Thomas the Train Double Riser

If your children are fans of the wooden Thomas the Train sets, I am sure you have plenty of experience with their wooden risers - both the good and the bad.  They allow your children to build bigger and better, AND they are also not particularly stable, especially, if you double stack them.

I revealed how I solved a few issues in this post, Thomas the Train Bridge Tutorial, involving permanently attaching a track section to 2 single wooden risers.  Simple and yet so very helpful.  I am not sure how much my boys appreciated this change, but I sure appreciated it as it stopped a lot of whining and crying because the track broke, yet again.  Screws and glue are good for that.

So, when my oldest recently started combining the single risers to make double risers (which they are meant to do, unfortunately), I experienced a similar problem as before - the track broke.  Grrrr.

Boo.  Real stable, right?

Tutorial: Baby/Toddler Duvet Cover Part 2

I mentioned in my DIY Your Own Pottery Barn Pillow post that I had a matching duvet cover coming, and here it is.  This tutorial makes the Baby/Toddler Duvet Cover Tutorial even easier.

 Do your kids have any special interests or characters that they like?

There are so many great fabrics to choose from.  You don't have to settle for whatever the kid's stores want to sell you for too much money.  I bought my Star Wars fabric from Joann's at 40% off 4.5 yards.  If you play your coupons right, you might even get 50% off your desired fabric, which is likely way less then what you would pay a the store. 

Who's with me?!

Pottery Barn Pillow Case Tutorial

You may or may not have been willing to pay for some Pottery Barn Kids bedding, but I have to tell you they got me with their Star Wars line.  Mind you, I waited and watched until I got a whopping 30% discount on 2 sets of 2 different Star Wars sheets sets.  (It has been my plan all along for my 2 boys to share a room.)

Well, let me rephrase that.  

I only bought a pillow case (not the sham which costs more) and a duvet cover from Pottery Barns Kids, and I bought a navy blue fitted sheet from Walmart which matched both sets so they are interchangeable.  That is how I was able to afford it.  It was still expensive from my point of view, but totally worth it.  They only had the Star Wars bedding and the Empire Strikes Back bedding when I bought them, for which I am eternally grateful.  I don't know if I could have made a decision with 2 more, just as cool options (Vader and Return of the Jedi too) that they now have.

Upcycled Jeans Bracelet

My boys kill jeans (well any pants, really) with such regularity that I end up with lots of extra fabric in my upcycle pile.  I love that fabric, because despite having paid for it at some point, it is like free fabric to muck around with as I please.

What, try a new idea?  Sure, because it is free!  No worries that you are wasting your money on some craziness.

So, when we went to Germany, I was looking to make something or somethings really cool for my niece to match these cool t-shirts that I had made for my nephew.

Since I love upcycling, especially jeans, I was perusing pinterest for ideas and found this great idea by Av Susanne.

When you visit her blog, there is a fantastic tutorial about how to make these great jeans and beads bracelets just like she did, but of course, being me, I followed my own path.  Av Susanne cut and used existing seams to create her bracelets, which according to her tutorial only wrap around the wrist once.  I chose to create my bracelets such that they wrapped 2, 3, or 4 times (use your imagination) around the wrist.  (If you use a leg seam, you could do the same thing still using her tutorial.)  The reason for the multiple wrap idea, was that I thought this bracelet would be great to grow with my 9-year-old niece versus a bracelet that only wraps once, i.e. if if it wraps 4 times around her slim wrist now, it will wrap 3 times around when she get bigger like me.  It wraps nicely around my wrist 3 times.