TIME

Confession~ There are days that I don't like taking the time to really play with my kids.  I mean that is why we the grandparents and friends buy them toys right?  But I know all four children really crave that one on one time or a group play time where Daddy, Mommy, and or all together get down and 'get dirty'.
The other day I had one of those moments. I did not feel like pretending and playing, but then I knew I was just being selfish and the kids really could use something special and different.  So I decided to take the kids camping!

In our Living Room...

I know it is not the most glamorous tent and definitely not one like daddy could make, but the kids were beyond ecstatic!

 The Happy Campers!

 Memories

 No camping trip is complete without food!

"Mmmmmmm Yummy!"

It's not about how much money you spend, where you go, or really what you do. It is just TIME! No one knows just how much time God will give us with our children.  So enjoy every minute you do have with them and go spend some TIME!

The Princess Chair

First of all I apologize for not posting anything last week. I have been told that not being a regular and scheduled blogger is taboo. I had every intention of  writing an article, but between home, church, and home school responsibilities, not to mention a much needed date with the hubby, I was booked.  I need to start scheduling  blocks of time during the week when I can sit down and just write without interruptions (um what is that like again?).

I have also been working on my next DIY furniture redo's too! I am very excited about this next dresser I am working on.  My hubby is going to teach me how to stain!  So in preparation for that I am having to sand it all the way down to its original bare self!  Kind of time consuming, but I am super excited about the finished look.  But today I am not writing to tell you about the dresser, but my daughter's chair.

You see I have a 'princess' daughter.  Some are very shocked to hear that, as I was NOT a princessy kind of girl growing up, but Alyssia loves all things pretty, pink, and prissy.  We are trying to help mold her attitude and behavior into a sweet princess girl too!

Here is Alyssia all dressed up for church right after she turned four.  Notice the purse?  She never leaves home without one and she is a strong believer that a lady can never have too many purses and shoes!

So back to the chair.  We were given this old wooden chair with a heart carved in it.  I forgot to take a good before picture. This is after I had wiped it down and started sanding it. It was very dirty and had several spots that needed some wood filler.

Not sure if you can see on the top left of it or not, but there used to be these little filler nobs that went in and covered  where the  screws are. All but two were missing and they looked moldy. So I popped out the remainder two and filled in all the holes and sanded her down.

I then gave her a coat of spray primer.

It was at this point when Lys came outside and said, "Oh mommy, is that chair for me?! Oh thank you mommy!" Notice she didn't really wait for an answer before saying thank you?  She saw that it was small, white, and the heart just made it very 'princessy' I think.  I did melt at her sweet face in that moment and I said, "sure honey, it is for you and eventually you will have to share it with your sister."  Needless to say she was very excited and quickly ran to tell her brothers about her new chair.

So with a very anxious daughter watching my every move I set to work to finish up this little princess chair. Two coats of paint, a little distressing, and some polyurethane, and this little chair was complete.

Alyssia is very happy with her NEW chair and I love it too!  Since I have decided to work on two bigger dresser projects back to back it was nice to take a little breather and do something small like this.  Plus it gave me some good practice time too.

So how about you? Have you done any small or big projects lately?  Do you have a daughter that is big into all things girly too? Just a side note, Alyssia might be all girl, but she will not be left out in a wrestling match with her brothers and dad!

The headboard!

As we work on  redoing our master bedroom, I thought I would give you a sneak peak at a project I completed today. I will continue to update you as we work on this room makeover project, but I could not help but show you the headboard. I enjoyed it very much and can't wait to make another one!

Here is what our headboard used to look like:

I found it at a garage sale for $5.00. It is hard wood and matched the color of the dresser we were currently using. We have never had a matching bedroom suite. A couple of things my dad had made me and then some hand me downs or garage sale finds.

We couldn't get it to attach correctly to our bed rails, so Josh just screwed it into the wall. Hence the screws on the bottom.  This piece would not match the furniture that my dad refurbished for us so we needed to buy a new headboard or transform this baby somehow.  So I started searching through DIY blog sights and educated myself on  how to reupholster a headboard.  I then dug through my material stash in the attic and praise God I had some khaki material that matched our duvet cover perfectly! I was super excited!

Next I cut off the legs and covered it with an egg carton mattress pad that we had bought at Dollar General a few months back.  It was like $3.00 with a coupon and we did not have a need for it on the bed anymore. Oh, and in case you are wondering, I did NOT use a power tool on this.  I decided to use the good old hand saw to cut those legs off. I'm just beginning my DIY journey and am not quite ready to dive into the 'power tool stage' yet. I love my appendages too much!

 Not sure if you noticed in the original picture of the headboard, but there was a 'pocket' in the middle. I just doubled up on the mattress pad there so that it would not show through.   I stapled the hound out of it to make sure that the padding would not be going anywhere!

