J's Carnival Birthday Party

As his birthday approached, J has been complaining about being old (eye roll so hard I sprain my eye).

I decided to throw him a surprise carnival birthday party. Because what better way to feel like a kid again than playing games?

He totally suspected. I told him I was making the games for my sister's boys' school. He was suspicious. When I had to buy food for over 30 people, he started asking questions.

None of your business J.

I combed Pinterest looking for ideas. When I was at Kristi's house helping her build a sofa table (blog here) and Jett was over playing with his cars, she made him a track for his cars.

Ummm, that's a pretty brilliant car racing game. I took the wood home so I could nail it together.

It was big trash pick up time in her neighborhood. One neighbor had a pretty big pile so I was going through, looking for boxes and wood. The neighbor came out and asked what I was looking for. I told him I was making carnival games. 

He gave me a cart:

And cornhole!!

Along with a bunch of other random stuff.

I felt bad. The cart and corn hole were pretty awesome. I have been looking for a good corn hole deal; those boards are $80. He told me he needed to get rid of the stuff. His garage was packed full, so I decided I would help him out. 

I just had to add legs to corn hole.

Clamped on the outside to make it easier drilling the hole.

And then I made myself some bean bags and I was set. The corn hole game is a bit warped, which made me feel less bad about taking it for free. But no one at the party noticed.

I really wanted a top canopy for the cart. My brilliant sister Kristi came to the rescue again.

I got this piece of foam from the neighbor guy. I was originally thinking I would cut holes and make a game. But Kristi cut it in half, secured it to the cart....

...and we had a canopy.

I went to Lowe's and bought cheap plumbing for the rings for my ring toss game.

Kristi helped me tape them together.

Then I drank a bunch of soda and built a box to hold the bottles.

I knew I wanted to make a frisbee toss game.

At the same time I started nailing the race track together.

You can see the race track and my partially finished frisbee challenge game. 

To get the frisbee challenge game to stand up, I made it a stand and connected it with rope.

I pulled the tape covered rope through with pliers.

Then I moved onto my ball toss game. 

I used a plastic pallet the neighbor gave me and some dollar store containers. I started out using bolts.

Yeah that wasn't going to work. Hellooooo holes way too big.

So I switched to zip ties. This carnival wasn't going for class, it was going for cheap, mmmkay? 

I tried to make a nerf game. I borrowed this clothes rack from my sister and had PVC pipe in the garage that would slide across the top piece. I cut pieces of PVC pipe, connected a piece of wood to the PVC pipe and threaded it through. The wood was too heavy to spin. I tried thinner wood. It still wasn't working. Luckily my sister had a nerf game I could borrow and I gave up on trying to built this.

And then as if she hadn't helped me enough, she helped me with the ping pong game.

It was a lot of work, but on Saturday I was ready.

The ring toss

The ball toss

The frisbee challenge

Corn hole

Ping pong toss

The car race (which is held up by another random thing the neighbor guy gave me, after Kristi took it apart to fit the size I needed).

The can knock down and the nerf game (which was later moved away from the window...good call Dad)

And my super fabulous cart that held the chips and popcorn.

Another thing I am proud of, is I made the cupcakes by myself.

I had to google what oil to use because the box just says "oil" it doesn't say which kind.

Then I had to google how far to fill the cupcake cups.

Not to brag, but I got some compliments and several people took some home. Not too shabby for someone who doesn't kitchen.

I made vanilla (first batch, in case I screwed up it was my least favorite), chocolate, and confetti (we only had vanilla left over).

Cheese and cracker platter

Fruit and fruit dip

We also grilled hamburgers and hot dogs. If anyone is curious, we've finally found the correct amount of food. 24 hamburgers, 24 hotdogs, big Costco package of strawberries, one honeydew melon, eight apples, four packages of raspberries, double serving of fruit dip, chips, cheese and cracker platter,  whole Costco case of water and 15 cans of soda. Feeds 34 people.

