To Do... Ta-Da!

I have been telling my husband about this project for a long time and it's cold and snowy, so I did it. Mainly because I think that it makes doing chores much more fun. The same way our laundry chute makes laundry waaaaay more fun. Especially if you yell things as you drop stuff... I mean clothes. And never anything breakable. I promise.

I took a few photos of the project as I went. My materials were all things I had in my "This'll be good for something" stash:

- Locker magnet board which needed a touch-up because I thought it was a dry erase board. It was not.

- Empty mini-Nerds box

- Adhesive magnets

First, I painted the board to give it a nice new look. Then I made a list of all the different regular chores we do around our house. (psst... We bought a house, and it's amazing - there are many projects to be done and document!) Once I had my list, I printed it out on plain paper and plain print. It was boring, so I did it again. Brown cardstock, and a fun font:

Originally, each rectangle would fit perfectly on a magnet, but as you can see I had some lining up issues and needed to add some more.

 Still, in a perfect world, I printed each rectangle out, cut them out, adhered the magnet, and cut them into individual chores.

Next, I printed out my To Do and Ta-Da! on pretty blue paper. I cut out the To Do in a rectangle and put a magnet on it. I then wrapped my Nerds box (sans flaps) with the Ta-Da! positioned on the front. Once again, a bit of a sizing issue but I was on a roll and didn't care. I can redo it later if it starts to bug me. (which it might)

And what about that icky not-a-dry-erase-board?

TA-DA!!!!!

Way above my expectations. It just worked. Now I just have to put them all together:

To Do:

To DoAs we finish our chores, we move the chore magnet into the Ta-Da box. So when it's all done,

TA-DA!:

My favorite part is that each piece is easily used in a different way. I can hang it on the fridge, or I can use the little nail to hang it on any wall I want - office, pantry, etc. Also, I can just use the To Do/Ta-Da magnets on the fridge if I want to use my beautiful new magnet board anywhere else. Plus, it didn't take much time at all to assemble and now every time we finish a chore, we can successfully yell out,

"To do? TA-DA!"

Now if only this project were on the To Do board...

A pillow for my cat.

Well, two pillows actually. While Clyde, our cat and roommate, may not like to have direct attention showered on him at all times, he does have a tendency to want to sleep in whatever room I'm occupying. While typing away on the not-so-portable laptop in the bedroom, he would curl up on my unmade bed and snooze happily. If I was reading a book on the couch, he would snuggle up on the recliner. Cutting fabric on the dining room table? Clyde had his pick of 6 different chairs, sometimes 7. Even in the kitchen, he will stretch out in the middle of the floor - often reveling in some sunbeams. He's always happy, as long as he can look up and check on what I'm doing without having to leave his roost.

But then there was my workroom. Full of bookshelves, desks, and a low lying table covered with whatever projects I was working on - he had nowhere to go. As I sat at my keyboard playing away, my poor cat would walk in, look for a snuggly spot to lay, and seem to plead with me on his way out of the room, "Why can't we work in a comfortable room today?" I have to admit, I also feel some comfort when I can reach down and give him a little ear itch while passing by.

Which is why I decided to make him a pillow to lay on. Actually, I had intended my low table to be a bench to sit on in front of the window. A place to inspire myself, write and read, but it quickly became laden with tubs of material, parts for craft projects I am always meaning to do and the like.

I made this decision around 5 months ago. And about two weeks ago, I finally finished the pillows. Ta-da!

Which is pretty good for me because the couch still looks like this:

And I started to make a couch cover for it 2 years ago in May to disguise the clawed area on the left with stuffing hanging out and mystery stains dotting the lower right end of the couch.

Back to the pillows though, the best part is that Clyde actually loves the new pillows! We have found him sleeping on them when no one else is even in the room. He even likes them if the corduroy side is up:

It's been a pretty craftastic time around here lately, I even finished up my business cards.

 

(Little clever musical thing with that logo there. Maybe a little cheesy, but I'm made of cheese and my name only uses the letters A-G, so why not?)

Hopefully I'll also be able to finish up that couch cover now too under the sleepy watchful eyes of my roommate on his pillow.