Then it was time for the material. I washed and ironed it with heavy starch twice. That way I would be sure to get all the wrinkles out.  I  stretched it out and stapled it at 12:00, 3:00, 6:00, and 9:00 o'clock.  Then I did the corners and  finished the sides. Here is a look at the completed back.

 I love the fact that if I want to change the material to a new design or just wash it, I can remove it without disturbing the padding. 

So here is the finished headboard!

I love the simplicity of it and it is nice and soft to lean against for when I want to sit up in bed and read. I love to read in bed!!
On the back we attached these hooks for easy hanging and removal for when I need to clean it.

 
And here it is.... (drum roll please)

L O V E!!!

I know it might seem like all the same color right  now, but I am still in the process of sewing new colorful throw pillows. The one there is the first one I completed.  See the wall color?! I just love it!  I love how the khaki fits in with the rest of the room colors.  But you will have to wait until a later day  to see more pictures of the NEW room.  I want to keep you in suspense and show you a little at a time.  It is still a work in progress and I am LOVING it so far.  Stay tuned!

A is for Apple

The 2011~2012 Appel Family Homeschool year has begun!  It seems as though I  have been preparing for this week for months. In a way I have because as soon as kindergarten was done we were preparing for the new school year.  This year I have a First Grader, who is already looking forward to next years summer vacation, and a Pre-Ker that is very enthusiastic and eager to learn. 

I know some feel quite negative toward a 4 year old in school, as if their childhood is being taken away from them, but after doing some fun pre-K stuff with Jacob twe years ago I thought it was exactly what Alyssia needed. Lyssie is one of those girls who needs structure and heavy guidance and so I figured an hour or two a day of learning her ABC's, numbers, and patterns would be very beneficial for her. Besides the fact that Jacob was just plain lonely doing school by himself, I believe this year is going to be great!

First day of school!

 
I was, ok I'll be honest, still am very nervous about this year.  I have given much prayer  and thought into it and my theme verse is; "If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him." James 1:5  For you see I am not a teacher by any stretch of the imagination. In fact you can ask my mother.  I NEVER wanted to homeschool my children.  But do to the lack of finances for a good Christian school and the fact that I will not put my children in our current public school system, along with the plain fact I knew that God had given Josh and I the responsibility to raise and train our children, I have taken on the challenge to educate our children at home!
But back to the part that I am not a teacher.  I wanted to find the easiest curriculum for me to use.  Something I could just throw in front of the kids and "Wala" they would be off to Harvard!  Well, it doesn't really work that way does it?  Video school was also to much for our school budget this year so the Lord decided to provide us with almost everything we would need, minus a couple of students books, in the Abeka program.  "WHAT!!! Isn't that what real trained teachers use?!" said the little voice inside my head.    But remember my verse for the year? Exactly! I asked God for wisdom and started learning how to use the Abeka system.  My husband along with a few others have been extremely encouraging  and I have decided to go into this year knowing that God will not give me more then I can handle!  So let the games begin!!!

Unlike some who have amazing school rooms to enjoy, I am blessed to have my dining room, which is also the walkway between the kitchen and the living room, be our school room, err area. Thankfully, last year when a local Christian school closed its doors, we got the school desks from them along with some other nifty school supplies. So we aren't completely studying at the kitchen table. The 'cool' middle divider is our old tv console. I needed something for their pencils, crayons, and other supplies that they use everyday to sit on without being in the way. 

I wanted something 'real school' like for their desks so I went searching online and found these cute name plate printables.

You can find it here on this neat blog from another great teacher.

I also decided to use a file folder system this year.  Over the weekend I look over my lesson plans for the upcoming week and get out all the seatwork, flashcards, and other teaching tools needed and stick it in its folder which are divided by subjects . That way I can get at it quickly and not have to hunt everything down everyday.

I also decided that instead of having my teachers books spread all over the kitchen table, I would keep it in a basket so I could easily remove it from the table when we eat.

I can keep everything I need in there for the week so I don't have to keep on getting into the school/game/craft closet that you see in the background.
I also thought that every 'good' classroom has a bulletin board, so here is mine!

Nothing special, but it helps to display Jacob's homework chart and their most recent art projects. Don't you just love the adorable apple clips my mom found for me in Japan? I just hot glued it to the bottom  of the board for easy art clipping.
For Lyssie's Pre-K work I am using a regular Pre K work book that you can buy at any old walmart to help her with her patterns, shapes, and colors. And for letters we are using the book "How to teach your child to read in 100 easy lessons"  This is what we used with Jacob before he started kindergarten and it was great. Such easy lessons that take about 15 minutes a day and with Jacob he was pretty much reading on his own before we even started kindergarten. The plus side is that the kids seem to really enjoy the short lessons.  I still use the traditional phonics method once they start kindergarten.

