DIY Art Caddy

I have been wanting to find something that I could just grab all of our art supplies whenever we are wanting to do a project.  But I didn't want to spend a lot and the ones I found seemed to be pretty pricey.

Surprise,  I went to Pinterest to see what I could find, and I saw this cute one.

So back a few months ago I found these cute little pails at Oriental Trading, and since I was placing an order anyway I went ahead and got them.

Unfortunately when they came I was a little disappointed because they are much smaller than I really thought.  Even though I measured, I really envisioned them to be larger.  But I figured they would still work.

Then I found this Lazy Susan at Ikea and loved it!

So a few days ago I completed this project, and I am not really sure what I was thinking!  When you have a toddler in the house, its probably not a good idea to leave art supplies out on your table!  I decided that I would keep it in our closet and just bring it out what we need when we need it, or just place it on the table when we are doing an art project.


So here is my finished project.

Needed for this project: Lazy Susan, Metal Pails, Hot Glue Gun, Magnets

Glue magnets to the Lazy Susan then place the pail on top of the magnets.

Finished project!  Looks super cute!  Not as functional as I would have liked though.  

***Compare my crayons to the ones in the picture from Oriental Trading. ***

All in all I really don't think this saved me any money!  Here is a break down of my cost:

-Bright Pails from Oriental Trading- $9 for 12
- Snudda Lazy Susan from Ikea- $7.99
- Magnets from Wal-Mart- $5.84
                               ---Total Cost: $22.83

- Cost for a new wooden Art Caddy- About $37

A little cost savings but because its not functioning like I would like, maybe I should have splurged and gotten the one I really wanted.  Oh well, maybe next year.

Lego Room

Something that has been on my wish list for about a year now has been a place where my boys can freely build their Lego creations.  Over the past year my husband and I have been brainstorming and trying to figure out where the best place for that would be.  We have a basement, that is half storage and then the other half has been a "dumping" grounds, so to speak.

This past spring in my part of the good ole USA we got bunches and bunches of rain.  Which led to our basement flooding!  Yeah, about 3 inches of water all over.  Thankfully nothing much was ruined, but it forced us to clean up our dumping grounds.  It also gave us a great idea of placing the Lego room down there.

So after much cleaning up, a garage sale, and some trips to Menards, we now have a Lego room!  My boys are so excited about this, they can now create to their hearts content and not have to worry about their little brother tearing it apart!

Here is our finished product, and yes this is how it looks all the time!  I didn't have the heart to make them put their Legos away just so I could take a picture!  We also have a few other toys down there, for when all the boys are down there (yes that includes my hubby!).

We decided to go with a cheap indoor/outdoor carpet, because then if it gets wet again, no big deal!  Its not tacked down or anything, so its easily removed and cleaned up.

There you have it our simple Lego room!

If you would like to see what else we have been doing this summer you can follow along here:

1) School Room Redo
2) Lego Room Redo
3) Master Bedroom
4) Potty Training

What I've Been Up To

I took an unplanned sabbatical in June from blogging.  We had a lot of things going on and a lot of home projects that were needing to get done.  So over the next week(s) I'll be sharing a little about what kind of home projects we have been tackling.

1) School Room Redo
2) Lego Room
3) Master Bedroom Redo
4) Potty Training Part 1, Part 2

So first up today I will share our school room.  I posted a few weeks ago about our trip to Ikea and the things I hoped to be bringing home.  Well, it happened!!  I was able to get the things I had hoped for and we now have it put together and set up!

For this up coming school year I knew that I needed to make some changes to what our school room had been last year.  So here is my criteria that I went by when deciding what I wanted.

1) Storage space out of a toddlers reach
2) Larger desk space for me
3) Sturdier work space for the boys
4) Accessible areas for the toddler

So here is what I came up with:

We got the bigger Expedit Shelving Unit from Ikea and I am so glad that I did!!  As you can tell its being used greatly!  I love that I have at least 2 rows of space that my toddler can't reach, yet at the same time there are three rows that he can get to.  So I have my teacher books and supplies in the first three cubby spots.  Then each of the older boys has one for their books.  The next row is random things that I may use from time to time.  Then the last three rows are books, puzzles and toddler toys.  Those big blue bins are HUGE, they are Drona boxes from Ikea!   I love them!!  They are great for storing some of the toys that we have a lot of like our stacker pegs.

Love my desk!  Its so huge and those drawers are amazing!  They are deep which makes it so I can store a lot in that little amount of space.

Then we have this great table that was given to us when my husbands grandma passed away earlier this spring.  I love it!  Its the perfect size for the space and its sturdy!  I am hoping this will work good when we are working so I can sit and help both boys at the same time.

We will once again be using our workboxes.  But since they won't each have their own desk, I decided to get them each this cool mini organizer from The Container Store to sit on top of their workboxes.  Its small enough that they can transport it to the table or take a drawer out if they want.

Next is our awesome closet space.  Since we have moved the Legos to our basement (I'll share about that later!), it freed up so much space in the closet.  This is where I am putting all of our learning toys and games.  I use the Sterilite Latch Boxes from Wal-Mart, they are great!  They all stack nicely on top of each other, and they come in lots of sizes!

So there you have it!  A basic rundown of our newly revised school room!  I have great hopes for it this  year.