Small Space DIY – Entryway Facelift

My townhouse was built in the 1960’s, and back in the 60’s, they did weird things. For example, in my parents’ house, there was a wet bar in the entry when they moved it. Keep in mind that it was literally 15 steps from the entryway to the kitchen, but sure. Wet bar. Totally necessary. (Insert eyeroll).

Anyway, my house has a similar oddity in the entryway. A built-in desk. It sounds like a potentially useful thing except that there are drawers under the desk part, and even if you had a chair low enough to fit, you legs would pretty much have to be the size of paper towel roll inserts to be able to sit there. Plus, there’s no light. So, what exactly would you want to work on in the front hallway by the door? It was built before the age of computers, so maybe they expected kids to do their homework there and not at the built-in desk in the second bedroom? Whatever. Anyway, completely useless to me.

Well, not exactly useless. What it actually became was a flat surface to collect my purse, my work bag, my camera bag, sometimes my collection of sticky socks for Pure Barre workouts, and most things that I was planning on taking upstairs. It was a catchall. Not just any catchall though. It was pretty much a mini black hole catchall where things went and never left.

I got tired of looking at the mess. So… I decided I needed a little DIY project.

Here is the cleaned off, blank space (also notice the collection of shoes underneath):

Before I could start, I cleaned everything off. Then, my dad came over and we decided on where to put the shelf that I wanted to add. We put in the little white support rails and measured for the size of the plywood we would need for the shelf.

Once the little rails were in, I cut in with the paint that I wanted to use. I actually started the painting project an embarrassingly long time ago. When I moved in, the walls were all a strange light green. I am generally a fan of green. It’s a very pretty color depending on the hue, but this was not a pleasant green. I think the original idea was to make it look like something out of the Golden Girls – like tropical chic. I could buy into that. I like tropical things, and Miami style is usually pretty awesome. But this was not Miami chic. Anyway, I bought new paint a while back but quickly lost steam when I realized that if I painted the downstairs, I was going to have to also paint the stairwell… Yeah. I am a little taller than average, but even Shaq wouldn’t be able to reach the top of the stairwell. My dad suggested rigging up a makeshift scaffolding system involving a ladder perched precariously on a step and a piece of plywood stretching across the expanse of stairs, resting on the window sill of the little tiny window way up the wall. I’m all about a little adventure now and then, but that sounds a little sketchy even for me. Needless to say, the stairwell is still a putrid light green.

Anyway, since I already had some paint…

For the shelf… At Home Depot, they usually have hardwood, furniture-grade plywood in small pieces. Obviously, I didn’t need a standard sheet of plywood, which is like 4ft x 8ft. My space obviously isn’t that big. I found a nice 2ft x 4ft piece of plywood, and then took it to the back of the store. I’m not sure how it is in other places, but usually here, if they have enough trained people there, they will cut things for you. There is a limit on how many cuts they will make for free, but I only needed two. Luckily, there was a guy on duty who was authorized to use the saws, and he cut it to size for me.

I found a couple of cute woven baskets at Sam’s that were the right size. Then I just needed to make the rest of it look pretty.

I am a closet weather addict. Or okay, maybe not such much in the closet. I’ve been outed as a weather junky for years, but whatever. Anyway, I have a cool magnetic tracking chart that I got a few years ago. It was in my bedroom, but I have been wanting to bring it downstairs for a while now so that it would be more accessible. Luckily, it is just the right size! Also, I had a driftwood lamp that I got at Cracker Barrel a while back

I still need to tidy up the shoe pile underneath and may still varnish the shelf, but I am super happy with how it turned out.

The only things I really had to buy for this were the shelf and the baskets. My dad had the railing boards, and everything else was just sitting around my house waiting to be used. The little tracking chart on the side wall is actually a laminated placemat that I had gotten in Galveston a while back. It’s an actual NOAA chart, it is just cut to size and laminated.

I’m super happy with the way this turned out. It is a completely upgraded space, and because I already had most everything, it cost me around $50, including the baskets.

Now, I’m looking around trying to decide on my next DIY project. I am totally eying my dining room at the moment. It may be my next upgrade target.

Is there anything that you would like to see me DIY and post about? Message me or leave it in the comments below.

Happy upgrading!

