Easy DIY Family Home Evening Chart

If you don’t already know I am a member of the LDS church AKA Mormon. An activity the church encourages is setting aside a night of the week to spend with your family to get together and teach important values. I’m not great or even good at planning so I need all the help I can get!

Enter the FHE Chart

I let the kids help me repaint the scrap board  and use my Cricut to cut the letters and name tags. Then we ran it all through the laminator!

Crafting is an important value, right? I’m totally counting this as a Family Home Evening Activity!

My favorite part is the way they attach. I used 3m Command picture hanging strips for the name tags. Now they are easy to switch around every week!

Now all that’s left is for me to actually get in gear and use it!

It's SEPTEMBER!!! + TP Pumpkin Garland Tutorial

Get out those Fall decorations 'cause it's September!!! 

As if any of you needed the reminder! This year I don't have any munchkins headed off to school but Anberlynn sure wants to go! She has a friend down the street that started Kindergarten this year and she would be more than happy if she could go with him. Instead we are trying to have some school liek fun here at home. 

First we made Oobleck.

I didn't take any pictures because it can get pretty messy with both girls but it's just 2 parts corn starch to 1 part water (add a little more at a time if it's too dry). The result is fun and entertaining. 

Then I pulled out the toilet paper rolls! And the paint! Around these parts that makes me "Mom of the Year." 

I didn't have any orange paint so we went ahead with yellow and red, purposely making the color as uneven as possible- I even left some blank! 

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We painted several, some were striped, some were spotted, and some were plain. 

 Next I sliced them into skinny little loops. I purposely cut them different widths, no measuring here! Just make sure they are wide enough for your hole punch! 

I used my Crop-A-Dial as my hole punch. I layered 3 loops inside of each other (they were already flat from when I cut them) and punched them all at once. Anberlynn tried to help with this but it too too much hand strength for a 4 year old. 

Cutting them all together made the next step easy - threading yarn through. 

Take a LONG piece of green yarn and tie a bow at one end and tape the other end for easy threading. 

Pull the taped end through your 3 hole punched loops and you'll end up with this. 

Slide your loops all the way to the bottom of your yarn, fluff it up and tie another bow between each set. 

When you are done you'll have a fun little pumpkin garland.  

 I hung mine on my mirror with two manipulated paper clips for hooks. 

And that's it.  I made a few extras and cu them apart for my cloche but of course it wasn't gonna cooperate for a photo.  

The girls love that they got to help out and point it out to all the guests that come over. What do you think I should write on the chalk board? 

Total Cost $0 I had everything on hand. 

Upcycled Crib Mattress to Reading Nook

Here's Evelyn's new favorite place to read before bed. 

If you have been following along for a bit you may remember I got this bed for her off Craigslist a few months ago.

We have been so busy with chickens and summer that I haven't done much indoors but this is one thing I really wanted to get done. I though't I'd just pop the crib mattress in there and call it good. 

Wrong. 

It was a few inches too long. So they had to go.

Yep. I had my hubby cut it off using scissors and wire cutters. I used the batting from the part I cut off to recover the top. 

I cut the corners so there wouldn't be a bunch of extra bulk for the next step.

I tucked it all in all the way around. 

I used the last little bit of the only duct tape we had to tape it down. 

It was probably unnecessary but I taped it down both ways just to make sure nothing was going to shift around and to make sure all the wire ends were covered by duct tape too. 

I slipped the part we cut off earlier right back over the top. I would have taped this down some too but  I ran out of tape! 

I put on the same crib sheet we used before and it fit just fine, not super snug like before but good enough that I don't feel a need to sew it smaller. 

Now it fits PERFECTLY in it's space. 

Evelyn has all of her reading needs ready to go in her little nook. 

Total cost for a perfect little nook? 

$0

That's my kind of project! 

Staging a Coop

Well, it's FINALLY done! You know a post has taken entirely too long to get up when you can watch the seasons change with the photos but a chicken coop is DONE and that's all that matters, right?

I started out with two of these guys:

They are sides from a boat crate. I leaned them together to see about how big this whole thing would be. Big enough, Check!

Then we got to work on the chicken wire. 

It was pretty simple, just stretch and staple. We only did it over the first two sections since the third is going to be covered by some left over bead board. 

All done. 

The next day I set it up and used hinges to attache the two boards together. 

Nothing super strong but it get's the job done. 

Next I cut two pieces of bead board for the back to give the chickens some shelter. 

To sturdy things up a bit I cut 2  boards to go along the bottom. I Just held the boards up to the wood to mark my cut. 

I used 2 little brackets on each end to make sure they were good and on there. 

My littel helper had a blast handing me things and helping me measure. It helped her for get about the scab on her little nose form falling in the driveway :/ 

Next we added a board on each side of the coop. 

Nothing fancy, just a left over piece of wood and a couple of screws.

They made a support for another spare board so the chickens have a nice little landing. 

Then Anberlynn and I git busy with some more bead board. Again I just held it up to find my cuts. 

We cut it into 3 sections and laid out our hard ware. 

The top and bottom sections are attached to the coop. The middle has hinges and a lock so we can get in and out when they finally start laying eggs. 

I added a spare piece of board and stapled some "rungs" on made from spare slices of wood. 

This is how we were looking for the time being. We let the chicks out in it during the day and they had a blast! 

We used a handy dandy sign the says something about "Big Bob's Flooring Outlet" as a door fro a while. 

They didn't seem to mind. Eventually I got around to spray painting and I let he hubby handle the hard stuff. 

He measured the sides of the coop and pulled out the miter box. 

He made 3 supports making the door just about the sturdiest thing on our little coop. 

While we were working the chickens were on the loose, free to roam the back yard, stretch their little wings as far as they could go...

With a few naps in between. 

Don't they look like they are posing for a cheesy boy band cd cover?

Here's their mafia look. 

But on the inside their really just little cuttle bugs. 

So say my daughters. 

My husband must know their sweet spot because they look like this just about every time he holds them. 

 And here it is! Finished! 

I chose teal and yellow because that's what I had on hand- then it ended up not being enough, then they didn't have the same exact colors...you know how it goes. 

And here's the back door open. We have since added bedding and threw in an old broom stick too but they still prefer the grass. 

Well, there it is. They like it. We like it. But we'll have to see how it goes when it comes to winter.