Then I stopped. Wait! Can’t I use what I have here and just give some furniture a fresh look, a new room in which to reside?

It was settled. The following weekend’s project? Painting furniture.

Two dressers, to be exact. One of them the dresser from my nursery when I was a baby….the other from our son’s nursery, purchased unfinished seven years ago.

The older dresser had been white once — but then underwent a coat of bright yellow, white again, then an experimental application of beige crackle paint treatment. (I did this before I was married and moved into our first home. It was in our dining room then.) It remaining in either our dining room or our foyer for the next two subsequent house moves.

This older dresser was donned the “craft cabinet.”

When I moved all of our art and craft supplies into the laundry right off of the school room last month, this cabinet was left free and open.

I decided to give it to Rainey since the 7-year-old dresser that was currently in her bedroom was considerably less roomy (and honestly, a little top-heavy and tipsy). It needed, though, to be white once again.

Then there was the newer dresser, the “current nursery” dresser. This newer dresser can be seen in this photo to the right.

The newer dresser was destined to go into the dining room — I need more space to house cloth napkins, tablecloths, placemats, other doo-dads. But white wouldn’t work in here — it had to be black.

So dropcloths went down and sanding commenced. In just three days, these two pieces of furniture had been completely transformed and given new tasks within our home.

I love the outcome — of both pieces!

Here’s how I did it:

1) Start with clean furniture. Wash the wooden furniture with a damp rag (mild detergent if needed). Dry completely.

2) Sand. An electric sander is recommended for many reasons, but it will only do the large, expansive areas well. The smaller grooves and edges will need to be sanded by hand with sandpaper. Sand, not necessarily to remove all former paint and/or varnish, but to procure a smooth surface, ready for accepting new paint. Here is where you can sand down the wood to lessen gouges and scratches.

3) Clean sanded dust off of the furniture. I used a combination of damp rags (again), a vacuum hose, and microfiber dust cloths.

4) Buy quality paint specifically made for wooden furniture. I used General Finish brand, available at WoodYou stores and other locations.

5) Apply thin coats of paint; exact number of coats differs from piece to piece. Several thin coats will wear much better and be more likely to chip than one or two thick coats. I used a large foam brush, but angled, tapered bristle brushes may also be used.

6) Lightly sand between coats (after paint has dried to the touch) using a very fine sandpaper. Use microfiber cloths or rags to clean dust before applying another coat.

7) When the paint finish is uniform, apply a sealer/topcoat. To cover miniscule defects, a satin or semi-gloss finish is best. Two coats is the minimum recommended amount. Let dry between coats, but DO NOT sand.

8) Reapply knobs or add new ones when furniture has cured overnight.

9) Enjoy your new face-lifted furniture!

At least at our house.

Want to know what it is? You probably have it in your pantry right now. (Unless someone in your household has an allergy. If so, please disregard this post.)

Peanut butter.

I tell the kids that their frequent bouts of hiccups as of late just mean that they’re growing. (Not true, but it’s what we’ve all heard, right? And it does make them seem a little less annoying and a tad more cool.)

As far as remedies go, we’ve tried it all.

Drinking water.
Drinking water upside down. (Wouldn’t recommend that one.)
A spoonful of sugar.
Scaring.
Holding our breath.

None of these worked. But for us, peanut butter does.

It’s not scientifically proven OR medically validated per se, but supposedly, eating peanut butter helps relax the sphincter muscle and calms the spasming diaphram.

(I’m not the only one who swears by this method.)

Now.

If I can get my kids to stop pretending they have a hiccups so that they can have a spoonful of peanut butter 30 minutes past bedtime.

Anybody got a cure for that? ;)

How about pull out some boxes from the closet upstairs….

Just a whiff of the vintage cardboard & vinyl took me back 20 years.

And then there’s the terrific 70s/80s photography on the back of the covers to bring me a smile….

…as well as the evidence of all the times I played “librarian” with these albums:

I’m thankful that most of my childhood LPs survived our many moves and the heat of storage all these years.

My favorites were the ones with the built-in storybooks….

…and it quickly became evident that these were G & R’s favorites, too, within the bunch.

G became instantly bonded to the whole “vinyl” experience. It brought me such joy to see him enjoying these stories and songs, the same ones I loved as a girl. I can see that I’m going to have to keep these out of hiding for a little bit longer!

Simply line a tin with paper liners, then drop a marble in between the tin and liner. (Balls of aluminum foil will also work.)

Carefully fill the liners to a little over 1/2 full (overfilling will cover the heart shape effect). Bake, remove from pan, remove marbles, cool, and frost.

