When we first moved up to NorCal and I was looking for a place for us to rent, Kyle and I made a wish list of things that we wanted in our new home. We wanted to rent a house with no shared walls, we wanted a place to entertain, we wanted 2 (but hopefully 3) bedrooms, a dishwasher, a nice neighborhood…it was a long list that we didn’t think would actually be met. And then Kyle added one more thing, the impossible…a sandbox for Kade to play in. When he mentioned it, I just stared at him…and then laughed. Talk about specific! Not to mention unrealistic. Kade and I drove up and down the Peninsula looking at places for 2 months. Then, the night before we turned in an application on a house that met most of our list, an ad for this house was posted. So I decided to take a look, even though I figured we wouldn’t get it. I liked it, a lot. But I didn’t know if it was worth the money, until the agent took me outside to see the backyard. And what to my wondering eyes should appear??? A SANDBOX! It was meant to be! God provided us with a wonderful home that met each and every item on our list and so much more. The miracles He’s worked to allow us to stay here don’t stop here, but that’s for another post.

Now the original sandbox was technically a sandbox but it wasn’t usable. It had been a neighborhood litter box for who knows how long and it was basically four 2 x 12′s nailed together. The wood was warped and coming apart at the seems, literally. Here’s a picture of our yard last summer and you can see the sandbox in the lower right. Clearly, with a fire pit stored in the middle, it wasn’t getting a lot of use!

So Kyle set to work tearing it apart, cleaning up the old wood and putting it back together. Then we purchased a couple 2 x 10′s and cut them to fit like a seat around the top. Kyle made sure it was good and secure and then routed the edges to make a nice comfy seat.

We found some left over primer and then painted it to match the trim on the house. The final step was sand. I’m trying to keep this as an uplifting and happy post so I won’t rant over the cost of play sand, but lets just say Kade will NOT be throwing it out of that sandbox! To top it off, we even found a tarp with a drawstring to protect it from the neighborhood animals.

There was only one thing left to do after it was all put together…get it approved by Kade. He loved it! It was so cute to see him bury his little fingers and toes in the sand. He was a little worried at first that it was sticking to his skin, but then we showed him how to slap his hands together to brush it off. If you thought he had intense dance moves, brushing sand off fingertips is even more so!

Look at that face! God is so good! He even answers the small prayers and gives us joy in the everyday things.

This DIY gift I loved so much, I kept one for myself…Stenciled Burlap Placemats and Chalkboard Coasters. It’s super easy and contributed to my secret goal to incorporate burlap into every room in the house!

I bought some burlap at JoAnn’s and cut it down to 13″ x 17″, an inch wider and longer than I wanted my finished placemat to be. I followed this great tutorial for how to cut burlap in a straight line, and it saved me so much frustration! Then I hand washed the rectangles to get rid of that weird burlap smell and soften their texture just a bit. After ironing them flat again, I did a straight stitch around the edges, 1/2″ from the border, to keep them from fraying. Then I purposely frayed the edges up to the stitching, just to give them a more unified look.

At this point, they were ready to be stenciled. I used my Silhouette to cut the stencils for my words. By cutting out the word, rather than the letters, I didn’t have to worry about messing up the kerning when I stenciled. For once, having very old craft paint was a huge win. My black paint had been left over from my mom’s stash and I’m pretty sure it was purchased somewhere around 1987. It was thick and clumpy, but it worked perfectly to give me very crisp letters. The paint didn’t bleed out from under the stencil edge at all.

I love chalkboard paint! If we didn’t rent our house, I’d probably cover the entire kitchen in chalkboard paint. For this project though, I limited myself to just the coasters. I purchased the cheap tiles at Home Depot (16 cents each) and glued a piece of black felt to the bottom of each with a hot glue gun. Then I gave each coaster two coats of chalkboard paint.

I wanted each coaster to have a toasting phrase and originally planned to stencil that too. But the font was too small and thin for that to work well, so I ended up tracing my stencil in pencil and then painting it free-hand. Despite my shaky hand, I liked how they turned out.

I’m so glad I kept one set for myself. They’re my favorite way to set the table!