Loving on your people… even after they move out? Well, yes!
If you know me, you know that my kids moving out on their own will not deter me from being the quirky, over-the-top mom. So my oldest moved out this past fall and while it’s been an adjustment, it’s actually been a fairly smooth transition. He only lives about 15-20 minutes away and we’ve seen him more often than I thought we would, so thats good! Lol!
So each year, I place the conversation hearts I’ve made on the bedroom doors of my kids. These hearts are made of colored construction paper, with words written in sharpie. Every year I go through my stack of hearts and pick words/phrases for each of them. And when I think of new words, I make new hearts to add to the stack! On the 14 days leading up to and including Valentine’s Day, I tape a heart on their bedroom doors. A word/phrase that is a quality I see in them. Something I’m proud of, something I admire, and something I respect. It’s my little extra way of showing them in “the month of love” just how special they are to me.
If you’ve been around the blog for a bit. you’ve no doubt read about this here.
But this year, with my son no longer here, I wondered what I would do? He lives on his own for now so I figured, why not keep the tradition by sending him the hearts I would put on his bedroom door if he were here? So that’s exactly what I’ve done!
I took 14 envelopes, and the 14 hearts with words I’ve chosen this year and I hand delivered them to him at his new place with the instructions to open an envelope each day starting with February 1st. He was suprised and not quite sure what I was up to, but it didn’t take him long to figure it out!
My original plan was to send the envelopes in a box with a few little things for V-Day, but since his dad’s birthday is the same day, I will undoubtedly see him so I opted to save the postage and just give him the envelopes for now.
It may seem silly, over-the-top, or strange to some; but I don’t care! Lol! Showing the people in my life how much I love them and how special they are is important to me and it seems like the world could use a little more of the little things to show we care.
What’s even better about this whole scenario? He’s actually hanging them on his bedroom door in his condo and was happy to send me a picture when I asked. I cannot tell you how happy that makes my heart. Through good and bad, the bond I’ve created with my kids will still always be the most important job I’ve ever done!
Do you love the look of canvas photos but not the price? Yeah, me too. There are some places online that will run a sale on them definitely making them more affordable, but when I wanted to do my own version of a gallery wall a few years back, I had to get creative.
There are a million tutorials for DIY canvas photos on Pinterest, you can find one that suits your purpose. For me? I opted to go with tip from a friend years ago mixed with a little common sense and trial and error. This is what I ended up with.
First off, choose your photo. for my gallery wall, I wanted a mix of current professional photos, snapshots, and photos that have been around for a little while. For this tutorial, though I used a landscape photo Mallory took of the mountains in Colorado on her spring break trip (pre-coronavirus). It’s a great picture, and she wanted it enlarged and made into a canvas for her room. She’s no stranger to this method, as she helped with my gallery wall years ago and has since made her own for her room, and her room at college with pics of her and her boyfriend and her with roommates and friends. Safe to say it’s easy and cheap enough for a college kid to do it! lol!
So the canvas. They come in so many sizes! You can get them for a great price every day at Hobby Lobby with their coupon (and occassionally on sale!). Walmart also has them for a great price, but when I wanted to do the gallery wall, we went to Michaels when they had their big sale and bought multi packs of various sizes for $10.00! we still have some left over in the craft closet! Choose your photo and what size you want it to be, and choose your canvas. To get photos printed, I always recommend Costco photo printing. It’s a good quality print, for a very good price. Shipping is fast and for this, I always choose their matte finish which they call lustre.
This is my gallery wall as it stands today. The engagement photo, wedding photo, and photo of the 3 kids when they were little, were from a while back, so their size was of course predetermined. I chose a canvas for each and cut (if needed) the photo to fit. You’ll notice 2 of them have a border… we needed this because the height of the photo did not reach the edges of the canvas. Mallory’s picture we used in this tutorial only needed a border on the sides. She was fine with taking the photo all the height of the canvas instead of cutting it. So before we even began, she painted her canvas black so the border on the sides would match her accents in her room. I’ll stop being so long winded and just say – use your creativity, it’s your project, do it how you want!
Make sure your photo is the size you want for the canvas. Trim and cut if you need to.
I use matte finish mod podge and a foam ‘brush’. It is white, but dries clear! Protect your surface with a tablecloth. We use an old vinyl table cloth for painting projects and projects like this. Start by spreading a layer (not too thick) of mod podge on the canvas and on the back of the photo. Don’t go too slow because the glue definitely gets tacky pretty quickly. Place the photo where you want it on the canvas and (making sure there is no glue on your hands) smooth the photo to the canvas. Let it dry.
Begin to apply pod modge to the top of the photo & canvas.
Do not use too much. This will cause those heavier spots to look faded and almost blurry when dry.
Make all brush strokes go across the canvas horizontally.
Try to take your brush strokes across the whole canvas if possible.
Once you have covered the surface, lightly and evenly with strokes in one direction, let it dry COMPLETELY. If you do not let it dry completely in between layers, glue does what glue does and you could end up with clumps and icky spots that will ruin the photo.
