Home Sweet Garage: Kitchen Ideas

Okay so I'm accummulating a bunch of ideas for what I want to do with our kitchen in the garage conversion. The space we will have for our kitchen will be approximately  - so it will be a very tight fit!! Luckily we're in a great position since DH's uncle owns a kitchen and bathroom renovation company. He's offered to custom build us the perfect kitchen and all we have to pay for is the materials; labour and all the upmarking he normally adds on top he's willing to give us completely free!
So the highest priority in this kitchen is going to be storage solutions. We need to manage to cram all of our kitchen gear into a very tight space, so nothing goes into this kitchen without the storage side of it being thoroughly investigated.

 

Drawers, drawers, everywhere. I read an article recently that said that drawers utilise 30% more storage space in kitchens. And no, I don't remember where I read this. Sorry. So I want pretty much no cupboards at all, just drawers. My MIL's two most recent kitchens had drawers everywhere, it was the first time I'd seen drawers being used so extensively in a kitchen but I loved it! It was so practical and much prettier, I intend on using drawers in every kitchen I build from now on!

 

I also plan on having a kitchen island on strong castor wheels so that when we're not in the kitchen we can push the island further into the kitchen and have more space in the living area. I especially like the island above that has the fold up bar with the bar stools. Now if only I could think of somehow to store the bar stools when they're not in use. Any suggestions?

 

I love, love, love this hidden kitchen design and have an idea to implement it in our kitchen to hide all the appliances. See, I love it when kitchen benches are completely clear with nothing on them, but we have a great deal of appliances that we regularly use which end up cluttering up our benches. So after talking extensively about my idea with my FIL, DH and DH's uncle I've come up with a brilliant solution: rather than the regular kitchen counter depth of 600mm, the counter along the back wall will be 900mm deep - the depth of a kitchen island. The extra 300mm along the back will make up an appliance cupboard with sliding doors along the front. The sliding doors will be made to look like a splashback so that it looks like it's simply the back of the kitchen, until you slide the splashback across and find all the hidden appliances :D I have heaps of ideas on how to make the splashback/sliding doors but that's a post all on its own!
There'll be 300mm of dead space behind the bench, but we're thinking that from the side of the bench we'll implement a slide out bin cabinet, and DH thinks we should put two access holes with sealed lids in the cabinet to throw our scraps/recycling out. We'll see :)


Of course we have heaps of different ideas and we're still in the planning stage so things may change at any time. Some of our ideas conflict with eachother too so we still need to make decisions on those items.
I'm constantly updating the Pinterest board, Home Sweet Garage, so be sure to check it out if you're interested in our plans!

Kiddy Time/Mummy Moments: Day 3

Yay, today went really well!! (picture me jumping up and down in glee!) Last night I had decided that I needed to centre our activities more on As interests to get him involved and actually enjoy spending time together (duh, pretty freaking obvious huh?)

Well I found a website that prints off large letters that look like roads do this morning I printed off a large capital A and a large B. A was so freaking excited when he saw them printing off that he didn't want to finish his breakfast before playing with them.
He got out all his matchbox cars and drove them all over the 'roads' with me for 15 minutes. I could see that he was starting to get a little distracted so I quickly finished up and packed it away before it ended negatively. Now that I know he enjoys it I think I'll laminate the whole alphabet so they're a bit stronger and bring out a couple of new letters every few days.

I had also printed off a couple of coloring pages of trucks I had found through google images so I brought them out next. He sat at the dining table and was quite happily coloring in for another 15 minutes before I duvked out to have a shower.

When I returned my MIL had put A in the pram and he was pretending to be baby Z, sucking his thumb and crying lol. I went along with it and we had a lot of fun making sure Baby was being looked after. This probably lasted about 30 minutes.

I pulled out his box of Lego and we sat on the couch together building trucks and trailers for an hour. He has plenty of Duplo Lego but we also let him play with the regular Lego while being supervised because he really enjoys it and he's extremely clever when it comes to his technical skills. I love to see how hard he's concentrating on what he's building and his fine motor skills are amazing, I'm always very impressed with the things he makes.

We then engaged in some more imaginative play, he decided we were both dogs and we were crawling around on the ground barking and playing tug of war. This game lasted well over an hour! And then he wanted to play it again tonight before bed :)

I was going to take him to the park again this afternoon but by the time we both woke from a nap it was too late in the day and the weather had turned. Instead I pulled out his Duplo and we sorted all his Duplo sets. A put everything in piles depending on whether it was a farm specific item, or from the police set or firefighter set. I was reading something today that said sorting is an early form of mathematical learning which is great because A loves sorting things!
We continued having free play with the Duplo and we ended up playing together for the next 3 hours!!

Even though I had to engage in a lot of imaginative play with him - which I normally hate - I actually really enjoyed the day. I think I'm just happy to finally be engaging with A like I always felt I should. I feel a lot better about myself (hey maybe I'm not going to be a crap mum anymore!!) although I feel much more tired!!
Tomorrow we're going to be going out for the day while DH has the day off so I probably won't bother posting. I'm going to try and go to the library with A and pick up some more bedtime books.

