DIY - Pocketful of Joules

Tying up my Curtain Strings with Safety Cleats

THIS has been driving me CRAZY.

With a little dude running around, I had to do some childproofing in my living room, which means that the crazy-long blind cords had to be tied up out of his way. I don’t know WHY the cords go all the way to the floor — maybe so the dog has the option to adjust the blinds if the sun is in his eyes — but they looked like a rat’s nest. If a rat made a nest out of cords halfway up the wall.

Blegh.

I tried to tie the knots nicely…if that is such a thing. Nothing worked though. No matter how hard I tried to tuck them away, they looked awful.

I did some googling around, and found some blind safety cleats on Amazon but paying $2.89 for a piece of cheap looking plastic wasn’t exactly ringing my bell.

So I put it off for a while longer.
Ok, like a year.
I WAS BUSY! I swear!

Then, over the weekend I was wandering around Home Depot at a snail’s pace. Really, I was – Jack refused to ride in the cart and insisted on weaving from one shiny thing to another. And shut-your-face if you automatically think that I basically do the same thing. Even if it’s kind of true.

While in the hardware aisle, one of us may have been switching the screws from bin to bin while the other suddenly bust out in a “OHHHHH” like you hear at a firework show. It was like the angels were singing…

Yeah, that’s right. Those sexy things are 2 1/2″ Chrome Plated Rope Cleat’s.

OOOhhhhhh Ahhhhhh!
And a 2 pack was only $1.78!
SOLD!

I grabbed up three packs so I could try them out in my living room and we (slowly) went on our way.

It took me less than 15 minutes to install them all and LOOK HOW PRETTY!

I’m kind of kicking myself for not doing this when we moved into our house almost two years ago. For a grand total of $6 the living room looks LESS MESSY. I mean, on the walls. Don’t look down at the floor where the toys live.

Have you done a super cheap and easy project where you kicked yourself afterwards for not doing it ages ago? Are you going to run to Home Depot now and buy yourself some fancy cleats? Did you know that they were called “cleats” and not “those cord wind up thingies?”

Building a RumbleStone Fire Pit

I was going to name this blog post, “A Place to Eat my Marshmallows” but we all know that I eat my marshmallows EVERYWHERE. So instead, let’s talk about how my husband and I made the best fire pit in ALL THE LAND. And how I can use it to roast my marshmallows.

Our original plan for a fire pit was to just dig a hole in the ground, throw some wood in and light it on fire. But then, on one of our trips to Home Depot we saw that they sold fire pit kits made out of RumbleStone. They had a bunch of different options, but we decided to go for Round Fire Pit No. 1 with a couple of changes.

On our first trip, we picked up the stones we would need (36 mini’s and 36 traps) and a tube of landscaping caulk. We didn’t bother with the insert because we wanted to be able to make larger fires. Also, why pay for an insert if you don’t really need one? The one thing that I found lacking is that there were no instructions included. The brochure pointed us to the Home Depot website to find the RumbleStone instructions… but all I saw was a video.

So, I thought that there might be other people out there who could use some help and put together this blog post.

Once we got home, we started by picking a spot in the yard that was a good distance from the house and any trees and set down the first layer of stone to figure out the spacing.

In order to make it easier for us* to mow the lawn, we decided to dig out some extra surrounding area around the stones. This way, instead of using the weedwacker right next to the stones (and having them break down over time) we had a little barrier. We used one of the mini stones to make the spacing even all around.

Travis then used a little spray paint to mark where the stones would sit, before he threw them aside so he could start digging.

And dig he did. The grass and dirt that came out of the hole ended up being three trips with the wheelbarrow!

And more digging. This totally wasn’t like it was on TV where the entire project was finished in 20 minutes…

After all the digging was finished, Travis used a rake to brush the dirt around so it was nice and even. Well, even-ish. It was still pretty crooked, but we hoped that the stones would cover that!

Finally, we were able to put the first layer of stones down. Look, it almost looks like a real fire pit!

