Pop Up Camper - Part 2

We've been making quite a bit of progress on the pop up lately. You can check out part one here. After Jason took all of the cabinets out, I scraped off all of the loose papery bits then gave it a good cleaning with a TSP substitute. I don't think this is a necessary step, but I did it anyway. I guess it can't hurt. We were originally going to reuse the hardware, but they weren't in very good shape. We removed those and I patched the holes with some wood putty. After that I gave it a coat of Primer. I used Zinsser Bullseye 123 Primer. It stuck to everything which was really nice! Then I finished off everything with two coats of Behr Dark Cavern. 

P.S. It looks like I shouldn't have stopped at the doors...our garage is in dire need of some new paint!

We really love the color. We weren't expecting it to have brown undertones but are very happy with it! We're keeping the white countertop for now. It's in pretty good shape, and I don't think it looks awful!

I'm so excited to see it come together. We had to get these big countertop/bench pieces out of the way so I can spread out to paint the doors, drawers and trim pieces.

Look - I'm helping! I think I've actually done more than Jason on the camper so far. Shhhhh, don't tell him!

While waiting for the paint to dry, I decided to tackle the cushions. We chose this awesome stripe fabric from Jo-Ann. It's an outdoor fabric so I hope it holds up okay. I used the old cushions as pattern pieces and reused the foam as well. The foam was in really great shape. I think I might wrap it in some batting though. That might help it fill out some of the corners. It seems a little loose since the cushions were already squished a bit on the corners from the old covers. I was going to use the old zippers, but we ended up finding some zipper by the yard in the upholstery section. It was about $5 to replace all of the zippers and now they match a bit better than they would have if I used the old ones.

The bottom of the cushions is a flannel backed vinyl. The original cushions used this same type of vinyl, but I'm still not sold on the fabric. It feels a little too flimsy. I hope it wears well. Note to self - next time use the walking foot like I knew I should have! The vinyl stretched quite a bit with the regular foot.

Stripes are tricky, that's for sure! I had to remember to line them up so that when the cushions are sitting on the bench the stripes will be in order. I also had the zippers all close toward the camper wall. The corners were a headache too. I could not figure them out for the bottom cushions. I finally found this post from another camper that posted pictures of what I knew was the way to do the corners. Sometimes you just need to see it. At least two of our cushions look nice and square with no puckers...we're just going to have to live with the other two! I don't think I'm going to redo them.

More camper reno to come!

T-Ball Preseason

This is our first year in t-ball and we're loving it. 

Hanging out at one of Clark's practices

The parade - what a fun time that was! Kent had on perma-smile. It was priceless! Kent's a Riptide. I was in charge of planning and making the banner. The kids all did such a great job with their handprints. I think the banner turned out cute and we won a runner up prize! Go us!

Clark's on the Saints (love the Saint Bernard!). We thought it was fitting since we're Saints. Ha!

Walking IN THE STREET! That was a pretty big deal for the both of them.

Our fans! Thanks for coming to support the boys Gigi and Kara!

Classic Clark

Love t-ball. So excited for the season!

Spring Break - Children's Museum

Spring Break was a lot of fun! We had a wonderful staycation and got a lot of great use out of our museum memberships! First stop was the Children's Museum. 

Ha - I think this is hilarious!

Kara and I played by the blocks and balls while the boys worked on gears and building. It was so fun to watch Kara. She was determined to hold all three balls in her hands at the same time. She would have one in each hand and then get this determined look on her face as she stretched her little fingers as far as she could to pick up the other ball. So cute.

Then the three of them all worked on towers together. Building and then Kara-zilla knocking down.

The boys loved the construction zone. Clark built a bi-plane and Kent built a racecar. There may have been a slight mommy meltdown as Kent was building the car, but the wonderful people of the museum jumped in to help him out. Thank goodness!

Penguins and Poison

The end of March/beginning of April was crazy with school projects. Clark had a penguin project for school and also the science fair project. They both turned out really well! He researched King Penguins and created a penguin out of a 2 liter bottle and some papier mâché. 

The class decorated their classroom like the Antarctic. It looked amazing. It was so fun to have Clark show us around and see how proud he was of his work.

Clark's poisonous snake project was really fun. He really knows a lot about snakes. I was quite impressed.

Love this one of the board in action. He was showing Gigi and Boompa how dangerous each snake was.

For the record: Grandma and Grandpa, Uncle Brandon and Jenny also came to support Clark at the science fair.

Pop Up Camper - Part 1

So the Pop Up Camper Redo has begun. Here is the camper all popped out with the crazy awning/screen room. The screen room doesn't really work but the awning is nice. The camper is in pretty good shape. The canvas is relatively new and only has a few minor places where it needs to be repaired.

Before - front

Before - back

When we opened the camper and started moving things a bit, we noticed some pretty bad spots on the roof. Jason just patched the really awful spot, but we are going to wait until winter before we redo the whole roof. It's not leaking or anything so we should be okay but it needs to get fixed.

We took out all of the cabinets and made a bunch of dirt so the after photos look better. It's a good plan in my book. This is the front of the camper.

Back of the camper with cabinets removed.

I scraped all of the walls to remove the loose woodgrain paper. I cleaned it with a TSP cleaner. Then I put on a coat of primer and two coats of paint. We decided to go with Wilmington Tan by Behr. The color almost matches the canvas perfectly. We are painting the cabinets dark but I didn't want the walls to be dark as well even though you don't see much of them.

We replaced the flooring with click lock vinyl flooring. It looks so nice! What a difference it made! A lot of people use the sticky kind, but we like the idea of a floating floor a little better.

