Driving

Cole has been doing more and more on the farm as he has gotten older.  He is wiser than his 10 years in all things farm and equipment.  He started small, driving the lawn mower, the Gator, and his four-wheeler.

He eventually progressed to small tractors, bigger tractors, and skid loaders.

Last week?  He started driving trucks.

I love seeing him evolve into one of the guys on the farm.  As they were doing wheat last week, he became a valuable member of the operation.  He was able to drive the trucks through the fields as the bales were loaded onto the wagons.  He was ecstatic and oh so very proud of himself. 

Seeing him sitting in the truck made me flash forward to six years...SIX SHORT years...when he'll be driving for real.  And that?  I'm not ready for. 

At all.

So for now, he'll stick to the fields where everyone, including my sanity, will be safer.

Summer Break, Week 2

This is our second week of summer break.  It's finally starting to feel like summer outside, and we can't wait to hit the pool later this week!

Claire had basketball camp all last week.  She loved every minute of it and even won a free throw shooting contest.  She walked away at the end of the week with two t-shirts, two jersey shirts, and one medal.  She misses it this week, so hopefully she'll want to continue with basketball in some way once the school year begins.

We also worked on Cole's room.  In a word, it was a disaster.  He had a cattle feeding trough as a toy bin.  It was a great idea on paper, but only resulted in hundreds of toys being buried and made it too easy to just pile more on top.  He had a toy car/track carpet that had seen better days.  We took EVERYTHING out of his room, including the carpet and started from scratch.  He surprisingly got rid of many old, broken toys.  (He can be a bit of a hoarder.)  We reorganized everything.  We bought 2 new rolling cabinets which he filled with Legos.  We transferred his clothes from a huge wardrobe to a dresser and then moved most of his toys to the wardrobe shelves.  We also bought a 9 cube storage shelf, which he put together on his own in 30 minutes!  I'd still be reading the directions!  We added new curtains and called it done.  It's so nice to be able to walk into his room knowing I won't be stepping on anything trying to make it through to his bed.

We also spent some quality time with my sister and nieces.  We spent some time at a local state park.  The kids played on the playground and had the opportunity to take pony rides.  Cole loved it and wants to go back to do a horse trail ride.  Claire was a little too apprehensive, but I'm sure she'll try it next time.

We've done some programs at the library, read several books, and today we are heading to the movie theater for free movie Wednesday.  We have nothing on the calendar for next week and that's an amazing feeling. 

Bringing an Old Cabinet Back to Life

I bought this dresser yesterday for $30.  It had certainly seen better days.  The paint was a dark cream  color, which just resulted in it looking dirty.  The drawer pulls were old and falling off.

I bought 2 bottles of white acrylic paint and a can of polyurethane and got to work.

Little Miss sanded the drawers, then wiped them down with a wet cloth.

I used two coats of paint, followed by two coats of polyurethane.

We then found new drawer pulls and decided to put artificial flower petals behind the pulls, as inspired by Pinterest.

The end result?  Super cuteness.

This is now storing arts and crafts in Claire's room.  It's totally adorable and only took a day to complete!

If I were to do it again, I think I'd spray the flowers with starch to give them a little more sturdiness.  But until the floppiness bothers her, I'm not taking them off.  That was the most tedious part of the redo.

One last look at the before and after! 

Have you recently re-purposed or salvaged an old piece of furniture?  Leave the link to your post in the comments!