Then, I came in with my handy-dandy caulk gun and made a zigzag pattern on top of all of the stones.

Travis came behind me and placed the second row of stones into the caulk, giving them a nice little wiggle to make sure that they would stay affixed.

One more layer of caulk and one more layer of stones, and we were done. Well, almost.

Our fire pit didn’t look like the most awesome fire pit in ALL THE LAND… it looked… well. Kind of lame. So the next night, we went out and bought some more supplies: 5 bags of base sand, 5 bags of pea pebbles and some plastic lawn edging.

Unfortunately, I don’t have any ‘in progress’ pictures of this part because I was making a delicious dinner inside while corralling Jack and dealing with a sick dog. While I was playing Supermom, Travis cut the plastic edging to size and smushed it into the exterior circle. Then, he added a thick layer of sand and topped it with a layer of pea pebbles.

Here’s a close up. The pebbles aren’t super pretty, but they were cheap and did the job!

So NOW we do have the prettiest fire pit in ALL THE LAND! After we put Jack to bed on Saturday night, we filled it with wood, grabbed some super-sized marshmallows and bottle of wine, and broke it in!

Here’s the cost breakdown:

RumbleStone mini’s: $20.88
RumbleStone traps: $89.28
Landscape caulk: $4.97
Caulk gun: $1.97
Plastic lawn edging: $9.47
5 bags leveling sand: $17.45
5 bags pea pebbles:$17.40

Total: 161.42

I LOVE having the fire pit in my yard because it’s totally like camping. But not, because I can go inside to use the bathroom instead of squatting in the woods and falling over. In a few years I can imagine us setting up our tent next to the fire pit and having Jack and his friends sleep outside for a fun boy’s party. Heck, I can see us setting up the tent NOW for a fun Mommy and Daddy party!

I do think we’re going to have to take one more trip to Home Depot to pick up a few Adirondack chairs (maybe a small side table too) in order to make the area super comfy for entertaining friends.

I also need to find some fun recipes for cooking food over a bonfire! I’m pretty darn good at making s’mores and also roasting hotdogs. Do you have any favorites that we should try?

*and by “us” I mean, Travis.

Dying my Shoes Green

It’s like painting the rose’s red, but dying. And shoes.

I bought a pair of white chucks a few years ago when Martin + Osa went out of business (they were the big sister brand of American Eagle) – they were my size and super cheap. So, why not? They didn’t really get much wear though, because I’m just not a white shoes kinda girl.

I wore them when I did the Color Run in the hopes that some color might make them more interesting… but they hardly got powdered at all in the 3ish miles that we walked.

Basically they just looked sad. And dirty.

The leftover fabric paint from my Brit tote bag was calling my name, but then I remembered that I had a couple containers of RIT dye leftover from my flannel sheets project.

So on a random weeknight when I got home from work I filled up a bucket with hot water, added in an entire container of RIT teal dye, some salt, and threw in my shoes to see what would happen.

Here are the shoes after The Color Run… a little dirty and the laces are way too short.

I filled the bucket with hot water, added an entire bottle of teal RIT dye, stirred it and then threw in my shoes. I left them there for about 45 minutes. (I wore gloves so I didn’t end up with smurfy fingers. Again.)

Here’s what they looked like after I washed them out with lots of cold water (until it finally ran clear) and let them dry for a couple days. The dye turned the plastic on the toes and sides kind of greenish too, so I used some soft scrub on a paper towel to clean it off.

Here they are with their final color and brand-new shoelaces!

What do you think – I think it’s a huge improvement but maybe you preferred them white? Have you tried to dye anything random lately?

PS. Yes, I know I owe you guys posts on my trip to Vancouver and I promise they’ll go up this week. I’m thinking about doing one on my packing strategy with pics of my trip outfits (and yes, I took pictures of myself in every single outfit… so obviously my poses were very, very stupid) and one with my Vancouver exploring/food thoughts. Anything else I’m missing?