Home Sweet Garage: Playroom

One thing I think is going to be extremely important in our new home is having a dedicated play area for the kids. I don't think its fair when children are made to grow up in a home that isn't appropriate for them; when they're not allowed to play anywhere outside of their room; not allowed to have any sign of them living there with you. Afterall, it's their home too.
So many areas of a house are designed specifically with the parents in mind: the main bedroom, office, kitchen, entertaining areas such as lounge and dining area, why should the children only get their bedroom - which they're then usually forced to keep in a condition that the parents desire. I want my children to be able to play while still spending time with the other members of their family rather than shutting themselves up in their room. I want to be able to do my work on the computer or make dinner while still being able to hear my kids laughing and playing; I want to be able to look over and see what has them giggling so hysterically.
We're going to portion off a corner of the garage as a play area for the kids, it's going to be approximately 3x2.5m. In this area I want to incorporate a table, a reading nook, open area of floor for playing and of course plenty of toy storage. I've found heaps of ideas that I'd love to include, such as designs for play tables, toy storage units, reading nooks, etc. You can find most of them on my Pinterest board, Playroom Ideas.

I think this toy storage solution is a terrific idea. Since DH is so handy, we're planning on building our own one out of timber and tubs bought from Bunnings (or the dollar store lol), it will be just like this one except we'll probably make it a fair bit longer (we're thinking about 2 metres long), and we're thinking of having it sitting on top of a bench that A can park his bigger trucks under. The bench will jut out a bit to make a step he can stand on to access the top toy tubs.

 

And I love this little table! It's narrow so doesn't take up a lot of space, but is still wide enough for little kids to draw, eat and do arts and crafts at. It's also long enough to accommodate three little ones at once: A & Z and a little friend :)

This reading loft idea is brilliant! I haven't told DH yet, lol, but I'm thinking we should have a reading loft above the craft table. It'll have to be a little higher than the one pictured above though, so we'll probably add a little rail to the edge so A doesn't fall off!

We'll also put little bookshelves like the ones above in the reading loft. The ones pictured above are simply made out of plastic rain guttering, isn't that a fantastic idea?!

Be sure to check out my Pinterest board to see where the original images come from.

Kiddy Time/Mummy Moments: Day 2

We didn't get a lot of time to do activities together today since DH's grandparents dropped by for a visit. Before they showed up A spent about 5 minutes drawing in the morning, then he went and got out the Scrabble game. A really enjoys playing with our old Scrabble game, he goes through all the tiles and picks out all the A's and lines them up on the tile holder, then he goes through and finds all the O's. Lord forbid you suggest he find any other letters though, A & O are his favorites and the only ones he's happy to learn lol!

We then baked a cake together, I measured out all the ingredients and let him put them in the bowl. He then half-way stirred the batter before I had to take over. After that he quickly ran off to watch some Lego videos on the computer.

When A's great-grandparents arrived they sat and played with A and his Lego for awhile before he went down for his nap.
I didn't end up doing any activities with him this afternoon either, once A woke from his nap, his great-grandparents took him and Z to the playground while I had a nap. I didn't end up waking till nearly 5pm, so it was too late by then.

I'm actually feeling a little dispirited at this point. After going back through the list of activities I'd hoped to do with A I'm realising that he's not going to be interested in most of them. Either they're too simplified for him, too complex, or they're simply not interesting to him. I've had another look online tonight to find some more things for tomorrow but everything I've found that I think he'd actually enjoy doing either requires me to buy more craft supplies (I already spent $40 two days ago on craft supplies from the dollar store!), or they're too messy/destructive to do at my in-laws house (they're very very precious about the house since it's all brand new. Most used phrase in this house is probably "Only on the mat!" There's only one place in the whole house where he's allowed to play and its on a carpet. Sigh.).
I have a couple more things for tomorrow, I'm really really hoping that tomorrow goes well because I already feel like throwing in the towel and saying "I'm obviously just a crappy mum, I'm not even gonna bother trying anymore!"

I'm also thinking about enrolling A in one of the kinder gym programs nearby, but unfortunately since we're going overseas for the month of October I probably can't enrol him till the next term starts next year. In the meantime hopefully I can get him into local swimming lessons as something to do with him and help him burn off some energy.

Anyway, Z is currently crying for my attention and it's time to go to bed, so I'm going to bid adieu to Day 2. Fingers crossed for Day 3.

Kiddy Time/Mummy Moments: Day 1

Okay, so today has had its ups and downs and has been a bit challenging. This morning I started off by sitting down with A at the dining table to do some activities I had prepared for him.

I had found this picture on Pinterest and thought it would be an awesome activity for A. He loves being creative and building things, he'll sit for an hour straight playing with Lego and I really thought these would be a fun thing for him to explore. Well, it didn't quite go to plan.
For starters, the sticky backs of the velcro wasn't quite strong enough so often when he'd pull the two sticks apart the velcro would come off the stick as well. He would try to gather a bunch together in his hand but then they'd just all velcro together and he'd have to pull them all apart so he could use them, but then we'd have the same problem with bits of velcro coming off again.

