Sewing Class

My girls made a new years resolution to learn how to use a sewing machine. 

 So while they were off track recently we had sewing lessons.  

Branden didn't want to be left out so we included him.  

At first he told us not to tell his brothers, 

but when he finished his project he had to show everyone!!!!

On Nana's day she came over and helped us with sewing lessons!!!

I love to spend time with these cute kids 

and teaching them skills to boot makes it even better!!!

What did they make?

We tried to keep them simple for their first sewing machine project.  

The first day they learned 

about the machine, 

practice how to thread it, 

and practice sewing lines and shapes on paper.

Then they learned how to pin and cut out their project.

And the last lesson, 

was putting their projects together.

The girls made jewelry travel cases.

Branden made a pirate pillow for his new room!!

I know,

 you don't know what's cuter the kids or the projects!!!

Thanks for stopping by!

Pirate Room Update - Small Details

So, it's time for another Pirate up date!  

Here are some little details and things we have learned!!  

We put rope lights on the inside of the shelves. 

 You can't see them from the front but they illuminate the inside of the shelving unit. 

  Les hardwired them and they turn on with a switch inside the cabinet. 

 They can also act like a great night light. 

 In true Batchelors Way fashion we used some old rope lights we had in our Christmas decorations. 

 (That means free!)  

They were longer than we needed,

 so we made a slot in the lowered ceiling of the shelf unit and shoved the excess up there.  

We thought we were freaking genius'.  

Until a few days after it was all installed a section of the rope lights burned out.  

Crap, crap, crap!!!  

Now we were going to have to take the whole thing down and re-install all those little screws and clips.  I went through the rest of our Christmas rope lights only to find out they all had burned out sections. 

Did I say,

 crap, crap, crap!!!

So, I did the only thing I could,

 I went on line to see if any thing could be done!  

And low and behold I found out lovely things.

Like, 

yes,

 rope lights could be fixed. 

So, I'll tell you what we did.

(I am not an electrician and am not telling anyone what to do.) 

Rope lights have 16" to 24" inch sections.

Our burned out section was toward the end of the rope.

We marked where it was burnt out,

 unplugged it and then cut it.

The rest of the string still works.  

(You can buy splicer kits and add a new section into the middle of a rope light.) 

 We just put the cap on the end pulled the excess rope down and it was fixed!!!

If there is no cap anyone touching the end section while it's plugged in will get a shock!

  I was so amazed and relieved not to have to unscrew and take out the hole rope light and replace it!!

Now that we have all been enlightened,

 lol

I'll show ya the trimmed out doors. 

 I chose to paint all the trim, 

except the ceiling trim, grey like the built ins.

  

I'm getting excited now!!

(You may notice I faux painted the room side of the door to match the closet doors.)

(The other side is white so all doors in the hallway match.)

More on my detail freakishness...

The pirate side has an oiled rubbed door knob and the hallway side is silver.  

No,

 I didn't buy two sets.

  I bought the silver and had an old oiled rubbed one.  

And they just happened to fit together!!

Last of all is another Restore to the rescue. 

 I bought these shutters at the Restore for I think $4 each, 

we cut them down to fit the window. 

 I love the deep rich wood tones against the grey. 

They came with hinges, but as we got into it we realized they wouldn't work.  

So we bought these simple black decorative hinges from Lowe's. 

 They were only $2.56 for a set of two. 

We needed four sets for a total of $10.24.

Not too bad.  

But then one day while digging through old hardware at the Restore

 I found a ton of these old hinges with Pirate character oozing out of them.  

And they were like 10 cents each!!!!

That's 80 cents for them all. 

After returning the simple black hinges to Lowe's, 

we saved almost $10 

 and added tons of character!!!!

(See the "L" shaped hinges two pictures above)

I then spent the next 30 minutes digging out 8 hinges and 56 matching screws!!

I know I must be crazy!!! 

 But it's totally worth it to me. 

 It's all in the details.

Did I mention I'm a detail freak?

Well, we are almost done with the Pirate room. 

 I'll post next about the building of the beds,.

Before I go I'll show ya this ice bucket I picked up at DI for two bucks! 

I'll leave you to see if you can figure out how I used this on the beds!!!

Thanks for stopping by!

Scooter Stand How to and Happy Birthday!!

I guess some one pinned my picture of our scooter stand we built over two years ago. 

This pin has caused a chain reaction of pins and multiple requests for some sort of how to. 

So here it goes.

Keep in mind we tend to build with what we have.  

You can alter this and use almost anything you have. 

 But I will tell ya what we used.

We basically made a fork out of 2x4's. 

 We had five scooters so we made it to fit five.  

Our end piece was 21 1/4 inches long.

The tines on our "fork" were 19 inches long.  

We used six and spaced them  2 1/2" apart.  

(Keep in mind that some scooters are larger than the ones I have shown here.)  

(We have a extra large one now that is a very tight fit.)

I suggest you use your scooters to determined the spacing.

We used a quarter inch thick scrap of press wood for the bottom.

  It helps keep everything straight.

We used wood screws to put it together.  

