When Life Gives You a Broken Window...

Our home is pretty old, built in 1903, which is one of the main features that attracted us. We wanted something with history and character. Having an older home though, also means there is almost always something to fix. Lucky for us we've only run into a couple major must do projects, like the bathroom which we had to gut and rebuild a couple summers back, or the exterior of our home which we're hoping to repair and repaint before the end of next summer. There have been, however, tons of little things and lots of "minor" (stripping wallpaper never feels minor) cosmetic repairs. Therefore, when one of our kids sent a superball through our glass-paned storm door, both Jeremy and I were a little exasperated.

door before the superball incident.

The more we thought about it though, we realized we never really liked the door in the first place. The paneled glass blocked the view of our pretty front door and I was always having to clean nose, lip, and finger prints off it - see above picture. So we decided instead of replacing the glass we'd just remove the whole panel and put in a screen.

For us it's been an improvement. We obviously still need to repaint the door but we like the look of the screen better. We also like that it allows us to open the house up to the porch/outside more.

Once the panel was out, I also had an idea of how to better use it. Jeremy took out several more of the glass panes and cut some new panes out of scrap wood. I then put the kids to work on covering them in chalk board paint.

Jeremy secured the new chalkboard panes, I hung up a bit of string, and we had a fun new piece to hang above our bed.

I never thought I'd be happy about a broken window. But I don't think either one of these changes would have happened if it wasn't for that accidental throw. The last month has been full of beautiful fall days - perfect for open doors and windows. And every time I walk into our bedroom I can't help but smile at our new "art".

Looking for more creative home ideas? Check out these great link parities: Transformation Thursday, Inspiration Exchange, Weekly Creative, Show & Tell Saturday, Share Your Creativity, & Sunday Life Party.

A Little Red Cardboard Barn

We've finished our farm unit and are moving on to a new theme tomorrow - but before we do I wanted share the barn we made. The wooden farm animals came with a beautiful handmade ark that we gave Big Buddy for Christmas a couple years ago. I would someday love to have a wood barn but it's currently not in the budget. So in the mean time we decided to improvise and make our own. I stumbled upon this perfectly sized milk box (4 gallons per box) while subbing and thought it would be sturdy enough to handle play. Hubandie and the boys used an x-acto knife and wood glue to build a barn shape. to get the doors to fold out hubandie used an x-acto knife and scored the inside of the cardboard We then painted with a basic primer and outlined a window and a door with painters tape. cardboard is very porous so priming is a must if you want decent coverage Big Buddy however insisted that we add more windows so it looked like the barn in our book The Big

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Preschool Syllabus: Dr. Seuss

Normally I'd do a Dr. Seuss unit in March around his birthday. We had to do one now though because on Saturday Big Buddy and I going on a date to a Dr. Seuss exhibit . The exhibit is only at the museum until January and I'm afraid if we don't go now we might not get the chance. We are of course reading lots of Dr. Seuss's books. A great advatage to studying Dr. Seuss in November rather than March is that all his books were available at the library. I also found a great children's biography which is perfect for preschoolers. Pebble First Biographies: Dr. Seuss We've read it a couple times and Big Buddy loves reciting all the facts he's learned WRITING CENTER ADDITIONS big buddy's name in sand paper letters, coloring pages & mazes from seussville.com skills practiced: fine motor, letter recognition, creativity, reading comprehension LEARNING "TRAYS" - I rotate these, setting out about four a day from which the boy&#

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Jack-O-Lanterns on the Fridge

Last fall I saw the idea for refrigerator pumpkins with face pieces in FamilyFun Magazine and have been anxious to recreate them ever since. It was pretty quick and easy and since the only thing we didn't have on hand was magnetic sheets ($1.50 with coupon at Joann's) it was also very cheap. my supplies: magnetic sheets, orange & black construction paper, white pen, tacky glue *i know they have self adhesive sheets but my Joann's didn't carry them glued (very messily) and ready to cut Both the boys were quite enthused when they discovered them after rest time :) Hopefully it will keep them entertained until we carve real pumpkins.

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Comments

Michelle SwidrakOctober 11, 2013 at 9:51 PM
Great idea!
chaniemomNovember 17, 2013 at 1:23 PM
I'm enjoying visiting your blog. You have some great, creative ideas. Love your old home!
UnknownNovember 20, 2013 at 2:46 PM
That is quite a silver lining. Having a screen there can help with air circulation during those hot days, without letting bugs and other foreign things get into your home. And I really like what you did with the panels afterwards. Maybe you can put a big family photo in one of those blank panels, and a wedding pic on the other fill up the space.

Maricela
UnknownJanuary 29, 2014 at 2:08 PM
When life gives you broken windows, take it as an opportunity to look for a new one. If it weren’t for the superball that broke it, you wouldn’t realize you disliked that glass door in the first place. And a broken glass for an art panel? Who would have thought? =) Roosevelt Franklin @ Clear Choice Windows and More
Bleep TravelAugust 26, 2020 at 11:38 AM
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Joyfully Weary

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