Summer Projects

So… I live in a townhouse. I know, right? Who would have guessed it given the title of the blog? Because I live in a townhouse, my space is limited. This isn’t always a bad thing. My yard doesn’t require a lot of upkeep. I don’t have a lot of extra space to store things, so I tend to be very picky when buying things based on whether or not they are going to fit in the intended room. It also means that I have to be a little picky with my projects. Well, okay, I say that, but I also quilt, so maybe I don’t have much of a history of picking the smallest projects, but quilts are foldable so there’s that.

Anyway, this past weekend, I was hanging out with my five year-old niece and wanted to do some kid friendly projects. When I am home, I don’t usually have the tv on during the day. I like the quiet, and I find it easier to think and be creative if I am not being bombarded with the noise and attention grabbing tactics of the daytime shows. When my niece is here, I try even harder to keep the tv off for as long as possible so that we actually get stuff done.

I was thinking about what kind of things we could do a few days ago, and I noticed the weekly ad from Joann’s. They had t-shirts on sale, and… get this… tie-dye supplies!

I immediately got excited. I haven’t tie-dyed anything since I was at Girl Scout camp when I was a kid.

I feel like tie-dyed anything gets a bad reputation. I know that people sometimes equate tie-dye with pot smoking hippies, but come on, people! Tie-dye is amazing! You get to make unique things that you can use and wear with bright happy colors. Why would you need to be a hippy to want to do that?

So, I did the only sensible thing. I took my niece to Joann’s, and we bought t-shirts and tie-dye supplies. She picked out the colors, but luckily, she has pretty good taste. We got a set called “Wild Flower,” with pink, plum and green. If I had been shopping alone, I probably would have picked out that same set because the colors looked cool.

Back in ye olden times at Girl Scout time, we had to put rubber bands around our shirts and then we dipped them in big giant pots with colored dye. The set that we found though, was completely different. The dye was in plastic squirt bottles in powder form. To use it, I added water to the fill line and should them up. We still put rubber bands around the shirts, but then we squirted the dye on instead of dipping the shirts. Once the shirts had the desired amount of dye, the instructions said to wrap them in plastic wrap and let sit for 6 to 8 hours. After that, it said to rinse out the excess dye and then machine wash.

I didn’t totally know what to expect. My niece and my mom both picked out the colors they wanted on their shirts. I did the squirting because the gloves included didn’t fit my niece and because I didn’t want my entire kitchen to be tie-dyed. She supervised, telling me where to put the rubber bands and where to put which color dye.

Once that was done, we wrapped the shirts in plastic as instructed. As you can tell in the picture, watermelon was also involved- but not in the tie-dye process. I will add a post about that later.

After six and a half hours, I rinsed the shirts and then watched them. At that point, it was evening, so I let her watch a movie while I was rinsing the shirts. The finished shirts came out pretty cute, I think. This is one of my niece’s (I think).

I was surprised by the amount of white space still left after dying. The result looked a little like splatter paint, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I’m actually wearing this one as I type this. It goes with a pair of green shorts that I have. Here in Texas, shorts are basically the uniform- at least they are are at my house. I avoid long pants at all costs. It’s just too hot. It is almost 6pm right now, and it is still 98 degrees. So, yeah. Shorts. And Flip Flops.

Overall, this was a really fun project, and it didn’t require a lot of space. I definitely plan on doing more tie-dye over the summer. I think I want to try the old-school dip-dye type too. I need to consult the wise ones at Pinterest and YouTube before my niece comes over next time.

This is my niece’s other shirt. It was one of my favorites, but the picture didn’t do the colors justice. In person, the pink was much brighter.

I have some other project ideas that I would like to try this summer. So, I will definitely be posting more projects soon.

Vacation Rental Worthy

I’ve decided that if your house isn’t in good enough condition to rent out as a vacation rental, then it isn’t in good enough condition.

Growing up, my dad could fix anything. He was a DIY’er before DIY was even a thing. Or, well, I guess he was a DIY’er before it was a thing not to do everything yourself? I’m not sure. I’m kind of confusing myself at this point. What I was trying to say is that when I was little, any time anything needed to be fixed, my dad did it, which is pretty impressive since the internet hadn’t even been invented yet. Literally the only thing he couldn’t fix was air conditioning, and I’m pretty sure that was only because you need a license to mess with a/c units.