You could paint it to make it look oh so pretty,

 but we just needed it ASAP! 

It's very simple yet it is easy to use and fairly sturdy.

 Good luck!

I also wanted to say Happy Birthday to my third son, 

Quinton!!

He celebrated his birthday this last week 

and we are so proud of the young man he is turning into! 

We love you!

To the One I Love!!!

This week is a most important week,

 as I celebrate Valentines,

 (which is the day I got engaged), 

and my hubbies birthday! 

So I'd like to dedicate this post to the man I love!!!

Les

(Love this James Dean look he's got going here)

Recently we had and e-mail going back and forth saying

 "I love you as much as ________ & _________."

We just kept filling in things that went together.

So when I saw this:

source

I knew that's what I need to make Les for Valentines.
 Here's my version.
(Les took no time to erase my peanut butter and jelly,
and drew eggs and bacon.)

I have been wanting just the perfect thing to put in my bathroom above my make-up mirror. 

 This is the perfect thing. 

 It looks great, 

but the best thing is every morning I wake up 

and see that Les has changed the blanks. 

(He's so cute and draws his in every day.)

 It just makes me feel loved knowing he has thought of me. 

 I hope he feels the same each day he comes home and sees what I've written.

(I will need some ideas to fill in the blanks when all the easy ones are gone, 

so leave some comments if you have any ideas.)

I love this man and all he does.

Can I just say a few things I like about him?

Great singer

(totally hooked me when he sang to me when we were dating)

good fisherman

Awesome cook 

(he can just make up something and it's good)

Cooks almost every weekend

funny

nice hands

"often" does dishes or housework before he leaves for work

works hard every day to support us

knows alot about the scriptures

detail oriented

very, very talented handy man

(Have you seen what he has built?)

I'm so lucky to be married to him.

Last fall we went on a date and to a Hillary Weeks concert, 

(Love her)

and we had dinner at Thanksgiving point. 

 We just had a good time and took pictures of each other. 

 It's like we were teenagers, only we look way older.

 lol

I tried to take a one arm picture of us kissing.
 It took a few takes to get a centered picture
 but who's complaining about too much kissing?

Thanks for letting me brag again!

Happy Birthday Les!

I love you!!!

Pirate Room Update - Built Ins Part 2

I finally finished window wall built ins.

Yeahhh!!! 

 I really struggled with what colors to paint them. 

 Black seemed the obvious color for a pirate room, 

but I didn't want it to be too predictable. 

 I also wanted to work in the wood tones from the shutters I have for the window. 

(Show ya that latter!) 

 In the end I choose a dark grey called Knights Armor by Olympic. 

 Which I love!!! 

(OK, truth be told I color matched this at Walmart with Glidden paint that had a built in primer.)

(I am a true believer in primer, so this was a risk for me.)

(So far it seems OK, we will see how it holds up!)

 The top of the window seat was laminate that looked like wood, 

that stuff is tough, tougher than any paint so I opted to leave it.  

(Remember this is a BOYS room!)

I then painted the counters faux wood just like the closet doors.  

(You can check those out here.)

The laminate and faux wood matched pretty darn good!  

   

Then we put the top shelf unit on top and trimmed it out with some small cove trim!! 

 So exciting. 

(Did I mention I built the top section?) 

(Yeah baby!)

 I like this building thing!!!

Remember those wooden decals I put on? 

 I painted them grey along with everything else and distressed them. 

  (I lightly distressed everything.) 

 (Let's face it, it's a boys bedroom and everything will soon look distressed.)  

(This way it all looks good!!!)

I could barely wait until I got the crown moulding up!! 

It made such a difference.  

Now, is a good time to mention one of my screaming deals!!! 

 I purchased that crown molding at the Restore.  

Total cost 20 cents for 11 feet. 

 Enough to do both sides of the room!!!

That's about $19 I saved!

Next, I turned my attention back to the window seat. 

 The drawers didn't have any handles just a finger pull under the drawer.  

But boys little fingers are really going to muck up those drawers fast!!

  Besides the handles add so much!!  

 You are thinking, 

"Nine handles at $3 or more dollars a piece just for looks 

is not the cheap Batchelors Way.

Silly you,

 I only paid 10 cent each for those at the Restore. 

 I saved over $26 dollars!!!  

That's the Batchelors Way!

(OK, I did have to clean them up a little.) 

 (Below-right is what they looked like when I bought them

 and the left is after I cleaned them up with a little soap and scrubbing) 

 I like the gold and how they look kind of old!! 

My husband told me my way of placing the handles was brilliant!

 (NO, I didn't pay him to say that!)

Here's what I did. 

 I traced one of the drawer fronts on a piece of paper and cut it out. 

 Then I just folded it in half each way. 

 I then knew where the middle of the drawer was each way.  

Then I just centered a handle and traced the tips and had a template.

(See above)

  I taped that template to each drawer and drilled.  

The handles lined up perfectly!!!

Now if your still with me, I'll show ya some more details.

We put a reading light mounted to the front. 

 Originally I planned on this fixture from Lowe's for $29.96. 

 Very Pirate like, 

but when we went to purchase it,

 it seemed a little to big.

