Household – Page 11 – Plain and Not So Plain

$10 ledge shelves anyone can make and velcro–a must for families with small children

I have been busily redecorating my home this past year. After years of having so many little ones all in a row, it was time to start making my house a home. One of the first things I did was go through the countless number of DVD discs that had our family photos on it for the last 8 years and decide which ones I wanted to have printed off. One thing I have never had was lots of photos hanging up around my home. There just wasn’t much time to do those kinds of things.

I wanted to find a way to hang them up without doing it the traditional way of just pictures hanging on the wall. And I needed to do it inexpensively. I came across this site by ANA WHITE on how to make $10 shelves and I saw how she, as a woman, made them herself. I knew it was something that I could do, well actually have my son do for me:)

We headed to our local Menards and bought some lumber. For 2-4 foot shelves you need:

2 pieces of 1x4x8

1 piece of 1x2x8

It cost us less than $10 to buy this wood.

Then I had my son cut these all in half. On the tutorial I saw they glued the pieces together but we just screwed them together–I was going to use a darker stain so I didn’t worry that I had used screws vs nice finishing nails. This is how they looked.

Here are all 4 of them

Then we used some black wipe on stain and I filled in the screw heads with permanent brown marker.

I am so pleased at how they turned out. And I love that they were so cheap. I had some of our family favorite photos blown up and put them in Dollar store frames.

***by the way a quick tip for homes where children touch EVERYTHING….For years I didn’t put any knick knack or decorations out because with 6 little ones it was impossible to watch everyone all the time. This year I discovered the wonderful value of VELCRO. Yes Velcro, every place that I thought a child would say, push the decorations over the ledge, down the stairs, i used velcro. They make it where it won’t rip off your paint when you goto move it later on. Genius idea.

I was so excited at how they turned out that I immediately went and bought more wood and had my son make me another set of 4 for our girls room. We painted theirs pink. Now everyone has a special shelf with which to hold all their possessions.

Yes that is a homemade quadruple bunk bed. Made by my wonderful husband.

How to make a Dakota fire hole

amy / 09/07/2013

My husband comes up with these great activities for the family to do. When he said he was going to make a fire in a pit under the ground I thought he was strange.

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But I have realized the wonderfulness of this type of fire. The Dakota fire hole is a great fire to make. It is completely underground! It has a low smoke output, no need to worry that smoke is blowing into your childrens’ faces, and I feel much safer having this type of fire when my children are roasting marshmallows over it.

Making a Dakota Fire Hole is initially more labor intensive than simply building a fire on the surface of the ground. However the outlay in energy required to make a Dakota fire hole is more than offset by its efficient consumption of fuel; it greatly reduces the amount of firewood required to cook meals.

When making this fire hole, you want to take notice of which direction the wind is blowing. If it is blowing at an east to west movement, then you want your vent tube to be facing the east side

step one—removing the dirt and digging your pit.

To make a Dakota Fire Hole first remove a plug of soil about 12 inches in diameter and dig down one foot.

keep digging….

keep going…. Stop and give 3 year old some worms that you dug up. Or save some for going fishing later with the family.

Is your hole about 12 inches down??

Step 2

Making the Airway – Starting about one-foot away from the edge of the fire pit, dig a 6-inch diameter air tunnel at an angle so that it intersects with the base of the fire pit.