Canvas Alternative Ikea Hack

I had a vision of hanging large, square prints of our boys for years.

I scoured canvas printing companies, but even with coupons or Black Friday deals, they were still very expensive. Especially for prints of young children who change from year to year.

After letting the idea of canvas prints simmer in my mind, I stumbled upon the perfect alternative while walking through Ikea last fall.

Since almost every visitor that comes to our home asks me about the prints that hang in our family room, I thought I'd share my simple alternative.

Plus, I patted myself on the back a little bit for coming up with the idea on my own, without the use of Pinterest. That's almost unheard of these days.

My secret? Ikea Lack side tables. I spotted the 21x21 inch square tabletops and knew they would be perfect on the wall. I ditched the legs and used the pre-drilled holes on the backs as nail holes. 

I ordered high resolution 20x20 lustre prints from Nations Photo Lab. I'm really picky about quality and they always do an excellent printing job. They were having a sale right before the holidays, so I went ahead and had the images mounted on single weight matboard as well. I wanted them to have more structure and more of a finished look since they wouldn't be in frames.

For mounting, I ordered some heavy duty magnets with adhesive backing and placed one in each tabletop corner. I used tiny 1/8 inch magnet cubes to hold the prints in place. I ended up adding a tiny bit of hot glue to the back of the prints as well, just to secure them and prevent slipping.

The prints will be so easy to replace in years to come. My only problem now is that this fourth baby is going to alter my perfect arrangement of three.

Family Night in Black and White

When it was announced that Blake's Kindergarten class was putting on a talent show on their last day of school, he had a hard time narrowing down which talent to perform. He was a little too nervous to demonstrate the cup game in front of his whole class, and he wasn't sure if he wanted to display one of his masterpiece mazes for a classmate to solve. He settled on building and operating a circuit set.

But he also came up with the idea to have our own family talent show so the rest of his skills could be featured. He talked about it for weeks and consistently asked each family member which talent he or she was going to perform.

Blake made a list of each participator in the first annual Tanner Family Talent Show. Next to each name, he wrote a yes or a no depending on whether or not that person had a talent to perform. Everyone had a 'yes' by their name except dad and Crew, who had 'no's'. I laughed pretty hard when I saw his list. He explained himself by saying, "Well, you know, dad has crutches..."

I ensured him that his dad still had talents even though he was on crutches. It actually became the running joke in our family. We pointed out each and every one of Troy's talents in front of the boys for a few weeks. We didn't want them to think their dad was completely useless. And after some consideration, Blake came to the conclusion that Crew could be included too.

We settled on a date and scheduled the Tanner Family Talent Show for family night.

Blake demonstrated the cup game to perfection as well a clever magic trick.

Nash entertained us with his dancing and singing skills.

Troy impressed the boys with his book spinning.

I brushed the dust off my violin and Crew showed off his head shaking and clapping skills.

It may have only lasted a half hour, and the talents may not have been that significant, but the boys were beaming the entire time. 

I also figured it was a good opportunity to give out end of school awards to recognize the boys' accomplishments over the last year. Some of my friends have held similar events in the past and I am always game for starting traditions that praise and uplift our children.

Blake's awards included the Learning to Read Award, Master Maze Drawer Award, Scoring Soccer Award and Making New Friends Award.

Nash earned the Big Boy Bed Award, Potty Training Award, Counting to 100 Award and Singing Sweetly Award.

And Crew was the recipient of the Climbing up the Slide Award, Waving Hands Award, Going Down the Stairs Award and Making us all Smile Award.

The awards ceremony was a hit. The boys were on their toes each time I proclaimed, "This next award goes to someone who..." They squealed with delight as the certificates piled up in their hands. Their eyes sparkled each time they realized that I was recognizing one of their accomplishments. They both mentioned the "awards show" in their prayers that night.

In a world of so much pushing and so little praising, I always want to make it a priority to recognize our boys' talents and accomplishments. We will definitely be repeating this tradition.

Memorial Day Weekend

We headed to the mountains over Memorial Day Weekend. We had the best time preparing tin foil dinners and desserts with friends, staying at the cabin with grandparents who recently returned from Hawaii, hiking around waterfalls and playing croquet. It was short lived in between waiting around most of the day Saturday for our air conditioning to be fixed and Troy having to work on Monday because the foreign markets were still open. But we savored what we could.

We were shocked at how much snow was left around the waterfalls. It has been hot in the valley, and it was even in the 60s in the mountains, but tons of snow remained. It limited our hike that we enjoyed so much last fall. It did not, however, limit Nash's enjoyment of eating the trampled snow.

Back at the cabin, Crew considered which mallet to choose.

The boys have absolutely loved having their grandparents around again after a long three years away.

Crew has been taking an increasing amount of steps on his own each day. 

The flag was delivered just before we had to head back home and Blake was pretty darn excited about that.

We topped off the events with grandma's homemade gelato. A well celebrated Memorial Day weekend indeed.

Summer Bucket List

Summer is officially in session.

I'm freaking out a little bit because I'm not ready. Sure, I'm excited to drop the school commutes and have my boys all to myself. But I've been flying by the seat of my pants lately and I'm not even close to having our summer mapped out yet. 

I still haven't signed up for swimming lessons or made up chore charts and reading charts. Or figured out how in the world we're going to attend summer playgroups, weekly dollar movies, the waterpark, or all of my prenatal appointments for that matter, with a baby that still naps in his crib twice a day.

I'm not quite sure how to keep the older boys busy with outings, which they crave in the summer, with a baby in tow that isn't as portable as he was last summer. We only have a narrow window to get out of the house each day.

I have some good intentions to add some structure to our lazy summer days and avoid as much technology as possible, but those plans have yet to made. And in our family, we do much better with a plan in place. Days 1 and 2 of summer vacation were filled with much more fighting than I'd like to admit.

But we did sit down and make our Summer Bucket List, which is at least a start to what I hope will be much more planning.

Because somewhere in between the naps and chores and keeping up on reading skills, having fun is a priority. 

The top activity our boys want to complete this summer is walking on one of those overpasses that go over busy roads. They have seriously been asking for years to do this. I think that's one thing we'll be able to manage!

Throw in our annual Michigan trip, the town carnival, the bi-annual family reunion and a wedding in New York City, and our summer is shaping up to be pretty full.

It's a good thing summer is long, right?

I shared this free Summer Bucket List printable on my design site. To download your own set of 12x18 and 8x10 prints, click HERE.

End of Kindergarten

Blake went ahead and graduated from Kindergarten. He has learned so much since his first day last fall.

He has even grown out of his dream of being an elf that builds toys.

We attended a few of his end of the year programs. First were riveting drama performances of Little Red Riding Hood and The Hungry Caterpillar.

On the last day of school, his whole class put on talent show for their graduation.

Blake settled on demonstrating one of his circuit sets for his talent. He wired the circuits to make a siren noise, turn on a light, and spin a helicopter top.

These boys made this year exceptional. Not only were all three of them born the same week, but they all picked a science related talent for the graduation program. I mean, they were born to be friends. We are so sad that one of them is moving away this summer and splitting up the pack. We hope Blake keeps picking out stellar friends that happen to have awesome families. He sure exceeded our expectations this year.

And just like that, we have a first grader!