But as fate would have it, 

we found two smaller sconces in a clearance section. 

 $9 each and much more size appropriate.

 (If your doing the math, we saved almost $42 on those babies!)

The next two pictures show the shelf brackets I bought at the Restore 

eight for 80 cents. 

 (They would have cost at least $40) 

I just painted them grey before I installed them.

 Now we have adjustable shelves.

The above picture shows the edge of the shelves, 

top is plain 

bottom is with trim added. 

 I wanted a chunky shelf, so I added trim.  

Much better don't you think?

I have two more things we did to these built ins. 

 Tell ya them latter!!

Total I saved by buying at the Restore or on clearance was $127!!

Used items make wonderful products!!

I can't wait to finish the whole room.

Thanks for stopping by!!

Random life at Batchelors

Here's just some random things that give you a glimpse at what life is like at our house. 

 Pinterest has effected even my husband. 

When I showed him these spaghetti hot dog things on Pinterest 

he just had to make them with the little kids.  

They had a lot of fun making them.

Here's another Family Home Evening craft activity.  

Austin makes a killer friendship bracelet and decided for our activity this week to teach us all how to make one.

 He added that we had to give it to someone who needed a friend. 

 As a side note, 

Branden and Em picked kids at school who didn't have a lot of friends 

and got a lot of grief from the other kids.  

Things like,

 "Why did you do that?"

 "Do you like them?"

But they each stood their ground and helped make those left out kids happier.

I was so proud of them.

Doing something nice is not always easy when there's 

peer  pressure!!!! 

We like to build stuff around here 

but we often have to fix stuff too!  

Like the other day I heard this weird noise from the kitchen. 

 I walk in the kitchen to find Les,

 NOT ONE OF THE KIDS, 

had ran into the cabinet door and broke it off. 

 I mean broke the door in two!!!  

Luckily it was easy to fix with a little glue and some clamps!!!

This is a very common scene at our house. 

 I call it the Creative Curse!! 

(We go through paper like you would not believe.)

 Often there are kids sitting around the kitchen table drawing. 

 In fact as I'm typing this there are four kids drawing at the table.  

Here's some of Austin's doodles, 

he's applying to colleges and his sketch book seems to make lots of schools want him in their art department.

This particular night Jaysen was working on this picture of Elvis.  

Can you say AMAZING!!!!!

So that's a glimpse of the 

Batchelor Life,

 lol!!!

Finished painting the built ins in the Pirate room,

 post about it soon!!!!

Thanks for stopping by.

Pirate Room Update - Built Ins Part 1 and my new skills!!!

I've been working daily on the Pirate room and getting so excited.  

If you remember I planned on having a built in window seat and headboard shelves.  

We started with this short dresser we found at DI for $45.  

(We couldn't build all those drawers for that price.)

 (It was well built and offered lots of storage.)

  So we attached to the wall under the window.

Instant window seat!

Next, I helped Les build the bottom section of the headboards.

(We used 1/2 inch MDF for everything but the counter tops we used 3/4 inch MDF.)

This is where I put on my big girl panties and began to build without Les. 

 (Check out my last Post about my new inspiration)

I built the top section ALL BY MYSELF!!  

(Definitely tackling my most daunting task!)

It's just a simple box which I cut out the front in the design I wanted.

I know, amazing huh?

(I know it doesn't really look that amazing yet, but I'm working on new ground here.)

Hardest thing by far in my new adventure is making all the decisions alone. 

 I just stop and think," I'll ask Les what he thinks", 

then I have say to myself,

 "Ronda just decide and do it or you'll never get done."

Oh, yeah back to my original post. 

 Let's see how I made that awesome cut out. 

 First, I drew lines where I wanted the edges to be. 

 Next I used my expensive curved template (a plate) on the the corners. 

 Once I had those lines set I used my fancy supports 

(trash bucket, wind toy and some magazines) 

to hold the piece as I cut out the inset.

Here's the top that I made, married to the bottom that Les made.  

(Get it? Married!!)

(I just crack myself up!)

We have some lights that will be mounted to the front, 

so Les who is still the electrician, added the light boxes.

I also added some wood decals on either side of the light boxes. 

 (See them held in place while the glue dries?)

After that I turned my attention to the ugly gap between the old and new. 

 That gap made it look like we took an old dresser and sandwiched it in between two book shelves. 

 (I know that's what I did, but I don't want it to look that way!)

I wanted it to look like one built in. 

 So, I ripped some left over bead-board down into two inch strips on the table saw.

 (Yes, all by myself!) 

I used the table saw and my chop saw to take out half the strip on the top half.

  I was left with a L shaped piece that covers the gap perfectly.

(I know that doesn't make sense, so just look at the pictures.)

I've been busy wood putting and sanding getting ready to paint. 

 I'm making good progress.

 I'm so glad I have such a supportive husband who puts up with me 

as I attempt to do so much on my own.  

I'm so glad that's his advice is only a phone call away. 

I love you babe!!!

So how am I doing with my new adventure?

 I could use some words of encouragement this is quite scary!

Thanks for stopping by!