Family HQ

Family HQ is done and ready to function!! Every portion of the bulletin board has an integral purpose to running the household efficiently. NO PAPER CLUTTER ALLOWED! Topped with coordinating happiness and a few ingenious ideas, I L-O-V-E it!

Let's look how it started for drama:

                                                           

    You can see how I recovered the bulletin board here.

Calendar

The calendar is a shiny piece of scrapbook paper drawn with Expo Vis a Vis wet erase markers. These are excellent markers! No smearing! 

Day by Day

Day by day is basically daily and weekly routines to help fine tune our schedule. These are currently handwritten because they may need tweaked as we go along, oh, and I'm out of printer ink...

Morning

• Make bed
• Brush teeth & hair
• Get dressed 
• EAT

After School

• Snack time
• Homework
• Finish responsibilities

Bedtime

• Lay out clothes
• Bath time
• Brush teeth
• Tuck In

Sunday

•  Plan week

Monday

• Focus on goals

Tuesday

• Clean day

Wednesday

• Prepare to shop
• Clean van

Thursday

• Errands
• Groceries

Friday

• Business

Saturday

• Family Day!!

Chore Chart

I have changed the headers of both charts to match the rest of the board. You can read about the system here.

Focus & List

Focus and List were created from the same shiny scrapbook paper and Vis a Vis markers. Focus is what we currently are working on. List is, well, a grocery list. They both can be updated as needed with a little baby wipe action!

Polish

Polish is my word for 2011.It's up for a reminder to stay on track! You can read about what it means to me here.


Headers on the board is all Cricut Alphalious cut roly poly shadow at 2 inches. Family HQ is cut regular at 6 inches. The swirls around polish is from Home Decor cartridge- it's a frame cut at 11 inches cut up to fit.

Thanks for reading!

Nicole

Chore Chart

This is the second installment of the making of Family HQ! The first step was redoing the bulletin board. Keeping to my goals, the chore chart is essential to teaching them responsibility and lightening the load on me. We have done many chore charts in the past, but I've found they only do the chores when they want and for money! 

I came across Coupon Cookin’s genius approach to chores. She gives the children responsibilities to complete before extra chores can be earned for allowance. For more tips and a free chore chart printable visit Coupon Cookin!

To get started, I wrote a list of responsibilities I felt the kiddos should complete without compensation.

• Make bed
• Feed dog
• Put away toys
• Set/ clear table
• Put away clean clothes (this will be a life saver for me)

Next, I made another list of chores that I would be willing to compensate for- AFTER MY RESPONSIBILITIES ARE COMPLETED.

• Vacuum
• Empty bathroom trashes
• Outside trash pick up
• Wipe sinks
• Dust
• Windows

As for compensation, each chore will be worth a quarter, 15 minutes of video game, 15 minutes of computer time, or 15 minutes of T.V. I painted wooden shapes to be the Media Tokens to give to the kids. I opted not to label them for flexibility.

The actual chore chart is 2 charts- one for responsibilities and one for chores. Each chart has the written words and a picture for each responsibility and chore.

On the written side, my 7 year old (K)will check off her duties and the picture side is for my 5 year old(R). My kids seem to like using stickers to signify they did the job. To accommodate daily stickers, I attached strips of paper streamers. Each day a fresh streamer can go up!

Of course, I chose the Cricut to style this project. Each individual letter placement was reminiscent of the Heart Typography project. Like the heart project, my muffin tin method came in handy. And look from my craft and stash stealth mode, I have dried letters and glue still in it. It POPPED right out! Wahoo! Too bad it’s not that easy with paintbrushes with dried glue…

Old glue popped right out!

The Set up

laying it all out

Mod Podged as I did each letter

Using the other end of the paintbrush to position

Here’s the rundown with the Cricut

• Cricut Lite Chore Chart for the pictures cut at 2 inches
• Alphalicious- cut at 1 inch for lettering. Braces cut at 2.25 inches. (Might too big)
• For the chart headers, letters cut 1.75 inches with the ‘O’ and ‘P’ cut to 1.25 inches to save room on RESPONSIBILITIES.
• Home Décor- label layer cut at 6 inches each to frame out headers.

After I got everything in place, I noticed the headers were washed out against the yellow scrapbook paper. I should have used the shadow feature in the maroon polka dotted paper-BUT it was all glued and I was running out of paper. I just took a marker and traced around the header letters for definition. It’s not perfect…

I really had to let go of perfectionism and just get this done. If I hadn’t let letters be a little wonky and outlines a little uneven THIS WOULD NOT OF GOT DONE AT ALL! The chart is supposed to help everyone and not become a problem itself.

Hooray for character!

Some details shots:

Update! I've changed the headers to match the rest of Family HQ

Book Page Flower Clip

I whipped this up in about 5 minutes. It's a cute little accessory that could be done many ways. But, here's how I did it...

I grabbed a book heading to the thrift store and cut little odd shapes out. Don't worry I used the excerpt tucked in the back. If they really want to read the excerpt they can go check the book!

I stacked the shapes on top of each other gluing in between, then added a little mirror to the top.

