Birthday Games! Fire House!

Mr. A wants a Paw Patrol Birthday party this year!  For one of the games we decided to take one of his favorite activities, dart-less balloon game, and make it fit into the paw patrol theme!  Now Mr. A's favorite pup is Marshall, the fire-dog, so we decided to theme the party appropriately!

I give you the firehouse-balloon game!

I started with a foam-core board from the dollar store and a handful of orange and yellow balloons, and some blue confetti.

I painted the foam core to look like the front of a building with windows and a front door.  I sort of taped the roof on, but to be honest it kept falling off... When leaned against the wall it worked alright.

Yeah, I know it looks purple, but it really is blue!  for the confetti I simply ran a couple sheets of construction paper through our paper shredder!  Instant, personalized confetti!

Then I used a funnel and a stick to stuff the balloons full of confetti!

The morning of my husband blew up the balloons and we put the board together in the same way we did our dartless balloon game found HERE.  Then when it came time for the part we let each guest take a turn to throw bean bags and pop the balloons!  They thought it was pretty much the coolest thing ever!  

Yay for tile floors that sweep up so easy!

Have fun!  Show me your creations!  How did you adapt the dartless balloon game to fit your party or event??

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Kitchen Chair Re-do !

I love taking something old and ugly and giving it a new life!  (Of course if you follow my blog much you already know that!)  Upholstering chairs sounds pretty scary and intimidating, but really, it's easy-peasy and so much fun!  Really a simple way to make something uniquely yours!

When we got married we bought a round kitchen table with four chairs that I loved!  

The chairs are black with a brown suede-like seat, they were perfect!

Then we had kids...

Now they look like this...

Yuck!  The suede stuff just doesn't come clean real easy, and kids just need everything to be wash-n-go!  So, lets re-do them!!!

First, flip the chair over and unscrew the seat.  My chairs had four screws, in the corners, holding them on.  (this picture turned out kind of odd, but it is the seat on the floor after taking the screws out)

Tabs where the screws were.

Then start to remove the old fabric.  I chose to be gentle on the black stuff so I could use it later.  Brown stuff, not so much!  Mine was stapled down.  If you can get the staples out that would be ideal, mine were REALLY tight, so I just made sure they were flat and called it good!

Next, I got some very-wipeable fabric, the name of which I don't remember and can't find, but the back is very much a normal weave cotton/poly fabric, but the front is very vinyl like.  Wipes clean super easily!

Cut out your fabric so you have 3 or more inches extra all the way around.

I used the old foam from the chairs, so either reuse the old or cut the foam to fit your seat.  Our foam was yellowed so I also put some plain-white fabric between the foam and 'nice' fabric.

Layer as follows: 

Main fabric (face down on the floor/table)

Foam

Wood (or otherwise) seat piece

Then pull up one side and staple from corner to corner every 2 inches or so (as needed to secure fabric)

Next, do the same on the opposite side, pulling the fabric so it is somewhat tight and you don't get wrinkles.  This also helps the seat have a nice smooth appearance.

Repeat on the other two sides likewise.

Now the corners... These get tricky sometimes.  Starting with the corner of the fabric pull it in on the diagonal and attach.  Then, fold the remaining fabric so it lays as flat and non-bunchy as possible.  Also pay attention at this point to where your screws will go in later!  The first one I did I didn't do this and we had troubles keeping the screws in and the seat attached!

Repeat to all four corners

Finally, reattach the bottom fabric, or cut a new square to cover the mechanics of things.  Finally screw the seat back on!  

Sadly I don't have a picture of the finished chair... 

You see, I did two chairs nearly two years ago and just finished the last two.  But I finished the last two so we could give the set to my Husband's brother and new wife... We just don't fit it anymore (which is why we refinished this table recently!)  Thereby, as I write this post, the chairs are not just a couple steps away, but across town... oh well.)

Give it a try and let me know how things go!  The concept applies to most chairs!

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How to Get Crayon out of a Full Load of Clothes...