When this first layer is completely dry, you can start the second layer by using the same process as the first except going vertically in even strokes.
Let it dry completely yet again and voila! You’ve just made your very own canvas photo!
When my kids were little, I stayed at home with them. Well, ‘stay at home’ is maybe not the correct terminology because we (I) rarely stayed at home. I volunteered at their school and we were constantly doing things with friends like having playdates – moms and kids 🙂
One thing I didn’t do very often growing up myself, was go to summer camp. With the exception of church camp, this was just something my sister and I never did because my mom stayed home with us as well. We did, however, stay with our grandparents a lot. Each summer my sister would go to one set of grandparents and I would go to the other. We would stay for 2 weeks and then swap. I would go to the other set of grandparents and she would go where I had just been. I do remember at my grandparent’s house in Memphis one year, my grandma let me make a sign for the door to the guest room where I stayed. Kind of like my own little cabin away at summer camp. I found that picture recently, me with my sign on the door to that room I spent so many summer in… and it brought back a flood of memories. Even in my 40’s I still remember the feeling, the fun, the anticipation of spending those weeks with my grandparents. It’s something I am very grateful my parents encouraged us to do. Those memories are lasting my lifetime.
I’m probably 8 years old here with my sign on the door of the room where I spent most of my childhood summers.
Being a family with 1 income, camp really didn’t fall within the budget and honestly, I enjoyed spending time with them when they were off school in the summers. We had a decent size back yard, a nice sized swimming pool, and plenty of toys/games/activities to keep them busy. So what was the point? Well, I learned that for them the point was that they wanted the experience, I guess. So I began to brainstorm. And looking back, there are so many more things I could have done with this idea, but they still talk about it in their 20’s so I guess it worked out just fine. The key for me was cheap or free but with a lot of memory making and education.
To make it as interactive and exciting as possible (and cost effective), I sat down and made a list of things around our city we could do for free or very little cost. i named the camp, Camp Firefly. The reason behind this name was that each of the 3 of my kids had the same kindergarten teacher and their classroom were known as the “Fireflies”. As the last Reed Kid had just completed Kindergarten and the Firefly legacy, it was an easy choice.
Then I went to go ole WalMart and Dollar Tree. At WalMart I bought a pack of men’s small white undershirts and fabric markers. At Dollar Tree I bought a pack of poster boards. That’s it. And with those items, our Stay At Home camp began. Camp Firefly!
On the first day of camp, the kids decided on their cabin names. Their cabins were, of course, their bedrooms. Jake had his own room so there was no negotiations there, he could choose whatever he wanted. And he settled on… Jellybean Cabin. The girls, however, shared a room. Surprisingly enough, there was little to no struggle getting them to agree on their cabin name. Butterfly Cabin. So with their choices made, time to decorate!
With the poster boards, they made signs to hang on their ‘cabin’ doors. I’m pretty sure their dad though I was nuts, but that was nothing new lol! Next step was camp shirts! Now, this was pre-Cricut. Well, the original Cricut was maybe out by then, but one would not be in my future for a very long time. Enter fabric markers! They had a blast decorating their shirts. They let their creative juices flow! We ate lunch on the deck, and swam in the afternoon. I would say it was a successful 1st day of camp.
Now since this was about 15 years ago, the memories have stayed but the specifics have not. After that 1st day, the rest is a blur of activities.
One day we went to a local drive through park near us. Lone Elk Park. It’s an exapnsive park that houses Deer, Elk, Bison, Geese, and at the time, Owls. It had long been one of our favorite pass times as a family on the weekend mornings and it’s free, so it was a natural choice for a day’s activity. Near the end of the park is a shelter with picnic tables. We ate our picnic lunch there. Dad was off work so he went with us and one of their cousin’s went as well.
The World Bird Sanctuary is also in the same entrance as Lone Elk Park. This was another free activity. Being our 1st time there (it hadn’t been open long), it was a new experience ad the kids learned a lot about the different birds. Watching the birds interact with their handlers and learning about their natural habitats was certainly interesting.
One of our ALL-TIME favorite activities is our local zoo. We are in the suburbs of St. Louis so we are very fortunate to have access to the world renowned St. Louis Zoo! We are very fortunate to have this FREE, world-class zoo in our city. At the time the kids were little, the Emerson Children’s Zoo, located inside the zoo, was free admission before 9:00am. So that’s the 1st place we would head. Once we completed our time there, the rest of the day was spent on the rest of the zoo. Having a yearly zoo membership we could save on parking and other activities within the zoo that may have a small fee, like my favorite, the Sea Lion show. But there is an entire days worth of fascination and education with just the main zoo itself… all for free.
There were other activities we did during our week long stay at home camp, like playing at the local park, riding bikes, swim day, and much more. Local to our area (St. Louis) there are a lot of affordable attractions to help summer or a stay at home summer camp be more fun! Six Flags, The Butterfly House, The Magic House, and the City Museum, just to name a few. Check the internet for coupons and membership savings. There is so much you can do on a budget and with a little creativity that provide those memorable moments lasting a lifetime. Be creative!
Bits of Love Creations 