Yes, I did use super glue. Not a great idea, but I made it work. I found a 'g' leftover from a Cricut project and gave the mirror a frame with it. Next, I wrapped brown ribbon around a simple bobby pin- gluing to secure.

Here's the finished project! Super easy, fast, and so many possibilities.

Whew! Had to wipe the screen off! It looked like I had dandruff. If it appears that way on your screen, please wipe off your screen too. If it's still there, e-mail me...

                 

Bulletin Board & Switcharoo

I was eager to get started on my goals. My priority is the kiddos and that means my first project is a bulletin board. ? Well, see I had to fix up the bulletin board before I could implement my grand Family HQ plan. (look for it later this week)

Here's what we were working with or rather NOT:

The board is a mess of random things. Nothing functional happening AT ALL! Plus with the laundry/mudroom door open this is the view from the couch... much further away though.

The walls in the laundmudroom were painted this sunny yellow when we moved in. I like it, but the intensity can be a bit much sometimes. I want to do a white beadboard chair rail to increase durability and chill out the yellow. With that in mind, I painted the trim of the board plain white.

Once again, I did 5 coats of paint because I did not prime. I think I've learned my lesson because it's peeling off currently.

The frame is held together in the corners by heavy duty staples. I knew if I took it apart it would NEVER be the same and most likely fall apart later. I opted to paint my 5 layers of paint messy style right over the cork. After it dried I had to go around and break the super seal I put between the frame and the cork... living and learning, I suppose!

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The material I'm using is a queen size bed sheet that was only used a month before we got a bigger bed. I love the colors and pattern. I thought the launmudroom's sunny yellow could handle the darker colors of the sheet. Plus, I've still got the coordinating flat sheet, pillowcases, and shams... I'm thinking curtains!

The frame situation made me take the tedious route of stuffing the sheet between the frame and the cork. THEN, stuffing some more to tuck the edges.

The result is smoooth and taunt. But, not too taunt. I tested to make sure as I stuck tacks in it the material did not give.

Here is the finished project. The shot is not close because I'm going to have a whole post of the function of this board. I added a little stool so the kids can access the board easily.

Now to the other side of the room. The brown laminate cabinets are not centered on the washer and dryer. The dryer was pushed up against the window. Half of the heating vent was blocked by the dryer. To stop air flow, someone taped cardboard to half of it. The little white cabinet had no function except to collect clutter. The whole deal was driving me nuts!

I took a peek inside the white cabinet and it was held by 2 screws to the wall! Yay! I can fix this! I moved the cabinet under the opposite folding counter. There is quite a gap, but I will deal with it when I fix up (and paint with PRIMER) those brown laminate cabinet.

Overall, the it feels so much better in the laundry nook off the mudroom! I can't wait to dive into painting, shelving and molding!

Just Say No to Word Verification!

<a border="0" href="http://ahomeforabunny.blogspot.com/2011/02/just-say-no-to-word-verification.html" target="_blank"><img src="http://i115.photobucket.com/albums/n308/colyn444/wordverification.jpg"/></a><br />

I love to leave comments. But, lately I'm getting so frustrated because I will write a well thought out comment and BAM! the dreaded WORD VERIFICATION REJECTION! That's usually where the comment ends. Word verification is the number one comment killer in my book.

I've seen a ton of people mentioning it and so I made a button!!! Please feel free to grab it... a sort of a PSA.

If you really get spam then by all means word verification the crap out of your blog. I have never had a spam comment. Maybe it's because I'm not attracting as much traffic as others.

TOGETHER WE CAN STOP THE SPREAD OF WORD VERIFICATION!

My First Feature!

At Sunshine & Chaucer I just got my first feature for Baby Sock Specimen Art! I'm so excited!



A big thanks to Sunshine & Chaucer! And yayayayayayayay!

Baby Sock Specimen Art

Today I was storing away some baby clothes. I could of just cried. I held every little outfit and cuddled it! I came across a baby sock and it fit right on my thumb.

As all mothers do, I want to keep lots of outfits because they give me the warm fuzzies. It seems like such a shame to stuff them into a spacebag and have them just sit there though.

Aha! An idea!

I have this shadowbox frame that I super glued some keys in. I'm not really happy with the frame color or the fact you can see the glue all over the keys. Oh and it fell off the wall and got busted.

I gave the shadowbox many many coats of white paint. I did not sand or prime. I know, I know. By the way, a dish green scrubbie doesn't do well as sandpaper. LOL, just a little FYI.

I popped in a light piece of scrapbook paper, pinned the socks in place, and used letter stickers for each kiddos initial. Tada! Laundry room art!

Now when I'm standing in the laundry room folding my life away, I can remember when they were sooo tiny and it will make it so much better.

Keep an eye out for more laundry room projects! The laundry/mudroom is my current project. Here's what's up- a little laundry organization, shoe storage, de-brown laminating, family calendar, and bench seating.

Until next time!
Nicole

Cost: FREE
white paint: found in house when we moved in
baby socks: obviously used and free
shadowbox: reclaimed free
pins: had on hand
scrapbook paper: had on hand
letters: out of craigslist lot that I had