You know, my boys they get into EVERYTHING!

A while back I thought it would be cute if I filled a little wooden box with feminine products and put it on a shelf that sits next to the toilette so all ladies would be able to easily find them if needed and they are very convenient. I had no idea how curious my two younger sons would be about that wooden box. They opened the tampons and played with them in the bathtub, then used the plastic casings as rocket ships, guns, swords, etc. I kept finding them in their room and toy boxes.  I calmly told them those are not toys, please leave them alone, don’t play with them, those are for girls to use, not boys.   So far, that’s all I really had to say and  they obeyed.

But then they forgot that they had obeyed.

A few days ago my son rushed downstairs so excited to show me this retractable paint brush he had made.  After my initial shock I asked him where he got it and he calmly replied, “It was in my room.”

The brush works really well.  I’m pretty impressed by his ingenuity.  One of my friends suggested that I get him his own box for Christmas and just let him create whatever he wants out of tampons.  If I was a good mom, I would do just that, but I’m a little scared what my boys might come up with and even more afraid of how I would have to explain their tampon crafting to people who see them.  Because my boys would haul tampon guns to the store or basketball game, I have no doubt.

I started approximately four billion projects this summer and I finished exactly one.  This one in fact.  Recovering one of the many hand-me-down pieces of furniture we have.

Have I ever complained about our chair situation?  Yes, I’m certain I have.  You see for some strange reason I am attracted to  uncomfortable chairs that have lived a full life and really need to be thrown on a burn pile.  I haul home these horrible chairs to live with me in hopes that someday I will do an extreme make-over on them and turn them into a beautiful piece of furniture that costs me mere pennies.  But what really happens is I haul home crap and it stays crap.

Until I need to procrastinate from something and then….

I finish one of the crap projects.  The sad thing is this little project took me all of an hour or two to complete.  I finished this when I was supposed to be finishing the Birthday Saga. It’s pretty amazing what I can get done when I don’t want to finish something else.  I would love to give you step by step instructions on how to upholster a chair, but if you’ve read this blog for any amount of time, then you know I suck big time at telling people how to do anything that requires precise instructions.

But here is what I would tell you:

Get a staple gun, pliers, glue gun, scissors and have fun, it’s kind of like wrapping a present.

*Please pay no attention to the miserable looking child at the table.  I was most likely ignoring his absolute certainty that he was starving to death.

The school auction is over and it was a success!  This year instead of buying a paper ticket to come to the auction, we had guest purchase a reservation and then we assigned them a table.  That meant I had to come up with a way to display the table numbers and do it without spending any money, which is what I say every time I work on something for the school, “We need to do this huge project and NOT spend any money.”

That’s when my cheap, frugal, Damn Ramsey lifestyle really comes in handy for my job.

The fundraiser has been called The Barn Party for over 15 years, so we kept the theme going.  I used my canning jars, chicken feed, fabric I had bought for an older project, raffia that I’ve been keeping for over a decade and I bought the wire.

The pumpkins were donated, so I used them when I ran out of jars.  One of my sweet friends donated her time and labor making the numbers on that cute paper.

I will probably re-use some of this next year.  It was a good idea!