A view from outside the camper. Freshly painted walls, new floor...you won't recognize this place when we're done!

More updates soon!

Trying Something New

I've always wanted to learn how to reupholster furniture. I finally figured out that I had to just jump into a project. I'm starting with these two chairs. They were given to us by my mom. The plaid isn't really our style. The arms are all ripped and fraying. But the chairs are in pretty good condition otherwise. I like the seat height, and I like the traditional shape. 

Here's Kent's attempt to fix the arms of the chairs. He thinks tape can fix anything. Well, tape and dad.

I found this black and white houndstooth fabric at Hobby Lobby that was cheap enough to buy just in case my attempt at reupholstering didn't work out. But it's not cheap quality fabric. It's a nice durable upholstery. I think I'm going to love the more modern fabric on traditional chairs. I'm hoping to replace the rug someday (maybe with this one, maybe not) and paint these walls. I'm done with brown walls for right now.

I started taking one chair apart last month, but haven't really made much progress over the last few weeks. I'm hoping to get motivated again so I don't forget how I took the thing apart!!

Our Fortune Cookie

My mom bought these cutest little fortune cookie shoes for me last year for Chinese New Year. They were more for Kara, but she wasn't born yet, so I got the gifts! I decided that I wanted to get a cute little Chinese dress for Kara and have her wear her fortune cookie shoes for this year's Chinese New Year. Well, the hunt for the Chinese dress didn't go as planned, of course. I decided that I would make one, but it didn't happen for the new year. No worries.

I know the dress is a little more Japanese in style, but that's okay too. I love the dress. It was super easy to make too. I used this Sweet Wrap Reversible Dress pattern by Heidi and Finn. I really love their patterns. And I love that we get two dresses out of one! I think she'll be wearing it next year too. I made the 12-18 month size. She's swimming in it. Next year she'll either still be wearing it as a dress or maybe a tunic with leggings.

She's so cute sometimes. We can't get over it!

Peekaboo! She's finally starting to enjoy this game. It's fun for the boys to play with her.

The cute little shoes.

The Monster Mash

...or maybe it was Monster Jam?!

Jason and his dad took the boys to Monster Jam again this year. Last year's event started Kent on his obsession with monster trucks. This year it rekindled the romance for him. I think the kids really loved going this time now that they knew what to expect. Jason was a little more excited too. He even wanted to make t-shirts for everyone. Everyone picked out their favorite monster truck picture and we printed it on ink jet paper and ironed it on to the shirts. Super easy - just had to follow the directions on the package.

Jason was so excited to see Max-D (upper left photo). I guess he came out and on the first run he flipped and didn't run again for the rest of the night. We joke about that a lot. Kent now is obsessed with El Toro Loco. He bought an El Toro Loco pillow for his souvenir. Clark still loves Grave Digger which is perfect since he wins all the time. His souvenir was a Grave Digger sword that I thought would be broken by now, but it's still slashing! They were all excited to see Iron Man. Clark loved the Zombie truck with its rotting flesh hanging off everywhere. Kent hated the Megasaurus that came out and ate cars. At least he didn't fall asleep this year!

They are already making plans for next year's big event. Hopefully they will be able to get pit passes next year and get close to the trucks. They will really love that. They tried this year, but it didn't work out. Next year it will!!

Winter OIympics 2014

We celebrated a LOT during February. We had Chinese New Year, the Superbowl and the Winter Olympics all in the first week or so! The kids were loving all of the fun stuff we did. I was just loving the food. Just keeping it real.

I decided that I wanted to have a little party to celebrate the opening ceremonies of the Olympics. We made a paper chain out of the Olympic ring colors. I still have a bunch of strips leftover from our snake project from last Chinese New Year, so any time we can use our strips, we do. Here's what we did for Thanksgiving with more strips. And the leaves from Clark's family tree used these strips too!

For dinner we had Russian Blini. Oh. My. Goodness. Can I just say that I was instantly back in Russia when I took the first bite. The phrase for "blini with sweetened condensed milk" is one of the key phrases that I remember in Russian. That's how much I used to order them!! 

We used this recipe and they turned out so yummy. We had many different toppings to use: sweetened condensed milk (my favorite), strawberries, bananas, cream cheese fruit dip, chocolate spread, chocolate almond spread, chocolate hazelnut spread, powdered sugar, and maybe a few more things. I can't remember. It was fun to just try different combinations and see what we liked the best. I stand by my favorite of blini with sweetened condensed milk lightly dusted with powdered sugar on top. Oh, who are we kidding, you just load that thing up with powdered sugar! I won't be waiting until the next Russian Olympic games to make them though!

During the opening ceremonies, we played a little bingo game that I found online. It didn't last long. We really just liked talking about the different countries and guessing how many athletes each one would have. We had the globe out so we could find the different countries and we had google out so we could answer any of those tough questions Clark asked!

Clark really enjoyed the Olympics this year. Everyday he would follow the US on the app and see how many medals we won. He loved watching the videos of all of the new (to him) sports. He thought curling was hilarious. It was so fun to see how much he enjoyed the games. Made me love them more too!

Sidelights Obscured

Before Christmas I took down my sidelight curtains to wash them. The once solid curtain panels were now striped from the sun and looked sick. I really liked the extra light that the uncovered sidelights brought in, so I left them alone for a couple of months. Then I really looked at them again. Those glass blocks are definitely NOT my favorite thing in our home. So I picked up some fabric from JoAnn and went to work. I think it's a vast improvement! Now to work on a new rug for this area...