Over here at the house of rad, we love Valentine's Day. It's our chance to let everyone know how much we care. And it's a killer vehicle to get CANDY (or other good stuff)!
The dudes are big fans of Valentine making because we always try to flex some creative muscles and make something fun and unique.
We decided to brainstorm "stuff we are into", to get some Valentine design ammo. Cooper immediately settled on Pokemon, being an active trainer himself these days. Charley was all over the place. Starting with superheroes, we thought we nailed it with Superman, but then he came out of the blue with MONKEYS. And at the last minute, wanted to throw the Aquabats in the mix.
So.... we took some quick head shots, then came up with some cupid-worthy slogans to click with the themes the dudes chose.
Of course, Charley ended up with three valentines, because they were actually pretty cool. Fortunately he's having two parties at school, so each fiesta will get a unique one! We taped some Fun-Dip packages on the back of them. That is all of them but Charley's monkey design. Those sweet little monkeys got taped to some fresh bananas!
Hug someone you love! Happy Valentine's day y'all!
It looks like we might have a future chef on our hands. Or maybe just a kid that's appreciative of using a microwave! Whenever we see a play kitchen, Charley seems to be glued to it. We decided that it would be a good birthday present for the dude turning 2, so we scoped the internet for what play kitchens were out there. After some research, we decided that the choices were either too plain & simple, or too plastic and oddly colored. With some (or maybe a lot of) urging from my wife, I decided to go for it and make my own! Carolyn found a few good lookin' ones on Pinterest, and we moved forward with creating one out of an old night stand. She luckily scored one at a garage sale for only $10! Based on the size of the piece, I sketched out a rough idea of what I was going for.
I took some quick measurements, so I knew what to buy. I needed:
-some wood for the shelving I was going to attach to the top
-a faucet
-a bowl for the sink
-a few towel bars
-something to use as burners
-some knobs for the oven / burners
I went down to Lowe's to score some goods.
I found a sweet deal on a little bathroom faucet w/ hot & cold knobs for $15. They also had a great deal on paint.. $3 for some mini samples of fun colors. I grabbed a couple of "sea foam green".
I found a nice stainless steel bowl for the sink, and some little wood cabinet pulls to use as knobs for the burners. I couldn't find anything to use for the burners, so I ventured over to Michael's, where I found a sheet of 1/4" black foam (to cut circles out of).
The only tool I had to pick up was a drill mounted circle cutter to create a hole for the sink and faucet. Below are a couple of pictures of the process. I started the hole with the circle cutter, and finished it with a jigsaw (on the left).
On the right shows you can see the painted version, and the shelves starting to mount. I removed the lower door, and taped off a square in the center to appear as a dark black oven window.
And, here is our finished kitchen! Our friends and family showered Char with pots, pans, utensils, playfood and a killer microwave (that fortunately came with PIZZA!) so our little dude is ready to cook!
we've been gettin a lot out of our weekends lately. between baseball games, birthday parties, and hangin out, we've had some good ones. here are a few recent highlights:
on our last weekend, we made a trip down to Zoomars Petting Zoo in San Juan Capistrano. It's a great little petting zoo with a hands on rabbit & guinea pig area, horse rides, a small train, some very hungry goats, and more! You can purchase a box of animal food (carrots & lettuce) for a couple of bucks when you enter, and that'll let you feed all the animals there. The carrots seem to be the most popular with the animals, but this guinea pig pictured here with the dudes seemed to really dig the lettuce. If you make it down to Zoomars, make sure to take a walk around the Los Rios district (which is where Zoomars is located). There are some VERY cool historic houses, a great park, and some amazing photo ops for the fam.
This weekend, we made another trip down to Lowe's for some garage organizing projects, and we picked up another monster truck kit for Coop. Although this wasn't one of their official "Build & Grow" events, we were stoked to grab another monster truck to add to our collection. We had a hard time choosing between the truck and a good lookin' monster truck, but we decided the monster trucks would be able to race each other, total bonus! Cooper seems to be getting the hang of this hammering stuff, literally. He did most of the nails all by himself, until he had trouble with one of the wheels.. then I had trouble with it too, so we ended up using wood glue to get the thing on! We call it being resourceful!
Charley and I ended the weekend up with a little jam session. He likes to pound on my guitars, one by one. I'd like him to grow up knowing the guitars are fun things to play, rather than me keeping them safe and out of reach from him. I definitely make sure he's not jumping on 'em, but some enthusiastic strumming is always good. We like to plug the electric guitars in with some fun fuzz distortion and weird delay effects, and make weird sounds.
Good times!
This last Christmas we got Cooper a tool kit (a nice 14-piece beginner kit from Lowe's). he's had a Handy Manny plastic tool set that has familiarized him with the names of the different tools. But a while ago he figured out that the tape measure didn't work, and that you can't do too much with a plastic hammer. Since Christmas, his tool set has been sitting on our tool bench in the garage, just waiting for something cool to do. We've talked about building a car race ramp, kinda like the Pinewood Derby style, or like the one they have at the Lego Store... but it seemed like a bit too big of a task to be our first official project. But on a quick trip over to Lowe's, I saw a sign about their BUILD & GROW series. Build & Grow provides clinics for kids to learn about woodworking, and the best part is THEY ARE FREE. cool, right? I was pretty stoked to see the next clinic would be building your own miniature GRAVE DIGGER Monster Truck. The Grave Digger has always been one of my favorite Monster Trucks, but that's another story.
The clinics usually take place around 10am on Saturdays, so we hurried over there before opening day of our baseball season, and lined up. They have the option to register on their site, which guarantees you a free project pack, or you can just arrive as a 'walk up'. They provide you with a free apron to keep, and a hammer to borrow, and when you finish up the clinic they give you a patch commemorating the project to throw on your apron. We took ours home so that we could use all of our own tools and have some more space (really just so we wouldn't be late to baseball). Cooper ended up hammering all the nails in(!) then we threw the stickers on, and we had our own GRAVE DIGGER! STOKED!
Check out your local LOWE'S Build & Grow site for their upcoming clinics. There's another Monster Truck build this weekend, so we'll be there for sure!