That fruit dip is a jar of marshmallow whip and a package of cream cheese. Make sure the cream cheese is room temperature and mix together. Everyone was raving about it. I probably could have tripled it instead of just doubled. 

The party was a lot of fun. My feet hurt so bad by the end of the day.

I had tested the can knock down before hand, adding sand. My nephews were laughing at my "weak" attempts (I posted it to snapchat). I decided it was too heavy and took the sand out. They wanted to add it back in. Made it more difficult, so the guys were flexing their muscles.

And then it was truly a carnival game, doing weird things like only knocking out one bottom can.

There was also impromptu Jenga in the front room. And Xbox in J's game room.

It was a good party. But I am so relieved it's over. I'm trying to decide what to do with my free time.

One thing I am proud of is how little money I spent building the games. I had a lot of the items. I did buy a few things, but mostly it was repurposed, borrowed, or provided by Kristi's neighbor.

Kristi's Sofa Table

Kristi was asking me about my sofa table (blog here). I told her it wasn't too expensive.

Kristi brought up the neighbor who had a big pile of wood out for the big trash pick up. I told her I had seen that pile and that J wouldn't let me stop.

So Kristi and I went (at 10:00 at night) and scoped it out for ourselves.

She has big plans for that board. But we got enough wood to build the base of the table. 

We just had to go to Home Depot to buy the top.

We got home, and started looking at the wood we had pulled out of the scrap pile. It was warped. So we went back to Home Depot and had to buy more pieces for the base. It took forever, because Kristi is a perfectionist. I think we looked at every single 2x2 in the pile. 

While we were building the table, Jett came over to play. Kristi built him a ramp to race his cars out of the warped wood.

Which ended up being brilliant, and I took the wood to use for my carnival games.

Kristi snapped this picture after he threw his snot rag at me. He was teasing and giggling.

And loving on his Kristi.

While I was slaving away. Being critiqued by the perfectionist. 

Looks fabulous.

Reupholstered Headboard

I made our headboard seven years ago (blog here).

If I was to do it over from scratch, I'd do some things differently. Be more of a perfectionist about cutting the foam, for one. I also wanted more buttons. The french cleat I thought at Home Depot has held up beautifully. If anyone is interested it's this one.

I'm tired of this headboard. I am tired of brown. Brown is out. Gray is in. I've been meaning to reupholster the headboard for months now.

The before (and all of my glorious mess because hey, we friggin live here ok).

I bought a bunch of grey fabric thinking it would be perfect. When I got it home, my lighting made it look purple. I'm so glad I have two and a half yards of purplish grey fabric I'm never going to use.

So I bought (much smaller) samples of other fabrics that I also did not love.

This seriously took months and multiple trips to different stores. Until I finally found one that I thought would work. So I took my headboard apart.

Realized I couldn't re-use the original buttons. Those suckers do not come apart. So I had to buy all new buttons. And of course, cover them.

Drilled more holes for the buttons.

And started putting it back together.

I looked at a few tutorials on Pinterest and there was one thing that saved my life and let me increase the number of buttons like I wanted. It was the double headed needle. Previously I would thread a normal needle, put it all the way through to the front, catch the button, and then poke it through to the back. It was surprisingly difficult to get it back through all the foam and find the hole. 

The double headed needed is super long. I threaded it, and poked the top part through but didn't pull the needle all the way through.

Then I took the thread off, caught the button, and re-threaded it. Then I just pulled the needle out. Super easy.

I had J push the button down on the front and tied the back to a button.

J thought it was weird that I didn't staple it first, like we did with the first one, but this is how the tutorials said to do it.

I don't love it. It's just ok. I think I should have used a darker fabric. And I'm kind of irritated. Do I reupholster it a-friggin-gain? This is why I have decorating issues.

I do love the buttons though. J said maybe if we buy new bedding it'll look better. We'll see.

Solar

As of March 27th, solar is officially active!