 Yup, this happened yesterday...

 

I heard, *thupumk, thumpumk* coming from a load of mostly t-shirts and thought... there is nothing in there that should be making that sound!

I opened the dryer door and found all of this...  As it was, we were playing with Mr. A on Sunday and would stick a green crayon in his church pants while he wasn't looking and then he would look for it, then would get all excited when he found it!  I guess we didn't get out the last time...

And I know what you're thinking, *thupumk, thupumk* doesn't come from a crayon... nope, but it doesn't.  That sound came from a now crayon covered rock from Mr. C's pants, all the way from Utah!

 Yup, they got all the way through the wash and about half-way through the dryer cycle.  On a HUGE load of shirts! AAAAHHHHH!!!!

The culprits...

So I did what any self respecting Mommy would do and took a picture.  Then cried, just a little, and then naturally, took to the internet!

There are lots of suggestions online to get crayon out of clothes, but most of them involved ingredients I didn't have or ingredients I didn't want to worry about getting out later (aka. WD-40, It may get the crayon out, but it stinks and I really didn't want to have to get WD-40 out of the clothes later)

The simplest and easiest I found involved just three things that everyone has!

Laundry soap (normal amount)
2-3 Tablespoons Dish soap
1/2 c. Vinegar

Yup, that it!

 First, fill up your washer with the hotest water yur clothes can handle!  Since we live in AZ and the water out of the tap can burn you (yes, I know you can turn down the temp on the water heater, and honestly ours is already really low, but it's Arizona!)  If you need to, boil water on the stove in your biggest pots and pour it in, the hotter the better!

Then put a couple of tablespoons of dish soap (Blue Dawn probably is best, it's the miracle soap, right?!  But I only had yellow Ajax brand, it still worked fine!)  and half a cup of vinegar (don't worry the smell is not a problem!) and your regular amount of laundry soap.

Fill up the washer and then I make sure everything is submerged in the water (I used a wooden spoon) then pause the cycle so it can soak 15-30 min.

When it's done check each item over for crayon, if it passes toss it in the to-dry pile, if not, repeat!

Now, let that sit for a minute while we talk about the dryer...

When I discovered the Crayon, I had a giant load of sheets in the washer... Trying to catch of up from nearly 2 months of crazyness!

so now I have a load of wet things and a green dryer... ARGH!

Back to the good 'ol Internet!  This time I opted for WD-40!  Did you know that WD-40 was originally designed as a cleaner?  Well it works!

I know it's hard to see, but there is a definite green tint to the entire inside of the dryer...

Cue the WD-40, a green scrubby, a cute hubby, and lots of elbow grease!

Whew!  Green Gone!

 Basically he just sprayed the WD-40 then scrubbed, sprayed, scrubbed, and occasionally wipped the excess (and the green) off with an old sock-rag.

When he was all done we wipped it down with soapy water, then plain water to help get the WD-40 out of the dryer.

This is the same shirt beore and after the soak/wash.  This particular shirt and about 4 of the 45 (Told you it was a huge load) shirts that had crayon on them still have some green, the rest came completely clean!  I kept pulling them out and being stunned it worked so well!

It seems that there is a correlation between fiber type and how well it came out.  The more stretchy the material the harder time it had.

Whew!  So glad that's done with!  now to catch up on the drying of two large loads since the dryer is now white again!  Good luck!  I hope you have as much luck as me if you ever encounter this problem!

I'm Back!!!

Wowsa! Our Summer has been some seriously CrAzY busy!  We spent 5 weeks out of town while my husband was gone for 3 weeks doing an out-of-state class for school!  While we were there my brother came home from his 2 year mission for our church, another brother came back from his out-of-state summer internship, not to mention lots of catching up with family and friends!  Oh yeah, and the day after we got back in town we had a couple of our nieces over for a few days until the rest of their family got into town... for our third wedding this summer!  Of course I did the flowers for this wedding too!

So moral of the story, I have done lots of great projects that you will see very soon!  I haven't forgotten about you!