So, needless to say, stuff was always getting fixed. Eventually. My dad was a merchant mariner, so he was gone for months at a time, and then he was home for months at a time. Usually, things would break right before time for him to go to sea. He would put a temporary patch on whatever it was and then fix it for real when he got back. At any given time, our house had at least three projects going- or three things that were kind of patched waiting for my dad to get home. I got used to things not being fixed right away, which is not actually a good thing. Yes, it was good that my dad could fix it, but it kind of set me up with a mindset of patches and holes being normal.

It’s not that I don’t like nice things, and it’s not that I don’t want things fixed, but even now, I find myself falling back into the habit of thinking in terms of things getting fixed eventually. That brings me to the topic I actually want to talk about.

At the moment, I have several projects going on here at the townhouse. I am in the process of Marie Kondo’ing my house still (it has been a little bit of a long process), I had a plumbing issue in the upstairs bathroom a few months ago, which my dad came over and fixed, but I now have a hole in the living room ceiling. I have a hole in the sheet rock in the under the stairs closet, where I ripped out a section of it to let the space under the bottom of the stairs dry when it flooded last fall. My air condition is on its last legs (I’m actually hoping to nurse it along so that my brother can fix it for me when it’s not so hot- he is a licensed a/c guy). Also, the back entry way is unfinished. It still leaks, and we haven’t been able to figure out where it’s leaking. Heard enough yet?

It isn’t that I haven’t done anything since I moved in. I replaced the windows with super nice efficient hurricane windows shortly after I moved in- best decision ever. I had the floors redone at the first of this year. I painted the kitchen cabinets (okay, really I almost painted the kitchen cabinets. I’m still in the middle of that one. I didn’t like how the paint was doing and haven’t decided which paint to use). I also painted the kitchen and living room walls.

I’ve done a bit, but not nearly enough. I look around at other peoples’ houses, and they always seem to be a little more put together than mine. I never quite understood why. I figured that probably everyone else just had things a little more figured out than I did, or at least that they were more willing to put up with crappy jobs and a miserable existence than I was. I am not exactly one to just go with the flow and do what everyone else is doing. I have tried that before, but every time I tried the 9-5 worker-bee thing, I have been completely and totally miserable and feel like I’m losing myself in the process. I don’t always do “normal” very well.

Anyway, I have decided that it isn’t necessarily that they have it all figured out better than I have. I think it is more a question of mindset and willingness to leave things undone. I can’t imagine that everyone else would be willing to sit around with a gaping hole in their ceiling. So, why should I be okay with that then? My dad can still fix things, but it isn’t really fair of me to ask my 77 year old dad to come over to my house every time I want something fixed. Leaving things undone was okay when I was little and dad was going to come back from work and fix it all. After all, that was his house (it was all of ours, but he owned it, so technically it was his). In this case, it’s my house, and I don’t have any excuse. I am not a super handy DIY queen who is going to come back from months at sea to fix everything in one fell swoop. So, leaving things to be fixed later really just means that they won’t get fixed at all.

I don’t think I’m okay with that. I don’t want to live in a house that is falling down around me. I want my house to be nice enough that I don’t have to be embarrassed if people show up unannounced.

That brings me to the new mindset that I am working on adopting. My new mindset is that if your house isn’t nice enough to rent out, then it isn’t nice enough. I was thinking about it and wondering if I should buy another house and rent this one out at some point- like on Air bnb or VRBO, but it occurred to me that nobody in their right mind would pay big bucks to stay in a house with gaping holes in the ceiling or a back entryway that is bare insulation and leaks every time it rains.

So, my new goal is to make my townhouse nice enough that it would be worthy of renting out on VRBO. I probably won’t actually rent it out, but that is the benchmark that I have set. It’s the new standard that I am aiming for.

If my house isn’t nice enough to rent out as a vacation house, then it isn’t nice enough yet.

Around the Townhouse Lately

So I was thinking about floors a while back. I had no plans of replacing my floors because my floors aren’t that old.

I guess you kind of have to be careful what you think about. This morning it rained really hard, which has never been a problem in the past. I mean seriously, it rained over 33 inches during Harvey, and I didn’t have a single bit of water in my house.

So imagine my surprise when I walked in to find water all over the floor in my entryway and my dining room (and then later discovered that the living room carpet was also soaked). WTF?! I mean new floors are nice and all, but I wasn’t really ready to get new floors. Those generally cost money.

I have to say that it’s times like these that make me question my decision to stay in teaching instead of going back to engineering. Then I remember how much time off I get in the summers…

Stay tuned for pictures of my new floors in the not too distant future.

