Budget friendly DIY Letterboard

So I have seen these things floating around on my Instagram account and on Pinterest quite a bit. I wanted one so I started looking to see what it would cost. These things are like $200 bucks online and let’s be real, my cash flow for novelty items is on the low to non-existent side. So, I figured I should make one!

I got some inspiration from Pinterest and went to work on my budget friendly version.

First I bought all of the materials. See below for the list of things you will need to complete this letterboard.

Materials/Tools:

• 1 picture frame (mine was 11×15)
• Black felt
• 1/4″ wooden dowels
• Hot glue gun
• Glue sticks
• Scissors
• Tape measure
• Mitre saw
• Cardboard (I used this for my frame backing)
• Letterboard letters

First thing I did was cut my dowels to size with a mitre box. It’s really easy and pretty user friendly if you dont want to use power tools.

I bought 4′ dowels from Home Depot so I got 3 cuts from each rod. There was some waste, but I had my frame already so it couldn’t be helped. If you want to calculate the cuts or get precut dowels you could avoid any waste and maybe save some $$. I used 14 4′ dowels so it cost me roughly $14 tax included.

For the frame, I purchased one from Michael’s, from the clearance rack for $10 and just used some cardboard as my backing since it didn’t come with one. **Make sure when you buy your frame that it will be deep enough for your dowels.** I cut the cardboard to size and hot glued it in my frame. If your frame has a back, you can skip this step.

Next I measured and cut out my felt pieces. I made them about 1 1/2″ wide and a little longer than my dowel length, about 11 1/4″.

Once I had all my pieces cut, I started to hot glue them to my dowels. I found the best method for this was to hot glue the length of one side of the felt and then roll the dowel through the glue so that it picks up the felt and keeps things even. Then I hot glued the other side and rolled it in the opposite direction. Doing this kept the felt tightly wrapped.

I repeated this for what felt like a hundred times and them set the felted dowels in the frame to see how they would fit. I didn’t hot glue everything until the end.

Once I had all my dowels covered I started to hot glue them into the frame. You want to glue them as tightly together as you can. This step is crucial so that your letters for the board will stay on.

I used a lot of glue sticks for this project. The entire bag of 40 to be exact. Luckily they were only like $3 at Michael’s.

Here is a picture of the finished board. I set it up as I awaited my letters to arrive in the mail from Amazon. 🙂

I looked in store for letters but they weren’t available anywhere. So, I did what is becoming a fond pastime of mine…online shopping!

I found Tabbee letters on Amazon.ca for about $20. I thought that was kind of pricey but, thems the breaks kids. Maybe you can find them cheaper.

When they arrived, I was a bit of a kid at Christmas. I tore into them at 10PM at night. Yep, that’s when my package arrived. It had been a long day. The baby was fussy, the other two kids were running around and not going to bed, despite many warnings. Finally, the upstairs was quiet when the mailman came to the door and our dog started barking loudly, which of course drew inquisitive little ones back to the top of the stairs to see who it was. I got them back to bed and the dog settled down and this is what I came up with for the board. I thought it very fitting after the night I had had.

Here is what I spent:

• Frame $10
• Felt $2
• Glue sticks $3
• Dowels $14
• Letters $20

Grand Total = $49 Bucks!!

All in all, I love it and it didn’t break the bank. I was able to complete the project for a fraction of what I saw them going for online. It may not be professionally manufactured, but it is made with love and I’m sure my fingertips will grow back after all that hot glue madness! 🙂

Try your own and let me know how it turns out. Happy crafting 🙂

Brynna xx

 

Mommy brain 101

So this is a story about mommy brain at its finest.

You moms out there know what I am talking about. It’s ridiculous, but it is a real thing. It makes me forget things I should know and do things that are just plain off.

Mommy brain has struck again. This time involving, meatloaf…

I had cooked some meatloaf for my family and we had it for dinner but there were leftovers which I put in the fridge. I ate it for lunch a couple of days and then it sat in the fridge for about a week untouched.

I was cleaning out the fridge and decided the meatloaf had to go. This is where the mommy brain comes in. Due to my fragile state and lack of logic it seems, I decided that a good place to get rid of the meatloaf was to flush it down the toilet in our bathroom off the kitchen.

Walking past the garbage can, I went in the bathroom, dropped it in the toilet and pulled the lever. Immediately after doing so my logic returned and I thought, hmm, why did you just do that. The thought could not even complete itself before BAM, toilet was plugged. I tried plunging without success. Every time I tried to flush it, the water would rise to the top and then slowly drain out…. so I left it.

When my husband came home I told him the tale of the lodged meatloaf. He gave me his sideways glance of disapproval and tried to plunge the toilet, without success. We proceeded to have a conversation about what compelled me to flush the meatloaf and all I could do was laugh about how ridiculous of an idea that was. Clearly, I was not in my right mind. 😉

“Why would you flush a cold, solid chunk of meatloaf down the toilet? Why wouldn’t you just put it in the garbage?”

