Drawer Organizing Jars DIY

 

It's been quiet on the blog here lately for a couple of reasons.  One, after what felt like an endless winter, spring is finally here and we are making up for lost time.  Once the snow finally melted, we have been outside all the time.  Also, Spring sports started a little later because of the snowy fields, so we now have soccer games and baton competitions to fill our schedule.

I've also been working on a fairly big project....a new sewing table for me!  I am very lucky to have a dedicated sewing area in our finished basement.  Maybe it was because the winter was so cold and long, but one day I decided it was time for a spruce up.  My space was started to feel dark and I was getting fed up with squeezing my 3 machines on one not so well designed desk.

My new desk and space is pretty much done and I'm excited to share how I made this table with parts from Home Depot.  It's kind of an IKEA knockoff, but about $50 less than what it would cost there.  It wasn't so much about the cost, but more about the durability and the travel time.  The 2 closest IKEA stores are just about 2 hours away for me.  Don't get me wrong, I'm an IKEA lover through and through, I just didn't feel like I'd have the time to make the trip. 

More details on the table coming soon.  In the meantime, here's a quick and easy project I made while transitioning my space.  I recently redesigned my Zaaberry CHILDREN  clothing labels and needed some way of storing them in my new drawers which are much shorter than my old ones.

These 4oz Ball jars are the perfect size and cost about $5 for 4 jars.

 I took the jars apart,

 measured the diameter of the circle top piece,

and drew 4 circles in Powerpoint.  I added the text for my labels and printed them on yellow paper.  I glued them into the ring top, then glued the the center circle to the bottom.  I would recommend making your circles a little larger than the center circle piece.  I ended up getting some glue leaking over the side since my circles were a little bit on the small side. 

 Oh well, not perfect.  But they do the job and look nice in my new drawers.

 Come back soon to hear about how I built my new sewing table.

From Sap to Syrup

Spring is off to quite a slow start here in Massachusetts. With near record snowfall for our part of the state, we are all ready for the change of season.  Slowly but surely, the days are getting warmer.  With the nights still below freezing, it's the time of year the maple sap starts flowing.  Some friends of ours have been collecting maple sap and making syrup for a while now and this year we decided to give it a try.

 My husband is an arborist, so it wasn't hard for him to identify a few sugar maples in our small patch of woods.  We started out with one tap and bucket.

The kids have been so excited to check the bucket every day after school so we figured we might as well just tap all the trees we can.  We only have 3 sugar maples so we improvised 2 more buckets and this time bought some cheaper metal taps.  The plastic tap, bucket and lid were a bit more expensive than we were expecting.

 This container that my husband rigged up with twine works especially well since it's got a spigot at the bottom and it's clear so it's easy to check.

We boiled our first batch down most of the way over an open fire, then finished it off in the house on the stove.  We started with about 1.5 gallons of sap and ended with about 3/4 of a cup of delicious, amber, maple syrup.  The ratio of sap to syrup is about 42:1. 

It's been so much fun doing this with the kids.  We've got quite a bit more sap to boil and have been learning all sorts of fun facts along the way.  We were expecting the color to be darker, but apparently the lighter color is considered Grade A and is typically more expensive.  I've read that the color is dependent on the tree and the weather and tends to darken as the season progresses.  I'm so curious to see what our next batch looks like.  No matter what the color is, everything tastes better when it's from your own backyard.

DIY Wood Photo Background

For a while now I've been wanting some kind of a new background to use for taking photos of my baby clothing.  I really like the look of a wood backdrop, but I also wanted something lightweight and relatively inexpensive.  I've seen a few made with peel and stick flooring, but I couldn't find any good colors at my local store and overall it was more expensive than I was expecting. 

 As I was wandering around the hardware store, something I actually really love doing, I came across a package of pine wainsot.  It was $12 for the package, and the finished dimensions are approximately 3 x 3.5 feet.  Perfect!

 The pieces are tongue and groove and are meant to be nailed into place.  I just put a little wood glue on the tongue part and put it all together on the floor. 

 I decided to keep a few pieces separate.  I put the weights on so that they would dry flat (they tended to pop up).

 After the glue dried, I painted both boards white with paint I had on hand.

 To give it a bit of a weathered look, I also added a little dark stain while the white paint was still wet.  After that all dried, I put a coat of clear finish on (that ended up turning a bit yellow for some reason).

 Here are the paints I used.  All of these were sitting on a shelf in my basement.  I think anything will really work if you are looking for a weathered look. Before I found the dark stain, I was considering using my kids tempera paints.  And in this picture, you can see how I used my 2 separate pieces.  The large piece is the background and the smaller board is on the floor.

 
I also made some really easy and cheap reflectors using foam board and clear tape from the dollar store.  I taped the boards a little offset from each other so I could fold them up for storage.

I'm really happy with how all my new photo props turned out.  Here are some of the first pictures I took with my new gear.  This cute outfit is headed to Texas for a new little Texas Rangers fan.  And you can see, I've finally perfected my heat transfer vinyl technique.  If you missed my last post, go check it out for my heat transfer vinyl fail and what I did to get it right!