Family Night

Kris and I have been talking lately about how we felt like we weren't being as intentional in discipling our kids as we once were. With football/cheerleading 3 times a week and on Saturdays and church on Wednesdays and Sundays, it is just so busy. So, we decided to have a weekly family devotional time on Friday afternoons. We plan to do it pretty soon after the kids get home from school so that if even if there is something else going on that night, it won't get in the way of our family time. My friend Kelly and her husband, have a great website called Family Muscle. It has plans for family nights all laid out for you. It is a really awesome tool to help bring your family closer to each other and God. So we decided to try one of them out. We chose to do the Back to school Family night, even though school has been in session for a month or so!

I only had a day to pull together decorations. I just used stuff I had and a couple things from the dollar spot at Target. ( I will go ahead and apologize for the poor quality of the pics! I realized right before dinner that my good camera's battery was dead, so I had to use my son's old point and shoot!)

I really wanted to find some school trays but didn't have time to really search them out, so I just bought the styrofoam ones. We had rectangle pizza, corn, salad, school bus cookies and milk.

The food was really good! So good, that I think we'll have it more often!

After dinner, we took all of our broken crayons and melted them into round disk crayons. The kids really enjoyed doing this.

Once the crayons cooled, they really liked coloring with them.

After craft time, we played a few games like show-and-tell...

and Red Rover, Red Rover.

We ended with a devotion and talked to the kids about obeying their teachers, leaders and of course, parents!

We really had a great time and look forward to our next family night!

Now go check out this website and get started planning your family night!

B turns 2!

I can't believe that my baby boy is growing up so quickly.

It seems like he was born just yesterday, but he turned 2 last week.

Here are a few pics from his Toy Story party.

I only have a few pics that turned out because my camera was on manual focus. Darn it! I just can't believe he's 2!

Cheap Kitchen Furniture Redo

I bought this little table 2 years ago at GW for $15. I painted the oak finish a distressed cream right after I bought it. I didn't prime it so, after moving, the distressed finish became a little too distressed and not very desirable.

I planned to paint it cream again, but thought I might go a little bolder and paint it blue. The paint was left over from another project, so there was nothing to lose but time, right?

So, I painted it blue and distressed it. Then, I applied 2 coats of wipe-on poly. I also added a shelf and trimmed it out with molding. This is the first time I have ever altered a piece of furniture with more than paint. I was pretty excited about the way it turned out. I love how the cream and the bare wood show through in spots.

This is a very important table in our house. Each child has his/her own basket to keep school papers in and those little things I find around the house that belong to them. Then on the weekends, we empty them out. I put special school projects or work that I want to keep in the bottom drawer. The top shelf has a basket where we keep things that used to clutter up the top of the table, like receipts, invitations, pens, pencils, etc.

I even gave my kitchen table a makeover. It used to look like this:

It was just a cheap-o black pedestal table- I think from Target (I bought it at a liquidation outlet.).

I really wanted a dark stained wood table with cream chairs. I was pretty sure that this table was not solid wood, so I thought it was hopeless. I decided to sand it down just to see.

I'm so glad that I did, because it was wood!

I found 2 of these chairs at GW for $14.99 (for BOTH).

I Painted them cream and recovered the cushions with a $4.98 shower curtain from Target. (I added some clear vinyl to the seats also to protect them from the many spills that will be in their future.)

Now, they look like this:

I also took two chairs like this, also bought from GW for $6.99 each, and gave them the same treatment.

So my table went from this:

To this:

And the kitchen went from this: (when it was semi-done)

To this: (done for now...I still want to paint my cabinets! )

I love it!

Cost breakdown:

Stain for table- $8
Poly- had on hand
Chairs- $30 for all 4
Spray paint for chairs- $12

Material- $4.98 shower curtain (but already had it on hand)
Clear Vinyl- around $5
Fabric trim- $3
Paint for small table- free leftover from another project (but $5 was original price)
Poly- had on hand
Piece of MDF- $7 cut for free at Home Depot
Braces for shelf- $1 also cut for free
Piece of trim- had on hand
New drawer pulls- $2 for both

Linking here, here and here. And also here and here.