Through uncontrollable giggles, I explained that this very thought had come to my mind as well, but unfortunately a moment too late.

In addition, I gave my husband the small detail that the meatloaf, which was about 2 inches in width and 3 in height, had not been broken up first. When I told him this and he looked at me in disbelief I could not control my laughter. His response was, “Why would you flush a cold, solid chunk of meatloaf down the toilet? Why wouldn’t you just put it in the garbage?”

Through uncontrollable giggles, I explained that this very thought had come to my mind as well, but unfortunately a moment too late.

Mommy brain at its best!

I received another lashing when my 4 year old daughter came home from school and wanted to pee on the potty. Upon trying to flush the toilet, the water rose to the rim as it had 10 times before. My husband told her what happened and she was very cross, telling me that people don’t want to sit on a potty with the water that high. Her logic, while cute, was accurate.

For the next two days my husband and I would try to plunge the meatloaf free, without success.

Over those two days all I could think of was Will Ferrell in Wedding Crashers yelling, “MOM, THE MEATLOAF” and it made me laugh at the situation I got us in.

Today I gave it another go and a huge bubble came up from the deep, like a submarine making it’s way to the surface. The meatloaf was free! The water left the toilet and a tiny bit of my sanity washed away with it.

I’m excited to let my husband know I fixed the toilet. I think maybe in the future I will recall this story as the time I fixed the toilet, not the time I lost my brain down the drain, starring, our leftovers!

Brynna xx

 

Welcoming baby #3…Here we go again!

Back on the blog and back on maternity leave! Since my last post, we have added another little one to our brood. ❤

Daniel. Isn’t he just the sweetest thing?!

We are up to three now. Three! Three incredible, beautiful babies. I am seriously feeling the love around here.

This may be it. According to my husband “this is it”. I will remain on the fence, even though just a few weeks ago I was cursing pregnancy up and down and was certain I would never ever remotely allow the thought of growing another human to enter my brain.

Why is that? How do we as mothers forget so quickly? For me, I’m sure it’s because once I conquered childbirth, (despite the begging and screaming for medication that arrived too late), I felt the indescribable relief of this little boy leaving my body and once I held him in my arms, I realized why it was all worth it and perhaps why maybe, I say maybe, I could do it again.

Love for your newborn is a scary thing. It makes you drunk on life. It makes you ignore all reason. It makes you forget all the hard parts. I’m not talking the beginning hard parts; the shrinking uterus, sore nipples, sleepless nights hard parts. I’m not even talking about the up to your elbows in poopy diapers part, and oh my did I forget how many times a newborn poops…and that it somehow finds its way out the leg hole of the diaper at record speed. Every. Single. Time. What’s with that, seriously?!

No, the hard parts, for me anyway, are the toddler years. The hard part is taking two kids in two different directions in the morning. Or fighting traffic in the evening to get to their school and daycare before it closes and cursing the driver in front of you who doesn’t know which lane is the passing lane and which is the slow lane.

Hard is wrangling a 40-pound toddler onto the toilet and bribing them with stickers if they will “just please try and push out some poop!”

The hard part is having a very cranky child or two clinging to your legs whilst whining and repeatedly asking for milk at 5 p.m., when you are trying to make pasta for the third time that week because that is all your children will eat. Hard is continuously making healthy dinners and then negotiating one bite of food off their plate so that at least you can say they ate a bite. Hard is wrangling a 40-pound toddler onto the toilet and bribing them with stickers if they will “just please try and push out some poop!” The list goes on and on…and on and on. Don’t even get me started on bath time and bed time.

Yes, all of those things are hard. But yet, in the couple weeks it’s been since I started writing this post, (children occupy a lot of my free time these days) those hard parts have gotten a little easier. I think having the newest baby has added even more love and structure to our home and the adjustment period is over. The kids seem to be listening a little better these days, or maybe we have found a bit more patience since the new baby arrived. All I know is I hope it continues!

My husband said the other night, “we have 3 kids under 5, a dog (who is still a pup), we are potty training, we are trying to have a life of our own and still try and find time for one another. It’s madness.” Yes, madness it is. But then there are little moments where the kids are playing nicely together and laughing, and it makes all the hard parts not that hard. The joy that comes from those giggles means we are doing the best we can and it is mostly working. We have our bad days like anyone else. Me, I have my meltdowns and “yelly” days, but mostly I think the new baby has helped me calm down a lot and take things more in stride. Really that’s all you can do when you are in this baby/toddler stage. Otherwise, you just have a hoarse throat and mom guilt! 😉

I think knowing this could be the last baby has made me put life on pause a little bit and just take the time to enjoy the present. Because despite even the hardest of days, the present is pretty good!

Brynna xx