The moment I saw this cute little DIY Tent on Pinterest I knew I had to make it. My son’s room is camping themed and there is an orange tent on his bedding and another painted on his wall, that makes a real orange tent he can play in a must.

I started the project by printing out the parts list and heading off to the local Lowe’s. The directions called for pine boards but after having a look at what was available I decided to splurge, spend a few dollars extra and go for the hickory. The hickory is not near as rough and it was much easier to find boards that were straight. In addition to the shopping list I also purchased some non slip pads for the bottom. The instructions call for tabbed curtains but the odds of finding the perfect bright orange tabbed curtains were slim, instead I went to Hobby Lobby with a 40% coupon in my hand and purchased 14 feet of bright orange fabric. To read the full instructions go to Ana White Homemaker, her site is amazing and a constant source of inspiration. I know my husband will regret me finding her blog.

I built this over two days, it took about an hour to dig for my tools and build the frame. The following day I spent twenty minutes carrying the frame upstairs and stapling the  fabric on. I am very pleased with the results, it was a quick easy project and the kids love playing in it. It looks great for costing only $28.

I had to rearrange my son’s room a bit to get the tent in. His bed was under the mural, it has been moved to the other wall. I am not quite finished with this side of the room yet and need the spring to get here so I can finish it. I am going to find a couple of camping chairs and a little table to go beside the tent and I found a perfect pretend camp fire to go right in front of it. I love decorating the kids rooms, I’m going to enjoy it while I still have a say.

Here’s the bedding, it is from Target. My mom picked up the artwork over his bed but it would be a fun DIY project. All you need is a frame, some wire and a few fallen limbs.

My husband and I started the Dukan Diet last week and we’ve been going through the normal teething issues that come with a new diet. I have never tried a protein based diet so for me the menu took a lot of getting used to. I have seen all sorts of cute weekly menu’s, mainly chalkboards, floating around Pinterest that I would love to do but do not have the wall space for.

I have a largish galley style kitchen so wall space is limited. I needed a menu to help with the new diet so I decided to make a laminated one and put it inside my pantry door. I added a legal pad for my shopping list. I used 3M strips and attached them to a sheet protector, I then slipped the back of the legal pad in the sheet protector. Now I can write what I need, tear the sheet off and when the legal pad is empty I can easily replace it. You can also see my little magnetic strip with the magnetic dry erase marker. It is simple and I like it, it is really nice being able to see what the next meal is instead of relying on my memory.

I have to add, I love my little laminator. I bought it last week at Walmart for $27 and have already given it a good run. I know this little thing is going to save me money in the long run, just on gas alone from all the trips to the office supply store.

I am finding so many great projects on Pinterest that I have a list made out with three weeks worth of things to try. This cheap and practical weekly calendar came from Kristy at Next to Heaven.

We are about to enclose our sun room and turn it into a dining room so I decided to go ahead and claim the old dining room as my office. I love it, I have huge windows that look straight into the back yard with views of the old barn and golf course. I had been trying to figure out what to do with a blank wall across from my desk. We all have to walk by it to go from the bedrooms to the living areas so it is a perfect place for our calendar as well as the kids chore charts that I will be doing tomorrow.

I bought the frame for this project from Walmart for $9.99 but also found more expensive versions of it at Hobby Lobby ($24.99) and Target ($22.99). I also found these fantastic little dry erase markers at Walmart. They are perfect for projects like this since they have an eraser on the end and a magnet on the back. I bought some magnetic sheeting from Hobby Lobby, cut it to size and stuck it on the frame, now the marker stays in place without the need for cords.

Twenty minutes of work and I now have a cute practical calendar.

I am one of those people that does not retain much useful information, song lyrics and things that happened 20 years ago no problem. I was a late bloomer when it came to domestic skills so new information such as cooking times and metric conversions don’t seem to be sticking. I am constantly running to my computer to see what temperature the chicken is meant to be and what temperature my Australian recipes are meant to cook at. I found a really handy chart that someone had painted into their kitchen cupboard and was brilliant. I of course forgot to pin it and now can’t find it. We have yet to renovate the kitchen so I didn’t go to that extreme. I typed up a quick little chart in Photoshop, laminated it and used some 3m mounting tape to stick it in the cupboard closest to where I put all the dishes together.

It isn’t totally fabulous but it took ten minutes to type up and saved me two trips to the computer last night when I was cooking dinner. If you’d like to print it here is a full size image.

My kids like making a mess with their toys when playing, for this reason we removed toy storage from the living room and took everything upstairs. They are now four and five and we feel old enough to have independent playtime without the need to constantly watch over them. It doesn’t matter how hard I try to keep the kids things from trickling down the stairs, they always do. I am constantly throwing shoes, toys, hair bows and blankets to the bottom of the stairs. I had a large canvas basket that I would try and remember to hide if company came over but rarely did. In my Pinterest searches I ended up on Karen’s site Sew Many Ways and she had a picture of cute little baskets with bows and name cards, very simple and practical. At least it should have been simple. It took me three Hobby Lobbies, two Walmart’s, a Target and finally Gordmans before I found two matching baskets. I recently bought a lamintor for projects with the kids so I used that to laminate the name tags. I tied them to the basket with some thread and then tied on a bow.

I finished them today and within five minutes of showing them to the kids they are both full. I really like them and they fit perfectly on the bottom landing of the stairs.