Apron hooks and shelf and an awesome GIVEAWAY!

Scroll to the bottom for information about an awesome giveaway I'm participating in!

I finished my kitchen shelf/apron hanger a while ago. I'm not sure why it takes me so long to post on my blog, but it does. Sorry.

Anyway, here's my shelf pre-painted.

A couple of weeks ago, I dragged my kids out to Lowes and found some great things! I got some double hooks for $2 (a 2 pack!) since they were the same price as the single hooks. I also picked up some Valspar spray paint. Jury's still out on the Valspar paint. I'm not sure how I like it, compared to Rustoleum and Krylon brands. Anyway, here's my finished-so-far shelf:

I centered the shelf on the wall with the pantry door open, since I rarely ever close that door. I also plan on making some kind of sign/thing to put on the shelf. I want to play with my jigsaw a bit more and cut out a word for the shelf. Any ideas? I've been thinking "oishii" which is Japanese for delicious (and is only 4 characters instead of 6 in Japanese), but I'm not sure how that would work.

On the subject of closing my pantry door, you'd think I'd do it more often because my 1 year-old is always rearranging the bottom shelf and using food at building blocks. Isn't he cute?

Here's another quick project I did recently. I found a pool noodle at a thrift store the other day and thought I'd repair my sons' swords with it. The "swords" are made of PVC pipe with a cap and a pool noodle. One noodle makes 2 swords. We actually made these swords a year ago for Christmas, but our boys ripped the orange noodle that we'd used originally. If you'd like to make these, they're very simple and cheap. We found pre-cut lenths of PVC pipe at Home Depot. They had a whole barrel of these pipes (24 inches) for $.78 each. We picked up two caps (20 cents each) and you cut the noodle into 2 24 inch lengths then shove the pipe inside the noodle. I painted the "hilts" yellow because I thought it would look cuter. Our boys have loved having their swords back and I like the green much better than our original orange (they looked Halloweeny).

And because I can never finish a project before starting twelve more, I decided to build a folding screen to go across my office/library opening since that room is usually a mess and I'm having a get together next week. We'll see if I finish it by then.

Here's my wood, cut and sanded and ready to be put together sitting on top of my yet-to-be-finished craft table. I finished cutting the wood yesterday and I would have kept going, but it started raining (my workshop is our back porch right now) and it got really cold out... for southern Arizona, anyway.

Here's my inspiration photo from Overstock.com.

I'll try to be good a post pictures of my finished product soon.

Now, on to the giveaway mentioned above! My good friend, Morgan is hosting a blah blasting giveaway! She's got a lot of great stuff from a lot of great ladies ready for everyone to win! I will be giving a FREE vinyl quote to one lucky winner, so head on over and enter!

Finishing up some projects and starting new ones

We've been working on various projects around here lately. We finished up our swing set (for the most part) on Saturday. That felt great!

My boys painted the canvases I prepped a while ago, but for some reason I didn't get around to hanging them up until today. Here they are in our upstairs hallway. My baby seemed to know which one he did (the one in the middle). He said something that sounded like, "I did this one" when I was taking him to his room for a nap today. He's 15 months. Blueberries were on sale last week, so I had a couple of friends over and we made 3 batches of Blueberry Lime Jam (recipe found in this cookbook).

Last night, I fell asleep thinking about all the projects and things I need to get done. I decided to pick an area in my house and just work on it until it feels "done," or as done as I feel like getting it. I picked the kitchen and spent a good half hour or more thinking about my apron situation. I originally planned on using a pegboard to hand my aprons. The flowery red/black now all black one found in this post. After spray painting it, I found out it wouldn't fit in the space available! I'm still trying to find a new home for that one. Inspiration struck last night and I decided I would make a shelf with hooks.

I was at Home Depot the other day, pricing out tiles for a craft night I have coming up. I ended up wandering into the lumber section on accident and they had a TON of nice pre-cut wood for 51 cents a piece. I grabbed a bunch of 1x12 for some shelves I've been planning on doing in my kitchen soon and then because it was so cheap, I grabbed a few other nice boards with no real plans for them yet. My 1x4 board became my shelf today!

This only took me about 20 minutes. I used a handsaw to cut the back and the shelf part. Then, because I got a jigsaw for Christmas and haven't gotten to use it yet, I cut my own corbels for the shelf. Can I just say how much FUN it was to use a jigsaw? I never knew power tools could be so fun! Loved it and will definitely be doing something with it again soon. I scrounged around and found some nails, then glued and nailed the whole thing together. It's too cold today to spray paint, but I'll be doing that soon. I'm also going to be getting some nice little hooks at Lowe's soon for my shelf, too. I plan on doing a word in block letters for the top of the shelf soon and I'll take pictures and post them when I get that done.

The Swing Set

We got the kids a swing set for Christmas. We picked a kit that you have to buy the wood separate. It took us a month, but we finally finished it. This past Friday, I pulled out all the wood for the platform to the slide and put it together while my kids were doing quiet time/naps.

Here it is, half the planks screwed down (above). And here's my two youngest having fun on the finished product (below).

Saturday came and we devoted the whole day to finishing it up. It was a lot of fun, but a lot of work too.

Here's a couple of pictures of us putting it together.

And the finished swing set (so far)! We were so excited, we went out for pizza for dinner.

We still need to stake the swing set down. My husband was trying to do that, but the ground here around Tucson is rock hard and the stake wouldn't go but a few inches down. We also need to attach the slide to the swing set. The slide was supposed to come with hardware, but for some reason, it didn't. I keep forgetting to call and see if we can get new hardware shipped to us. When I get around to that, we'll be adding the slide. Until then, our kids LOVE the swings!

**After finishing this project together, my husband told me that he would be willing to help me with some more projects (like all the furniture piling up in the garage that needs to be refinished! Yippee!**