tied fringe makes it look a lot nicer than a plainly-sewn fleece pillow cover would, and it's certainly much kid-friendlier of a project. In fact, for most of it you can use my tutorial for making tied dog/cat blankets, which my Girl Scout troop did with Brownie Scouts in September.

And yes, I DID make this pillow cover while watching Season 2 of The Crown. I am also spending my free time watching a bunch of dorky documentaries on the royal family bootlegged on YouTube, so there you go.

To make this super-easy, no-sew pillow cover, all you need are fleece, scissors, and a paper cutting template that measures 1"x 3". A rotary cutter and self-healing cutting mat will help you cut the fleece to size, but you could do without, if you had to.

Step #1: Put your fleece wrong sides together, two layers thick. Measure the fleece to dimensions that are 6" longer than your pillow on each side. For the 12"x 24" pillow that I'm covering in these pics, I measured my fleece out at 18"x 30". Cut out through both layers.

Step #2: Make a cutting template out of paper, dimensions 1"x 3". Use that to cut the fringes along the entire perimeter of the fleece, making sure that you cut through both layers each time. For the corners, you'll find that you naturally cut an entire 3"x 3" chunk out of each corner--that's okay! It's supposed to look like that!

Here's a gratuitous photo of Matt and Syd putting together one of the two computer workstations. Matt won the argument over what to get, and fine, they're perfect, whatever.

Step #4: While watching season 2 of The Crown, begin to tie each pair of fringes into a square knot. I give a little more detail in my tied blanket tute, but it's not hard.

Step #5: Only tie together three sides of your pillow cover. When you've got those three sides tied together, insert the pillow form and then tie the fringes on the fourth side. If you wanted to take the pillow out later, you could just untie them, but these throw pillows can be thrown entirely in the wash. 

I had meant to use all of the throw pillows that I bought for the couch, but after I made that black tied pillow cover, I realized that the Girl Scout fleece that I bought last month would be perfect for pillow covers for the 20"x 20" pillows, so I made one for each of the kids:

They use them as throw pillows on their beds, or cushions when they're hanging out on the floor, but they're also planning to use them as the pillows they take on a slumber party later this week, and I think they'd also work well for camping and summer camps.

Will liked hers so much that she made an identical one as a birthday present for a friend.

I'll show you the two pillow covers that I sewed out of faux fur another time (and why on earth I have so much faux fur in my stash pile I can't really tell you...), and when the kids and I head up to Indy to volunteer at the Children's Museum later this month, I think I'll make another trip to IKEA afterwards.

Obviously, I need to replace those three throw pillows that aren't going on the couch now, and I could use some more magazine files for my comic books...

How to Make a Girl Scout SWAPS Banner

Of course, girls can store the Girl Scout SWAPS that they've collected in a shoebox or plastic bin, and most girls do, which is fine, but frankly, in our house we have more wall space than we have shelf space, and so I thought that SWAPS banners would be a cute decoration for my girls' bedroom, as well as a way to organize and display their SWAPS that didn't mean there was one more plastic bin sitting untouched on a shelf.

I don't do that KonMari thing at all, but I do like our possessions to be actively used and loved!

If you've done any kid crafts, you likely have felt in your stash, and you may very well have an unused dowel hiding out in your garage, or a nice-looking stick in the backyard (after yesterday's all-day/all-night storms, which included me having to hide five young party-goers in the children's bathroom during a tornado warning, complete with their plates of cake because they wouldn't let go of them, we have LOTS of nice-looking sticks in our backyard!), which means that you could very well make this banner today, using supplies that you already own.

That's my favorite kind of project!

To make this Girl Scout SWAPS banner, you will need:

• felt, any color, dimensions 12"x24": You can cut your felt to any size, of course, and if you're part of a council that's really into SWAPS, or you have several destinations planned where you know there will be SWAPS, you may well want to make yours larger--maybe a lot larger! Our council doesn't offer many SWAPS opportunities, however, so the only chances that my kids have to exchange them are at the yearly Girl Scout overnight at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, and recently at the Girl Scout National Convention. If the pace doesn't pick up, then this banner will have plenty of room for the rest of their Girl Scout SWAPS.
• letter stencils: I wanted to use my Cricut to make stencils, but the old version of Cricut Craft Room isn't playing nicely with my newish-to-me computer, so I used some large-format alphabet stickers as stencils instead. I think the letters actually worked out really well!
• dowel or stick: This should be longer on each side of the felt so that you can use it to hang your banner. I found a 3' dowel in the garage and asked Will, who has earned her Cadette Woodworker badge, to saw it exactly in half for me.
• sewing supplies. I used a sewing machine, but this would be simple to sew by hand, or even to hot glue.

1. Cut felt to 12"x24", then turn the top edge over by 1" and sew:

I made this channel pretty wide, because at the time I hadn't raided the garage, and I wasn't sure what sort of hanger I'd end up with. Stash PVC pipe was another final contender.