I simply drew large letters all over our driveway with sidewalk chalk (each was about 1 foot high, enough to allow room for four little feet on top).  I yelled out, “1, 2, 3, A!” and so on for various letters.  The kids had to run around madly searching for the letter I asked for.  They grinned from ear to ear and jumped in place when they reached the right spots.

As a wrap-up, the kids randomly jumped onto letters and yelled out (loudly!) the name of the letter they were on.  This got out some energy and satisfied their urge to use their “outside voices” to the fullest before we went inside to eat.

Can’t get much easier (and cheaper) than a piece of sidewalk chalk!

Simply write age-appropriate tasks on one end wide wooden craft sticks; let your child color the other tips their favorite color. Stick them into a jar, facing either direction you choose. Every morning, when G completes a task, we flip it over. When all of them are flipped, he is free to have free time of his choice (play computer games, go outside, etc.). Our list is:
- Take breakfast dishes to the sink.
- Make my bed.
- Tidy up my room.
- Get dressed.
- Brush my teeth.
- Hug someone!

The last one is a fun one. I love him watching him seek out and hug his sister, who’s usually looking at him in a funny way. I have hopes that one day soon he’ll hug her unprompted! (I occasionally hear him tell her, “I love you.” Nothing prepares you for that sweet sound.)

(Thanks, Make & Takes, for a very fun way to encourage helping out!)

It can be more fun for you as a parent if you ask them at the end of their masterpiece what they want to title it.

This can be fun for artwork just to hang on the fridge or on the wall….but serves as a special touch for artwork given as gifts to grandparents and such.

You’ll be surprised (and tickled) at the titles their little minds come up with. Some are spot-on (“It’s so obvious it is a gear shift on Daddy’s tractor, G.”). Some are a little bit more ambiguous and surreal (“This one’s called ‘Butterfly Butter.’”). Either way, these little titles add just a little more sentimentality to their creations!

Needless to say, the kids do tend to get a little stir-crazy and…shall I say?….bored at times. Especially around those magical hours between 3-5pm (when my fuel’s almost empty…I’m a morning person).

We’ve been pulling out some of our old childhood toys for the kids to explore and play with. Nothing too sentimental or fragile — but things we intended to hand down anyway. (We just put my childhood dollhouse back into the attic because it was being destroyed piece by piece. It’s a renovation project for later, rest assured. That house will be restored to its original glory!)

Barbies, dress-up clothes (including my ballet recital costumes), cooking aprons, Legos. Recently we had fun with one of my favorites from childhood (Snoopy Sno Cone Maker) and one of Ken’s (GI Joes). The kids enjoy these because they’re new to them, despite the fact that there’s missing pieces, musty-attic-smelling, and dirt-studded parts here and there. It’s a great way to entertain them, and it’s great fun to watch your kids enjoy something you loved so as a kid yourself.

G’s little arm isn’t quite up to the task of grating the ice just yet, so Ken helps.

R enjoys her cherry sno cone.

One of two boxes of childhood-survived GI Joes.

My personally-outfitted “GI Jane.” Not sure how I feel about the very large, very violent weapon she’s hoisting, but at least she’s color coordinated in a Christmas kinda way.

There’s a whole lotta toys on my list-of-things-from-my-childhood-to-buy-for-the-kids (held endearingly within my Book of Lists), such as:

Kenner See Wee Mermaids

Tiny Blessings dolls by Ban Dai

My Friend Mandy by Fisher-Price

Weebles Treehouse

Chirping Woodstock

Superscope Storyteller Books & Tapes

Owl Answer Clock by Tomy

And last but not least, Texas Instrument’s Speak & Spell. (And better yet? I found an online simulator! Whoa. This’ll take you way back.)

We had a cookout and lots of fun fireworks afterwards. The kids aren’t fond of loud fireworks, so we mainly stuck with smoke bombs, flower blossoms, cruising tanks, and of course, sparklers.

Even though kiddie packs have sparklers in them, I was hesitant to let G hold one just because of the fact he might get scared and drop the thing (onto his flip-flopped foot, no less). Ken and my dad came up with a great hack: Stick them into a sidewalk or driveway crack for support and light them simultaneously! Beautiful display of light — and no fire sticks being swung around near people’s hair and extremities! Brilliant.

Now, the sparklers pictured are some Ken’s mom gave to us from a wedding she attended — they were three feet long and burned for a full three minutes! Smaller ones would work, too, but the show would be short-lived.

Another fun hack: Set your camera to manual mode and slow down the shutter speed. You can write with your sparklers for a neat surprise…