Boy room

Two hacks in one post (curtains for my boy’s room)

04/02/2013 9:28 pm by Allison 20 Comments

Hiah my friends! I have been doing a little bit of tweaking in my son’s room this past week and am very excited to show you! His poor room has been virtually neglected the past almost-3-years that we’ve lived here. Thank goodness he is a typical boy who could care less what his room looks like. As long as he has his legos and DS, he is a happy camper.

Okay, so his room started like this:

First off, I ditched the shelf below his window almost immediately. It’s now on the other side of the room. And just for a refresher, here’s the post I wrote about all his bedding.

I’ll just go ahead and start with the “after” and then share the deets. I hung some curtains in his room and I still can’t believe what a huge difference it made.

I’ll let you do a quick double-take now. Yes, I am just as shocked with the before and after.

I didn’t even paint his walls or anything. Just curtains. And the room looks like 10 thousand percent better. Wow.

I love with a capital L these curtains. They are actually navy/white pinstripe twin bedsheets that I found at Target in the clearance section a few weeks ago. All I did was add a 1″ wide orange grosgrain piece of ribbon down the inner edge of either panel.

The stripe compliments the stripe on the bedding, but because it’s such a narrow pinstripe it doesn’t compete with the bedding. To turn the flat sheet into a curtain I sewed the orange ribbon down the side and stuck a curtain rod through the top of the sheet (I had to seam rip some stitching to open it up on either side).

Then I just hung the rod so that the curtain would barely touch the floor – no hemming or anything. So easy!

Now for the really fun part! I totally did an ikea hack to hang the curtan. I was going to make another one of my custom $2 curtain rods but as luck would have it I came across two ikea “bygel” kitchen rails in my stash. I had them in my office before Ben and I did one of our many office flip-flops.

The wheels started turning and I thought to myself, “Self, these look like they could be awesome cheap curtain rods!” I tested them out and sure enough, they were long enough and the fabric fit on them.

All I had to do was screw them into the wall with the curtain already attached, and voila! instant curtain rods.

I am just giddy at how well they worked. And if you can even believe it, they are only $2.99 at ikea and come in two different lengths (these are the shorter 21″ length).

I guess you’d say this post is a double hack. I hacked some twin bedsheets into curtains, and I hacked two kitchen storage rails into curtain rods. I’m ~~sexy~~ thrifty and I know it.

And for your pinning pleasure:

I have been working like crazy on this house lately and I can’t wait to get down to business and show you everything I’ve done! If you’ve done any crazy ikea hacks lately or have made some curtains, share your post with us in the comments section!

Filed Under: Decorating, For kids, Sewing, Tips & Tricks Tagged With: Boy bedroom, Boy room, curtain rod, curtains, IKEA, ikea hack

Sorting all those LEGO instruction booklets

03/25/2013 9:58 pm by Allison 7 Comments

Are you a Lego mama? I am. My son has tons of Legos. Like, bucket-loads. I’ve spent time setting up a pretty sweet containment system for all the chaos, but those instruction booklets? Aye yai yai. I swear, my friends, Legos will be the death of me!

So, for like 8 years I have saved the Lego instruction books from the grips of a little boy who would otherwise completely destroy them. He is finally old enough that I have relinquished my iron grip on these very expensive little books and allowed him to keep them.

The booklets have been stored in a plastic container with a lid. They have seen better days.

The problem with storing them piled in a plastic bin is that when the boy decides to look for a book, he tears through the container until he finds the book he wants. And then we end up with trashed booklets. And mama cries.

Did you know every time you throw away or destroy a Lego Instruction Booklet, somewhere out there a Mini Figure dies. It’s true.

We have killed too many mini figs. It was time for a new solution. Leanne is more creative than I, and fortunately I found an idea that she used for all those booklets.

Drum Roll… Lego instruction booklet binders.

I read her post a year ago, pinned it, and have been meaning to get on it since then. Well, finally I did it. I hunkered down and stuffed those booklets into nice organized binders.

I started by dumping out the bin and sorting all the books into piles by theme (Star Wars, Mars Mission, Indiana Jones, etc).

Once I had my piles goin’ on, I took all the itty bitty little instruction cards and taped them onto cardstock.

These mini square cards are from the Advent Calendar he gets each year for Christmas – I save all the little cards so he can rebuild his little treasures.

And like I said earlier, I had to do some damage control on several books. I just taped them all back together using scotch tape.

As for the stuffing, I just purchased a few packages of sheet protectors and a couple binders. Each book gets stuffed into a sheet protector.

When the boy wants to build a set, he removes the book from the protector, builds his set, and then returns his book back to the protector. Seems simple enough. Yet, then again, this child is the most unorganized little human on the planet, so we’ll see how it goes.

As I stuffed the books and created my cardstock pages with all the mini cards, I added them to the binders.

Super simple, and so much easier to find a particular book without destroying every other book in his path.

And just as a refresher, here’s how we store Legos in his room.

Do you have any other really awesome Lego storage ideas? I’m always open to new ideas. There’s pretty much nothing worse than stepping on a Lego while barefoot, so any new ways to keep them away from my arches is gravy.

Filed Under: For kids, Organization Tagged With: Boy bedroom, Boy room, lego instruction bookets, legos

Labeling & organizing massive amounts of Legos

08/28/2012 9:02 pm by Allison 14 Comments

Well hello hello! Things have been cray-cray around here! I have been doing stuff around the ol’ hood, but mostly I’ve been trying to soak up the last few weeks of kid action before they head back to school… which they did, Monday. sniff. I love having them home, but I’ll admit, it is time.

It’s been two days and I’ve already got the house totally torn apart with projects! The first of many is to get some labels on the Lego Organization System I set up in my son’s room.

{Lego Organization}

Remember that post? About a month ago I showed these cool storage units I found over at ikea. {Love that place!} Well, today I finally sat down and labeled them all. And I’m pleased as punch. Check it out:

Pretty tight. I approve.

I’m seriously digging how they turned out. Hopefully my almost-11-years-old son can refrain from picking and peeling the labels off. I’m sure it will be fine.

I tediously made all the labels with my Silhouette CAMEO. I say tediously because I had to swap out the correct color vinyl for each individual word. Kind of time consuming. You can easily make them using pre-cut sticker letters or even just using colored sharpies too though. Or if you are really ambitious you can always hand cut them out with a pair of scissors.

(I hate to have to say no, but no, I can’t make a set of these for anyone. I don’t have the time or resources to mass produce them. Sorry.)

Each label was cut out in coordinating vinyl, except the words “figures” and “clear” are with a frosted vinyl.

Of course the “orange” is my favorite. Are you surprised in the least?

I just went through and slapped all the vinyl right onto the plastic drawers. The yellow didn’t want to stick as well but it’s the only non-Silhouette vinyl I used. The rest is the premium vinyl from the Silhouette store.

I had two shades of brown so we got a little funky with that one. Kinda random, but so am I.

So glad to have this project done! And they turned out so cool looking. Oh, I almost forgot, the font I used is called “CK Ali’s Hand” which I found for free (can’t remember where – google it). Just make sure if you use this font to “weld” the letters together.

* This isn’t a sponsored post by Silhouette, I just love using mine! However, if you want to order any vinyl or a machine, here’s the link to the premium vinyl (sticks better and is thicker than the regular) and here’s a link to the CAMEO.

Add this project to your to-do board on pinterest! ->