Heart of A Lion

First some background:
Little Bears school has been doing a "wellness incentive" where the children can earn points, by eating fresh vegetable or fruit, running, or reading. When you get 5 points you put your apple in the draw for some fun prizes, they drew weekly. Little Bear was fortunate enough to win the very first week and got a book.

Telling Papa Bear ALL about it!

Fast forward 8 weeks, Little Bear has valiantly eaten her vegetables every day. Weeks of choking down carrots, and cucumbers, loving the weeks that strawberries were on sale. She worked really hard, but did not win another prize - until last week. When she arrived home from school last Thursday, she came running in yelling "I WON! I WON!"


She then put down the water bottle she had chosen as her prize, and asked me for some wrapping paper. Now, Little Bear is prone to changing topics very quickly, and has been know to actually change topics mid-sentence, but this was a leap I couldn't follow. I got her a gift bag and she disappeared into her room without saying another word. I didn't really think about it again until Papa Bear came home, Little Bear guided him to the sofa, and made him close his eyes. She then went to her room and got the gift bag and gave it to Papa Bear. I was shocked, and in tears when out of the bag he pulls the water bottle Little Bear got as a prize. 

She tells him that she ate all those carrots (she really kind of hates carrots) so she could win a water bottle and give it to him. What!? This kid has the biggest heart! It was all her own idea too!

Oops! I Did it Again!

I rearranged! Again! I think I have a wee problem! This time it was the kitchen cupboards. Forst off, they were ugly, really ugly. I have a hard time living with things that have not been updated since the early 80's. Doing what I could with what I had is something that I am trying to do more of. Spending less money and being more of an "upcycler". (Did I just invent a new word?) Dark cabinets, and a narrow room made for a dark workspace, even after I painted the walls yellow. Anyway, I totally stole this idea from a friend of mine, who by the way has the best kitchen ever! While building her house, she chose to have the upper cabinets made with no doors, and I loved the way it looked. She also has light upper cabinets and dark lower cabinets, which looks really nice too, but I digress. Taking her idea and trying to make it work in my kitchen, It doesn't look near as good, but It looks WAY better. 


Right after taking off the doors, a huge improvement already, and now you can all see that I am not as organized as everyone thinks.

It took me literally all day, but this is what the cupboards look like now. The plan is to paint the entire upper cabinet in white, or slightly off white in a semi gloss paint. Maybe. Still deciding, but I will be painting them.

Salty Lemons

A few years ago, Papa Bear bought me a new set of cookware. Really nice copper bottom stainless steel cookware. I love these pots, I really do. A couple of weeks ago, we rearranged the kitchen cupboards and my pots ended up hanging out in plain sight. Well, they were tarnished, and looked awful because I hadn't kept the copper shiny. I didn't know how to keep the copper shiny. So I used my favorite search engine, and found that keeping the copper shiny was pretty easy. All I needed were lemons, sea salt, and ketchup! I am not kidding, that is what I used to take my pots from this:

TO THIS!

Bear Picnic

Along with building a swing set for Little Bear, I asked Papa Bear to please, build me a picnic table. We can never seems to just do things simply around here, so we started planning again! Papa Bear gets out paper, and a pencil and spends a couple of days drawing, working out angles and depth, width and other math things that I don't understand. We decide to go to the hardware store and look for materials, and came home with a load of lumber, and big bag of bolts. 

Now, sitting in my front yard, next to the fire pit is an incredibly solid, very heavy picnic table that will seat TEN! Anyone want to come for a picnic?

Just Swingin'

In making plans for the summer, we decided that instead of driving places to do things, we would bring the fun stuff to our yard. So, was born the plans for our swing set/fort/playhouse. We looked at about 50 different play sets, swing set kits and so on, before we decided that we could design something just as good for less money. Then came the planning, and more planning and then just a little more planning. Papa Bear came up with a design, and we set out to get all the supplies. It only took us 2 days to get everything cut, and put together.

Little Bear is SO excited to have her very own swing set. I am happy it is in our backyard so I don't have to drive her to the park.

Attempting a Craft

I saw a post several weeks ago on a design blog I like to read. It gave a suggestion for using old picture frames, and silk flowers. I decided I really wanted to try it, and do so without spending much money.

I had some old frames collecting dust in my basement, so I sorted through them and found 2 that matched. Cost: $0

I removed the glass and used it as a temple for cutting some cardstock, I had leftover from something else, for a backing. Cost:$0

After storing the glass, I glued the cardstock into the frame, then it was time to find silk flowers to use. I didn't have any large enough on hand, but I came across 2 large daisy's at Michael's that were on sale. Cost:$4.20

I removed the stems, and glues the layers of the daisy together, then glues each flower to one of the prepared frames. These frames did not have a hanger on them, they were designed to sit on a surface, so I used a scrap of ribbon that matched each flower to make a hanger. Cost:$0