Four days into the start of our school year and everything is going quite smoothly.  Lys is enjoying the structure, Jacob is trying to pretend he doesn't like school even though I know he does, and Jason is extremely lonely without his older siblings to play with  in the morning.  So I gave Jason a new responsibility. He gets to play with his little sister.  Wanna know how that is going?

OK, so pretty much he sits in her bumbo chair and shows her how fire engines work. But they seem to both be happy!!!

So how is your school year going or have you not started yet? I know for some I have started early, but we have chosen to go along with our county school calender which allows for more breaks throughout the year and we will still finish the middle of May.  Plus it gives me three weeks off at Christmas time!!!

A dresser completed & a lesson learned!

Well people, I finally did something I have been wanting to do for some time now. A Do It Yourself piece of furniture.  I have been looking and studying over DIY furniture blogs for some time now and I have had such a itch to do it myself.  So when we were given a FREE dresser and desk set, I thought to myself, "here is your chance Alicia to give it a try".  Little did I know what I was getting myself into.

My girls room needed a bigger dresser.  Lys had a small dresser, but beings she has a little sister now, I decided it was time to upgrade to something bigger that they could share.  So when this lovely dresser was given to us, I was like, ohhh i can repaint that in no time and get it in their room.

One thing wasn't true about the above statement though. And that is the, "in no time", part. It took, way longer then I thought. Thanks to the fact that it had been painted over before. Not once, but twice!!! The first color that it was painted was yellow. The second was white. Now, white is not a bad choice, but when I started to sand it off,  it started pealing like crazy. I then realized that I would have to completely sand/strip it all off.  Ugh!  That part was NOT fun! And beings I could only devote an hour here and an hour there to it, it took me over a month to strip it down to this.

Notice all the beautiful detailing on it?  The drawers were worse.  The above picture kind of shows you the yellow color.  I did think about stripping it all the way down to the beautiful dark hard wood, but I lacked the energy and oomf to do it.

Here are a couple of my totally cool tools I used to make my job easier.

A tiny screw driver to get all that nasty pealing paint out between the detailing and my trusty air pump to blow it clean after sanding.  The blower was really handy when it came to the detailing on the drawers.













I also had the 'bright' idea to paint this dresser in two tones. I had seen it done on several pieces online and loved it.  Note to others: Not a wise choice on your first piece. I would recommend on your first piece to keep it simple. Pick a piece of furniture with little to no details and one color!!!

I did two coats of basic white paint.  One really neat thing about this project, was God gave us the dresser for no cost and the paint was also supplied by Him through my father in law too. So the only money we put out on this was the paint brushes,  polyurethane, and the spray paint. What did I spay paint you say?

The hardware of course!!! I didn't mind the white so much, but I did not like the silver center thingies so I decided to ORB (Oil Rubbed Bronze) it all.  Oh, and if you are wondering what they are sitting on, I screwed them into a shoe box first so that they would stay upright and it would be easier to spray them evenly.
So after about 3 months of it sitting in our garage and working away at it a little at a time, here is the finished product. Are you ready for it?! 

Ta-Da!!!

 

 There are SO many mistakes, but I keep telling myself it is my FIRST and with time, and much more patience as I work on pieces, I will improve.

I really wasn't planning on distressing it, but while I was going through the process of polying and sanding it, I accidentally chipped some of the paint off on the corners. I liked it so much that I lightly distressed the rest of it. That way if when the girls accidentally nick it or something, it will just look like it was supposed be that way. 

So what do you think?  Have you ever refinished a piece of furniture, whether by staining it or painting it?  What were some lessons you learned while doing it?  Here are a few lessons I learned:

1. Have patience!

2. It won't turn out like all the other pieces on other DIY blogs. I'm sure they had been doing it for years before they ever blogged about it anyways.

3. Don't tackle something like this when it is over 95  degrees everyday.  

4. Practice makes perfect.

5. Keep it simple at first.

6. In the end, it is not about whether I could sell it for $200.00 dollars, but it is full of love and care for my daughters.

Now~on to my next project!!!

Playing, Packing, & Picnicing

Last week I took the kids on an adventure.  Well at least it was an adventure for me!  I drove 4 hours North to my brother's house in NC.  Did you read that little word there? "I"  So maybe some of you don't think it is a big deal to go away from home with four children ages 6 and under  with one adult, but I was a little nervous about it.  I mean, what if I got a flat tire or Annalyn had a major blow out?  Good thing I don't live by the "what ifs", because I would have never gone! So here is a little window into what went on during the week when the Mansell cousins and the Appel cousins got together.  I'm sure the grandmothers are going to love this post!!!