2. Cut letters out of felt:

It was pure happenstance and good luck that the stickers that I found to use as stencils fit perfectly on my banner. Yay!

3. Sew or hot glue the letters to the top of the banner:

Seriously, look how nicely they fit! I used hot glue, and put the top edges of the letters over my stitching line to hide it a little.

4. Add the SWAPS:

Notice the post-Halloween candy in her mouth.

One of the reasons why I wanted this banner was so the kids could organize their SWAPS by event. You could print each event and date on fabric and sew it on, but I just wrote it on cardstock. The day was starting to get away from me, and "done is better than perfect!"

You can see both of my labels on Syd's banner below, and how she's organizing her SWAPS by event. Just what I'd hoped for!

I hung the kids' banners in their room, in a piece of wall real estate exactly the right size for them, and next to the behind-the-door hooks where they keep their Girl Scout uniforms:

You might think that one kid is way more into SWAPS than the other, but I believe the reality is that Will hasn't remembered where she stashed all of her SWAPS yet (probably stuffed somewhere I don't want them, after hearing me prod the kids to clean their dang room already because we're having company).

I like that the items are themed together--hanging from the doorknob is even a washer necklace painted in Girl Scout colors!--and now I consider that entire space to be devoted to Girl Scout decor. I have a postcard-sized portrait of Juliette Gordon Low that I've been looking for a home for, and I'm wondering if I should paint the Girl Scout Law around the door frame (although surely that would also involve repainting that grody nonsense first...) or stencil a quote onto the high part of the wall above the door.

Any suggestions?

We Painted the Deck Furniture Crazy

This deck furniture is nothing special. It came with the house, so had been sitting outside on the deck for at least four years before we bought it, and it sat outside for another full year before it occurred to me to do anything with it, and that only happened because one piece of it, two chairs connected by a table in between, completely broke apart in my hands as I tried to move it to a new spot.

Can't have the deck furniture coming apart in one's hands, or under one's butt, now can we?

The furniture clearly needed paint and sealer, but I didn't want to paint all that by myself. Will painted one chair last year (and that one's holding up great--thanks, Will!), but that experience was tedious enough to teach her that she did not want to paint all that, either.

So let's make a list:

1. The deck furniture needs to be painted.
2. Nobody wants to do the job.
3. The paint does not need to be cute, because the furniture is nothing special.

What can I do to tempt the family into helping me simply get paint onto deck furniture?

I'll tell the kids that we're going to CRAZY paint it!

Before the kids were born, Matt and I spent a summer on the porch of our rental house, taking turns reading to each other from the porch swing and crazy painting my mother's old rocking chair. We painted it in a riot of colors and patterns using Matt's old art school acrylics, and although the rocking chair was ugly as hell, we had a fabulous time together doing it. How nice would it be to recreate that happy memory with the kids?

Will helped me prime all the furniture (thank goodness for our paint sprayer! Watching her contentedly prime this furniture gave me the realization that after this particular project, I just need to hand a kid a paint sprayer to get anything that I want painted. Next time!), and then I brought out all our craft acrylics and all our artist acrylics and explained to the kids that we could paint all the furniture however we wanted, doing whatever we wanted. Syd immediately then, of COURSE, chose the ugliest technique in existence:

Splatter paint. UGH!

Oh, well. All that matters is that paint is on the furniture. It does NOT have to be cute.

Process not product, My Friends! I just have to remember process, not product.

And maybe that particular chair will need to be repainted next year, darn.

Neither kid had bottomless levels of enthusiasm for this project, but they were happy enough to come out and paint off and on for a few days running:

I even got Matt to paint with us a couple of times!

Notice that in this photo, Syd is actually painting the driveway, not the furniture. Sigh...

 The finished furniture, all painted and sealed, is not going to win any beauty awards--

Especially this one. Ugh!

I added some image transfers to this one, just for fun.

--but it's all got paint on it, which was the point of the process. I got plenty of help putting that paint on, I got everyone to work together a couple of times, and everyone is able to take ownership of the final product.

And we'll have more fun with it next year when it turns out that we have to repaint that one chair, because oops, I forgot to seal it!

My Latest over at Crafting a Green World: Antique Drawers and Detox Baths

a round-up of herbal recipes for kids, including a "detox" bath

a round-up of drawer projects

and a look at my own antique drawer storage system

The whole family has been fighting a nasty cold, probably originating from the kids' plane trip, all week. I actually put Syd in that detox bath that's mentioned in my first link one afternoon, hoping to relieve some of her annoying symptoms, poor kid, and she LOVED it! She spent four hours in that bath, listening to audiobooks of A to Z Mysteries, running more hot water whenever she felt cold. 

The rest of the family prefers showers, so we've been regularly steaming up the bathrooms, trying to relieve congestion. I've made soup with garlic and ginger, we've had some extra home time, and although I haven't fed it to the kids, I've happily indulged in my Pappaw's homemade recipe for cough suppressant: whiskey and honey.

I don't know if whiskey and honey actually suppresses my cough all that well, to be honest, but it does make me feel better about it!