Simple Play Kitchen Sink

I have been busy working on a special play kitchen with a toy sink that I am building for some friends.  Julio has been so drawn to it while I'm working on it, that I decided to make a simple version for him.  I knew that I wanted to make it out of recycled furniture, and before long, I found this little treasure out on the curb:

Am I the only person in the world who could get excited over this piece of junk?  When I saw it, I knew it was just perfect.  I cut a few inches off of the legs and a hole for the sink, painted it blue, and outfitted it with some inexpensive plumbing pipes and a steam table pan.

I made some wooden knobs that are decorated with bottle caps.  They were very simple, and they are nice and sturdy.  (Let me know if you like these little knobs, and I'll give you a tutorial.)

I stuck a wire rack in there, but I may have to take it back every time I want to bake some real cookies.  I thought the kids might want a door and more knobs for the oven, but I was happy to see them miming opening and closing the oven when they were pretending to bake.  I'm going to wait and see how they play with it, and then I might add some more details later.

The only real problem with it is that now Julio believes that he can really wash his hands here.  When I tell him to wash up for lunch, he refuses, saying, "I already did it in MY sink."

A Chalkboard in the Hall

This simple project  has been on my to-do list for years.

And then, moments after I hung it on the wall, Ruben wrote his first sentence.

I bought a piece of decorative molding that had a ledge big enough for holding chalk and catching dust.  I rubbed some mineral oil on it, let it dry, and screwed it directly into the wall studs.

I painted a thin sheet of MDF with chalkboard paint (three coats with a smooth foam roller, and light sanding after each coat with 250 grit sandpaper).  I waited three days and then "seasoned" it by rubbing it all over with the side of a piece of chalk and then washing it.  I mounted it on the wall with drywall screws and finishing washers.

It has seen a lot of action all week.  Julio has become an expert at drawing 7 and 8-pointed stars.  What?  Your two-year-old can't draw an 8-pointed star?

I'm kidding, of course!  He just loves scribbling on everyone else's drawings.  And we all love this new chalkboard.

Is Halloween Tomorrow?

As we went outside to carve our pumpkin back in 2008, a then four-year-old Diego said, "I've been wanting to do this ever since last Halloween, and as soon as we're done I'm going to want to do it again next year!"

What is it about Halloween?  It seems like it has constantly been Halloween around here for years... the daily costumes, the obsessions with monsters, skeletons and candy.  But it's October now, and the rest of the city has finally caught up with us.  The boys want to decorate our front yard.

This guy's been on our front window for a month already, but he'll have some spooky company soon!

Crib Conversion

I have never been thrilled with the way our crib was supposed to turn into a toddler bed.  It was too big and too high off of the ground.  So, the other day I rebuilt it.  Even though it has the same footprint as our old crib, it now looks like an inviting kid-sized couch and is so much lower than the crib that it gives the feeling of a lot more space in the room.

It cost $15 (for the wood) and was very simple.

He loves it.  Now, shhh... it's naptime!

Mobile

I made this mobile last weekend for one of my little friends for her first birthday:

It was more fun and challenging than I expected, but I am so happy with how it turned out.  It was not easy to make each piece spin freely without ever crashing into the others, so it took a lot of careful adjusting.

I added some nature treasures that I had gathered and enjoyed over the years, and it was so gratifying to see them in this new way.  I spent a lot of time thinking about the textures and weights and how to make them balance both physically and aesthetically.  This is one of my favorite parts:

The crow feather is so light that it catches every small puff of wind, and it spins more easily than the other elements.  I put a small metal weight on the tip in order to make it hang horizontally.  Here's a closer look:

I've had the abalone shell for many years, and have always loved how rough and dark it is on one side and pearly iridescent on the other.

I wanted some other shiny elements to catch her little eye, so I wrapped some sections of the apple branches with pieces of wire that used to belong to my grandmother.

The smooth, dark branches were gleaned from our favorite apple ranch, and the others are fallen sycamore branches from trees in our neighborhood.

Now I want to make another.

Make Your Own Kid-Sized Clothes Hangers

Here are some free and easy wire hangers that I just made for our dress-up area:

Watch out when you cut.  My wire end went flying!

I am hoping that the electrical tape wrapping will make these more durable and will keep any sharp wire safely inside the cardboard.  It's time for me to teach them to hang up their own capes!

House Bookshelf

Here's a bookshelf that I made a few years ago to house our picture books.  It is made out of 3/4" plywood, and is very sturdy.  One of my favorite features is the sideways shelf on the right, which holds all of our long books that stick out too far if we put them on the other shelves.

I imagined that we would occasionally empty it and use it like a toy house, but that has yet to happen.  It also has a chimney tissue holder that holds a regular square tissue box.  Here's a closer look:

I want to show you some more of my home made projects, and I was having so much fun taking pictures around the house that I left Julio happily entertaining himself at the dining table.  From the other room, I heard him say, "Cow milk.  Want it!"  And then his big brother call out, "I'll get it for you, Julio!"  I got back just in time to see this near-disaster:

Park Bench

When Joe and I first came to Los Angeles, we moved from a tiny Manhattan apartment, so we had a lot of furnishing to do.  One of the first additions to our house was this park bench, which is now one of our favorite places to sit in the house.

I found an old bench with broken slats that someone was throwing away.  Saving the beautiful curvy cast iron pieces, we replaced the broken wood with new red oak.  It was too pretty to put in the garden, so it has been sitting by our front door ever since.

It really is a comfortable place to sit, and people have even been known to take cat naps there (although whenever I see that, I want to blanket them in a newspaper to keep them warm Central Park-style.)  We used new brass bolts with round button tops to attach the wood.

The whole project cost us about $40, but it could be done for a lot less if you used pine or recycled wood.  One of the fun parts was deciding how long we wanted the bench to be.  I almost made it into a chair, and someday I'll probably make another one as a matching chair, which I think would make excellent living room furniture.

The combination of velvet, wood and cast iron makes me very happy!

Cigar Box Shelves

Here is a way to make a fun little shelf that is also a hidden treasure box:

If your cigar box has a hinged paper lid like mine, you will need to slice off the lid so that you can attach the box flush to the wall.  I like using drywall screws, and I recommend making pilot holes in your box first.  Once it is attached to the wall, you can replace the removable lid:

Now you have a sweet little shelf with a place to hide your treasures.  It looks a little crooked in this picture, but in life, it is level and quite sturdy.  (As my photo assistant was pulling on my leg, I had some difficulty lining up the shot.)

These boxes have a very faint smell of cigars inside that I find nostalgic.  Most smoke shops will give them to you for free or very little money, just ask.  And, no, I did not have to smoke any cigars!

Fiction vs. Reality:  I have always thought that these would make perfect little bedside shelves for kids or in small bedrooms, but mine are actually knickknack shelves in a cluttered corner of my kitchen.  For the above pictures, I put a pillow on my cookbooks so you could see how it would look by a bed.  Here is my reality:

There are many beautiful styles of cigar boxes.  Vintage ones are usually gorgeous.  I have always been partial to these Partagas boxes, and also to the all wood ones by Nat Sherman.  Some of the Nat Shermans have sliding lids, which would also make excellent treasure box shelves.