Oh~and before I go on, I would like to say a big Thank you to my darling hubby who stayed home to work and repaint our bedroom. More on that subject to come!

I tried to capture the trip with some photos. Now I didn't get every moment; like trying to get 6 kids to quickly and quietly sit down at the table and eat lunch, or getting 3 adults and 7 kids ready on time in the morning to meet up with friends for a picnic, or even the conversations between two adorable 4 year old cousins who have a serious Love/Hate relationship. But I did try and get a few shots of what our little trip was like.

Hope you enjoy!

Annalyn's spot for the trip.  She did great on the way to NC, but the way back she decided she had quite enough of this little cramped spot and she screamed for about 45 minutes!

Here is a shot of some life sanity saving people! Our dear friends and adopted grandparents from church were headed the same way on Monday morning so they graciously stopped at the same rest area with us so that I could feed the baby and use the rest room without having to worry about the older three kids jumping into this very pretty lake.

Finally after a four, better yet, make that five hour trip, we arrived!! Praise the Lord with no mishaps or melt downs too. Not even the kids had a melt down!  

Notice my little friend in the window? Yes, a GPS is a must have in my opinion!

Emma was my big helper during the week. She loved to hold, talk, and sing to Annalyn.  Even when Emma rode in the car with us she would just sit and sing to the baby.

Alyssia was in girl paradise the whole time as my brother has three girls and LOTS of girly toys! 

DOLLS, PURSES, BARBIES, SHOES, DRESS UP, JEWELRY. . . You name it, they got it!

This is my youngest niece Makayla. Isn't she a cutie!

My brother is an inventor at heart. Check out some of his other creations here.
This right here is a 'custom' built "spray park". See that little red and yellow thing? It shoots water out and spins at the same time. Then there are two slides and a kiddie pool to splash into. The kids had fun getting wet and splashing each other.

Eventually they tired of getting wet and decided to try racing each other by foot and on mini four wheelerish things down the hill behind the house.

Even my brother, Richard got involved.
He is definitely still a kid at heart and I believe he always will be!

My little man who thinks knows he is super cute!

One main reason why I went to my brothers, other then the part that I miss my family, the cousins wanted to play with each other, our house was finally getting fixed from storm damage, my darlying hubby wanted to paint our bedroom for me, and I was just crazy enough to want a road trip, was to help Angie pack for their move to Virginia.

Word of advice: If your kids are ever bored, drive down to the nearest convenience store and ask for some boxes. Your kids will be happy for hours. Throw in a few blankets, pillows, and some crayons and they will be in heaven!

So while Angie and I packed, and packed, and packed, and packed some more boxes, Jason and Kayla made up their spots for taking a nap. Don't they look so cute, cuddly, and quiet? OK, so quiet doesn't start with a C, but it has a "k" sound!

The older four enjoyed pretending by  making tunnels, tents, and turtle shells too!

While we didn't get the whole house packed up before I left, we did get off to a good start.  There were stacks of packed boxes in every room before I left. I was happy to help, but makes me thankful that I am NOT packing to move anytime soon.

But we couldn't have all work and no play right? So off to the mall play area we went!  Two moms and seven kids, I think some thought we were bringing a day care to play at the mall!

Can you tell that being 'hams' runs in the family?

Emma and Lyssie's relationship is very unique. I do pray that some day they will become best of friends.

Now Abigail and Jacob are best of friends and love spending every available minute together.

After playing for about an hour we had to stick to Mansell tradition and get some ice cream before heading home.  Notice who they each chose to sit with? 

On our third day in NC, we packed a picnic and drove over to a park in Gastonia where there is a Real 'spray ground'. We met up with some old college buddies and had a wonderful time. One of my favorite bloggers was there too! Renee from Living, Laughing, and Loving.

We finally managed to get a couple good group shots of the seven cousins too. 

And of course they had to do a 'crazy' one!

And here is a little special message for their grandparents!

Before the kids and I headed home we stopped by our favorite food joint.

Chick-fil-A

The cow was even nice enough to make an appearance, to which the kids were thrilled about!

Annalyn bonding with her aunt!

The Mansell and Appel cuties!

   I have truly been blessed by  having my brother live only four hours away for the past four years. I am thankful for the Lord leading them to an assistant pastors position in VA, but I will miss our 'last minute get togethers' we have been able to enjoy periodically since our move to GA four years ago.  I don't think I will be doing an eight hour trip by myself anytime soon either.

I will leave you with this funny story.  When it was time to leave CFA, Angie took Makayla to the restroom, so Richard and I walked out to the vans with the other six children.  At the same time a father and his five-year-oldish son were walking into the store.  We over heard the boy say, "daddy that sure is a really big family!"  

Praise God for family!