Toys

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Kid Stuff

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Just a couple small projects this week. First up my childhood friend the rocking horse. I never gave it a name. Or a gender for that matter. Comment what it’s name should be, I think it’s about time it got one. 

This poor, 26ish year old horse has spent the last 14 or so years in a garage loft and it shows.

My grandfather built it for me before my legs would even reach the pegs. And my grandmother painted the beautiful designs. 

As you can see the varnish has yellowed over the years. In fact you can see where my little hands wore off the varnish so the blue paint shows its true color around the hand holds.

I wanted to get rid of as much of the yellowing as I could while still keeping the lovely paint that my grandmother did, so I just did a wet sanding with a 150 and 220 grit sanding pad 

Now it just looks a little more antiqued than before, but still beautiful. I will eventually need to replace the tail, but for now it’s found a home in our dining room for our friends children to play on. 

Next up a project from Mr. Smith’s childhood. 

It’s not quite as pretty but it’s a bit more practical. It was his childhood toy box and before it was his it was someone else’s… I’m not sure whose, but obviously it’s pretty old and it’s pretty sturdy. It’s made out of scrap, solid wood, tongue and groove. 

And as you can see here a 6 year old Mr. Smith painted it. 

We freshened up the paint a bit using the same red and chalkboard as I did on the bar. As you can see it’s also going to need a new bottom. 

It also desperately needed new casters as the bearings in these had seized up. 

New casters, new bottom reinforced with a center strut thanks to some scrap paneling and wood…
I think Mr. Smith is excited about his newly remodeled toy box…. Or at least the toys

And it has found a cozy home in the breakfast nook. 

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Free!

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I am going to attempt the impossible. I set out to make a completely free diy project.

  
And by free I mean by using leftover “junk” around the house.

  
Let’s start with some bottle caps, 10 to be exact. Grab my trustee nail polish and pick out a couple of contrasting colors. Paint 5 bottle caps one color 5 another.

  
A couple more colors and some Xs and Os, you can probably see where this is headed.

  
Next grab a little linen sack or something similar. This one came from some novelty gum Mr. Smith just had to have. Use a fabric pen or paint or just a sharpie to put on the grid.

  
Once everything is dry you can toss it all in the bag and voila you have an on the go conflict resolution implement for the kiddos, or frustration for the adults when they figure out how to always end up in a draw. 

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Zombie Clowns

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Mr. Smith and I have been on a little mini hiatus for the last few days. I had hoped to get a post up before leaving for said break from the real world but I wasn’t really sure what to write about. 

  
At first I was reluctant to pick up blogging and my hobbies again. To be fair I was reluctant to do anything. I couldn’t even eat. Now I’m finding I relish the little things; in particular the hobbies that bring me and especially others joy. So of course I’ll be doing a blog about how my hobbies are helping me through everything. I guess every blog I do is about a hobby or project, I just have a new love for them. 

  
But of course now I have a mini vacation to blog about . For Mr. Smith’s birthday  we spent some time with his aunt and her family down in Florida. As I’ve said my family has been amazingly helpful with getting through this so I’m incredibly grateful Mr. Smith has some family relatively close by.

  
They live in an area that I’m quite familiar with because my grandparents used to live there. We had the opportunity to go to Legoland one day… 

This is going to sound like an

  
Type of thing, but I actually went to Legoland before it was Legoland. On a side note I had been to Legoland once it was Legoland as well, I was just excited to see how Mr. Smith would like it since this was his first trip. 

  
Legoland is built around a place called Cyprus Gardens which I had been to several times in my youth and your admission to the park includes admission to the old gardens. Don’t get me wrong Legoland is cool, (more about it later) but if you don’t bother going to Cyprus Gardens while you’re there you are missing out. 

  
Mr. Smith didn’t really bother taking any pictures in Legoland but his eyes lit up and the camera snapped away when we got to the gardens as you can probably tell by all of these pictures.  If you’ve never seen a Banyan tree it is an amazing sight to behold.  Of course he had to have a creepy tree in this post. 

  
Legoland itself was toy heaven, secretly (or perhaps not so secretly) neither of us have matured in the last 20 years so we are still stuck in the 8-14 age bracket that Legos cater to… our vacation budget was spent accordingly. And that’s pretty much all we did was shop. The weather was terrible thanks to this time of year so a good amount of the rides were closed anyway. I’m extremely happy I wore my bathing suit under my clothes because I never dried out.

  
(Han definitely shot first) 
Our haul from Legoland however was epic…. Oh I mean Awesome!

  
I’m personally of the master builder disposition whereas Mr. Smith tends to follow directions. He has plans involving Kra-Gl but I’ve got a piece of resistance around here to stop him.