Summer Quilting Project

As a teacher, I don’t have much time during the year to work on personal projects. Now that it’s summer, I finally have time to work on projects that have nothing to do with lesson plans or tests and homework.

I’ve been wanting to try making a jelly roll quilt for a while now, but I wasn’t even thinking about it until I saw a batik jelly roll at Joann’s Fabric. As it turned out, it was one of the only things not on sale- which meant that it was one of the only things that would work with my 40% off coupon. It must have been fate. Far be it for me to go against fate. So I bought two. Then I went online to find a pattern.

I scoured Pinterest for a Jelly Roll Quilt Pattern

Once I picked out a pattern I wanted to try, I got busy sewing strips together. I didn’t want to make a small square patchwork quilt.

I decided to use diagonals instead. By cutting each of the squares along the diagonals and then rearranging the pieces, I created larger squares with nested squares.

I then outlined each of the squares with white on off-white strips. I finished the quilt with a batik background and a polka dot batik border. I was really happy with the way it turned out. I don’t think I would recommend this pattern for someone with no quilting experience, but it was a really fun change from basic square blocks. I think I am going to try another jelly roll quilt using material scraps that I have left over from some of my previous projects. I already have another pattern picked out. Stay tuned!

 

 

Why, Joann? Why?

So… I was minding my own business the other day, when I saw the latest add for Joann’s fabric. Apparently the evil geniuses in their fabric development decided that the way to a quilter’s heart is with a sale on quilter’s cotton fabric prints. This isn’t anything new. They have sales all the time. But this time it got more personal. They had sea horse material right their in the flier that they mailed out. They sent nautical prints straight to my house!

I tried to resist, but… (okay really, I grabbed my purse and jumped in my car before the sales flier even hit the floor).

So now, even though I have other things to do- like grade papers that I don’t feel like grading- I am daydreaming about what patterns to use on the quilt that will be the first thing on my summer projects list.

Stay tuned for my actual hurricane season prepping activities.

Townhouse Cottage Etsy

Happy Monday! While I was working on redoing the table for my sailboat, I discovered watercolor painting. I had never really been into painting before. I love paintings, but as far as actually painting goes… that was a different story. I tried painting a pirate ship with my mom’s oil paints when I was in high school. It was terrible, and I don’t mean terrible as in it was actually amazing, but I wasn’t happy with it as an artist. I mean it was actually terrible. A five year-old could have literally done a better job. So I gave up on painting for good. Until now.

Watercolors are completely different than oils. I love them! It started with seahorses, but it soon spread to jellyfish and coastal landscapes.

This past weekend, I was working on another project involving hand-dyed t-shirts, and it hit me. Iron on transfers! I took a picture of one of my paintings and then printed it onto a transfer, which I then ironed onto one of the t-shirts I had made.

I decided that these t-shirts are too cool not to share, so I posted this one on my Etsy shop. This is just the first. I have several other colors of shirts that I will be posting, and I plan on posting more of the watercolor paintings over the next few days. If you are interested, check out my Etsy site here. I think these would make wonderful gifts. Be one of the first people to buy something from my shop, and you will receive a special bonus item.

Also, as you may have guessed, the project that I have been working on involves t-shirts. I will be posting more on that over the next few days.

All kinds of things are happening around my townhouse!

Tabletop Project Summary

Okay, I think my Pinterest project has been a little bit of a fail. It’s not that I haven’t been doing any projects. Quite the contrary. I’ve been doing lots of projects. They just didn’t all come from Pinterest.

One of the main projects that I have been working on (that I hinted at here), was the nautical chart that I was epoxying onto the top of the dinette table for my boat.

It turned out amazing!!! On a side note, possibly related, I’m addicted to epoxy now. I am practically itching to find something else that I can put epoxy on.

I wanted to turn my super ugly in an 80’s-threw-up-kind-of-way table and make it presentable and actually cute. My boat has issues. It was completely neglected for who knows how long. None of the systems worked when we bought it- okay really I traded a 1988 Toyota Celica for it, but that’s a completely different post. The cushions were so bad, I threw them out. I wasn’t convinced that I would ever be able to get the smells out. Plus, I didn’t even want to think about all of the sweat and other bodily fluids that had been oozing into the foam of the cushions that were on the boat, but I digress.

