$14 worth of FUN

It's 104 in Dallas.  Not exaggerating. At. All.  Literally, Mia and I make a 15 minute trip to the store and she's red-faced and sweating.  Not much we can do here outside in this heat and keeping an 18 month old toddler cooped up in the house all day means more Elmo and Mickey Mouse than any person should be forced to consume.  

So, I guess we could go to the pool, right?  Wrong.  Not on a Saturday! You couldn't pay me.  No weekend pool time until Mia is old enough to push those stupid kids back in the baby pool.  Monday, I can do because there aren't as many kids. Saturday during crazy kid day? Nope.

So, this weekend, we spent $14 and bought a whole lotta fun!  A baby pool in our backyard! 

Oh, she loved it.  She played with at least 3 buckets and a million different kinds of cups (we're really into pouring water in and out of things now) and she probably played in it for an hour and a half.  Two sunscreen and one bug spray application later, we were pooped and done with the pool.

I foresee a lot of "pool" time this summer.  Right in the safe space of our  backyard with no grubby 7 year old stealing her bucket and knocking her off the steps to the water slide.  Monsters.

A DIY Project (are you reading this HGTV?!?)

This past week was the week of projects.  Most of it done by my dad who helped us switch out a good part of the yucky, nasty, gross and disgusting gold light fixtures that plagued all homes built in 1997 (which ours was).  Gross.

For example...this atrocity...

Turned into this...

Oh, so much better.  But that's not really the big story of the day.  The big story is what my mom and I did with a piece of 3/4 inch plywood, some fabric, buttons and a staple gun.

A short DIY Story...

One day, a girl and her mom were tired of a creaky, metal headboard on a bed that should probably just be donated to Goodwill, but it's owners continue to use as a guest bed.  So they had an idea.  It's starts with a big piece of 3/4 inch plywood:

They decided that plywood wasn't particularly cozy and it was hard to match with other surfaces, so it had to be covered.  First...to work on the cozy part...they covered it with foam using a staple gun.

Next...they needed to cover the foam with something pretty.  They decided red was a good choice.

Once it was covered...a little girl wandered over and thought it was a new play toy for her.  So, work stopped and it was just that for a little while...

Next, the pretty red, soft board needed some "pizzazz"...something that made it special.  Buttons!

Here's how you make your own fabric covered buttons...told in pictures...

From here, the buttons were placed evenly on the fabric and foam covered board, stapled and then hot glued on. The project was completed and it was as fabulous as they thought.  Much better than a creaky old metal headboard. The two stepped back and admired their work...

Then stepped to the side and admired it some more...

A true happy ending.  It was decided that this was the best DIY project they'd ever completed.  A beautiful fabric headboard for about $50. 

This headboard took about 45 minutes to complete with 2 people working on it.  I think HGTV should hire me.  Seriously.  Let's go, people.

A project....

So I had this chair when I was little...cute, wooden rocking chair.

It's been in storage at my mom and dad's house and she brought it to me so I could have it.  So it stayed in Mia's room and she knows how to "rock" in it...which is adorable by the way, but probably a story for another post. 

Anyway, the seat was pretty dirty from spilled sippy cups, food, whatever me and my brother's grubby little hands got into...

So, after covering up the chair with a cute blanket, I decided to do something about it. So, Mia and I went to Hobby Lobby, spent $5.99 on cotton batting, $4.69 on 24 inches of fabric and $4.69 on some paint. 

And here's the result!

I think this chair could totally be sold in Pottery Barn Kids for probably $100.  (Cause Pottery Barn Kids is cute but seriously overpriced).  I did it for under $20!

Mia likes it too.