The project that is the topic of this post is the table. I had seen other blogs and Pinterest posts where people had put nautical charts on tables, and I was completely in love with the look. I decided that I wanted to try it. I picked out a chart of the upper Gulf Coast of Texas because that’s where I will be sailing the most to start with, and painted a watercolor sea horse to fill in some of the blank expanse of water. I had never painted before, but I found Maria Raczynska on YouTube and followed her tutorials. She is incredible!

We removed the old rubber tiles from the surface of the table and then sanded the wooden rim around it. We put a coat of varnish on the rim and made sure the Formica on the table top surface was clean and free of any debris. I cut the nautical chart to fit the table and then had it laminated. Apparently you need to laminate whatever you are putting in the epoxy because the epoxy will make the paper kind of translucent, and then the design won’t show up if it’s not laminated.

I took this picture with my phone, so the sea horse is kind of distorted

Checking the fit before gluing the chart to the table

I laid the chart onto the table, to make sure it fit right before gluing it on. Then I used contact cement- the paint on kind not the spray kind. The way contact cement works is that you have to paint both of the surfaces that are going to be in contact. I painted it on the tabletop and on the back of the nautical chart, and then I let both of the pieces dry according to the directions on the can- I think it was 15 or 20 minutes.

Once they were somewhat dry, I carefully positioned the nautical chart on the table.

Then I let it dry for a couple of days. It actually dried longer than it needed to because it was rainy and too damp to work with the epoxy.

Once the weather decided to cooperate, I started the epoxy process. I used the “glaze” kit at Home Depot, which is really just two-part epoxy if you look at the smaller print on the front of the box. I thought I was saving money by getting the quart size, but I actually ended up needing three quarts of it and spent more than if I had just not been so cheap and bought the gallon kit on Amazon in the first place. Next time I’ll just buy the gallon and be done with it.

The epoxy actually has two parts. There’s the resin, and then there’s a hardener. To apply it, you first have to mix the two parts. I would have taken pictures, except that every time I remembered that I should be taking pictures, I was mixing the parts with gloves on. I need to be more organized with the picture and video taking when I am working on stuff!

Anyway, you mix the two parts according to the directions on the box. It ends up taking about 7 minutes. Then you ignore the directions for a moment. The directions say to spread the epoxy in thin layers, about the thickness of a penny, using a plastic spreader.

Don’t do it! The thin layer didn’t spread well, the plastic spreader made it worse, and I ended up with an uneven, gooped-up, streaky mess. I was convinced that all was ruined. I tried correcting it after the appropriate drying time with another thin layer. That only made things worse. Then I got smart and looked at an epoxy video on YouTube.

What worked better for me was just pouring a giant amount of epoxy mix, starting on one side of the table and then making my way across in sections. Then instead of using the stupid plastic spreader, I used the long edge of the wooden paint stirring stick that I had used to mix the epoxy. It worked so much better. I gently pushed the epoxy around, filling in the spaces toward the edges of the table and evening out the spaces between the sections that I had poured.

Once all of the epoxy is on, you need to go over it with a heat gun (or possibly a hairdryer?) to get all of the tiny little trapped air bubbles out. This is an important step because if little air bubbles stay in, they will leave tiny indentions on the surface when the epoxy is dry.

I think the hardest part is not touching it right away. You have to let it sit undisturbed for at least 72 hours, which is 3 days in case you didn’t feel like doing the math.

So the table sat on my closed in back porch for a very long time (4 days). I stared at it longingly through the door, but I didn’t dare actually open the door because I knew that my devil of a kitten wouldn’t be able to resist jumping on it.

Finally, it was ready to take to the boat. I really love the way it turned out. I’ve had my share of Pinterest fails, but fortunately, this was not one of them!

Okay, that was my tutorial. I hope you enjoyed. Be sure and check out the Sea Bean Project blog for updates on other stuff that’s happening on the boat.

Don’t worry, I already have another project that I am working on. Stay tuned…

Pinterest Challenge

Okay, I’ve been a little slow on the Pinterest Challenge. I’ve been working on something, but I haven’t taken any pictures.

The Townhouse Cottage expanded a little shortly after Thanksgiving when I bought a beat up old sailboat. My dad and I have been fixing it up, but it is still a long way from being ready to actually take sailing. Two projects that I have been working on lately both involve the main living area of the cabin (called the saloon). There is a c-shaped booth style settee with a drop down table that converts into a bed. In theory it’s a really good idea- like an RV, but in actuality, it was completely unusable when we got the boat.

The previous owner was living on the boat with his girlfriend and three year old daughter, but I can’t for the life of me figure out why anyone would live on such a filthy boat. The whole cabin was greasy to the touch from years of cooking inside the boat and apparently never cleaning. The cushions were all so smelly that I just couldn’t…

I decided that it wasn’t worth trying to salvage the cushions because they were in such bad shape and smelled so terrible. So I have been making new cushions for the cabin. I started with the cushions for the c-shaped booth. I have all of the cushions for around the table; now I just have to make the cushion that fits over the table when it is lowered.

In addition to the cushions, I have been working on the table. One of the previous owners had covered the original Formica with super nasty rubber tiles to make it black and white. Needless to say, the worn out rubber tiles had to go. I saw a sailing blog post a few years ago where the couple had epoxied a nautical chart to the table, and I’ve been wanting to try that since then. I decided that a nautical chart would be perfect on my little boat. So I painted a watercolor sea horse on an old chart that I had and have been preparing it for the table.

That brings me to the Pinterest project. Here is what my table looked like:

This is the Pinterest post that I am following as my Pinterest challenge:

My chart looks different than this one because I needed the Texas Gulf Coast, but the idea is the same. We were able to remove the old tiles with a heat gun and then some super strong chemicals. The Formica underneath was not in very good condition. We re-varnished the wood trim. Then I painted on a nautical chart and had it laminated. The next step is to use contact cement to attach the chart to the table. The weather didn’t cooperate this past week, but it is supposed to be dry tomorrow, so the plan is to attach the chart tomorrow and then let it dry completely for a couple of days before applying the epoxy.

Stay tuned for pictures of the finished project…

Pinterest Challenge of the Week

Okay, I got off to a slow start on the whole self-inflicted Pinterest challenge. It was a little overwhelming. There are so many things I would like to try on Pinterest, and so little time (money) to try them all. I went back and forth on what to try. I kind of wanted to do something that involved gardening, but the weather didn’t want to cooperate.

Finally, life intervened. I am running a crowdfunding campaign to fund the renovations on my old beat up sailboat, and one of the rewards is an autographed sea bean from the s/v Sea Bean. (Clever, eh?) I had been procrastinating on ordering the sea beans for that. I guess part of me didn’t really believe that anyone would want to pay to watch me fix up a boat. Probably if I looked like a Brazilian supermodel… but I digress. Anyway, I got my first contributor and went “Eeek! I have no sea beans!”

So I ordered some sea beans really quickly, but I needed something to put them in. Macramé instantly sprang to mind. So I decided to make that my Pinterest challenge.

It went great. (cough cough- that should have been read in a super sarcastic tone). If you kind of squint your eyes a little, it looks pretty good. Kind of . If I were a five year-old.

Um…. Macramé?

The main problem is that as soon as I pulled the container out, I couldn’t get it back in right again. I accidentally tied the pieces of yarn in the wrong order. Obviously that wasn’t going to work.

So I went back to Pinterest. After scrolling through, getting distracted by sailboat pictures and cute dogs and then focusing on the problem again, I found this post.

Crochet! I know how to do that!

It’s a net bag, but it’s crocheted. I can do that! So this became my challenge. I was going to use some cotton yarn that I have left over from a previous project, but then I saw the cutest yarn at Michael’s. I was powerless to resist. I mean seriously. Check out those colors!

Who am I to resist colors like these? #resistanceisfutile

Super cute sea bean with partially finished net #seabeanproject

I ended up accidentally making the bag a little too tall, so I tucked the handles through one of the loops so that the container of sea beans would hang down too low. So my net back looks a little like a milk bottle, but hey. At least it will keep the jar of sea beans contained even if the boat is moving.

Sea beans in the finished net #awesome

Overall I feel like the Pinterest challenge was a success. There are a couple of things I would do differently next time I make a net bag, but I feel like I will be making more of these for the boat before too long, so I will definitely get the chance to improve my bag making technique.

For my next Pinterest challenge… I’m not sure yet. I’m still a little hung up on the idea of printing out the useful posts to make a survival binder. Even though that’s not technically a Pinterest project, it’s a project involving Pinterest posts. So I may do that. I haven’t decided. I’ll keep you posted.

Obligatory picture of me and one of my puppies on the boat.

Super cute puppy on a boat #bestillmyheart #dogsarebetterthancats #seabeanproject