 

Then he started thinking that the velcro coming off was part of the game and started ripping the velcro off and sticking it on the table, on his face and the floor.
I'd decided to allocate only 10 minutes to the craft sticks so that he wouldn't tire of them and they could be something special I bring out once a day when we sit down together. Well it hadn't even being 5 minutes before I quickly moved onto the next activity since we were both starting to get a bit frustrated.

The next activity went a bit better. I had found these coloured dot stickers at the newsagents and decided to do a colour sorting game with A. He had a coloured piece of paper for each colour sticker and I thought I would start off by handing him a sticker at a time and ask him where it goes. I braced myself and prepared to launch into a futile explanation of "See, this sticker's blue so it goes on the blue paper" with a not-quite 3 year old as I handed him the first blue sticker.
"Where does this one go?" I asked.
To my amazement he looked around at the different sheets of coloured paper I had placed in front of him and promptly placed the sticker on the blue paper.
"Dere!" he announced proudly.
To my increasing shock he proceeded to place 3 more stickers on their correct papers. After the first round I gave him the sheet of stickers and told him to go ahead and finish the sheet.
Once I saw how well the game was going I decided to allocate 5 minutes before we'd move onto something else before someone got bored.
The game lasted approximately 1 minute, 4 more rounds, before A handed me back the sheet of stickers and announced he was going to watch TV. Sigh.

After that I thought I would give him something to do which was a bit less educational and restricted. I'd found this idea on Pinterest too. I gave A a couple of colanders and a bunch of pipe cleaners and showed him how to thread the pipe cleaners through the holes and how to bend the pipe cleaners to make different shapes. I left him to play with them while I went to the bathroom.
I came back to find that he'd taken all of the pipe cleaners out of the colanders and stacked them all back up neatly, ready to be put away.
I was nearly ready to give up at this point and it had only been about 10 minutes. So I thought I would do something that he was bound to be interested in and brought out a small box of Lego. He was quite content to sit there creating for about 10 minutes before I gave him lunch and sat him in front of the TV :(

 

 

This afternoon went much better. A has his nap from roughly 11:30-1:30, he woke up today at about 2, and we straight away got ready to go to the playground just up the road.

I decided to walk around the long way to get there, and halfway there we realised our naughty dog, Ditzy, had decided to escape the yard and join us. We live in a very dog-friendly neighbourhood so we decided not to return her to the house and continued on. It actually turned out really well because when we got to the playground we made multiple games out of chasing Ditzy and having her chase us.

A was able to burn off plenty of energy, we played lots and lots of chasing games with him chasing Ditzy, him chasing me, me chasing him, me holding Z pretending to chase him, lol. He also went up and down the slide plenty of times.

I've decided the design of our local playground totally sucks. It's raised (as most of them are to accommodate the slide), but the way to get up on it is via a very steep (going straight up) ladder which younger kids can't go up on their own, so rather than letting your toddler run around and play by themselves on the playground equipment while you watch you need to be there assisting them every step of the way. I don't mind helping out a bit, but after 15 minutes straight of playing chasies (yes, I'm very very unfit!) I was absolutely exhausted and just wanted to sit and watch as A burnt off more steam. I had to come up with some other games for him to play so I could sit for a few moments and have a rest.

We left after about 45 minutes and walked back home, this time we went the extra extra long way, walking the entire way around our suburb to get home. Then, just as we were going through the gate at home A suddenly realised we'd left the water bottle at the playground! I contemplated just ignoring it and going back the next day to get it but since you can actually see the playground from our gate I finally sighed and decided to get it. We took the direct, 2 minute walk back to the playground lol.

 

By the time we got home and I made A an afternoon snack and a cup of tea for myself it was already 5pm! So we had a more chillaxed evening just watching Lego videos on YouTube before having dinner and starting the bedtime routine.

Well I must say that despite the rough start to the day I feel like I was really productive today. I really enjoyed our time at the playground, I'm definitely going to try and do that at least 3 times a week.
I knew, going into this, that it may take awhile to get into the more structured activities with him, especially since he isn't used to them at all, and I'm going to have to play around with a few things to work out what works and what doesn't. Hopefully by the time Z is ready for these activities I've got a better routine in place!

Kiddy Time/Mummy Moments Challenge

We're currently living with my in-laws, now let me just give a quick run down of how that's turning out: My MIL is the stereotypical perfect housewife and mother. Her house is always completely spotless (no worries about dropping in unexpected here!), she's a fantastic cook and is currently thinking of doing pastry-making courses once she finishes the chefs course she's currently doing, everything in her home has a place and there's decorative pieces everywhere, she sews and quilts, she's an award winning gardener and - get this - she actually enjoys playing with kids! And she's fantastic at it! It's a little like living with Martha Stewart, which as you can probably tell makes me feel like an even crappier mother. Luckily she isn't quick to judge and embraces me as a member of the family despite my - many - flaws.
Now I'm never ever going to be like my MIL. She cleans and sews and bakes and spends time with the kids because she genuinely enjoys doing these things. I usually have gritted teeth while forcing myself to play with my nearly 3 year old son, and surreptitiously check my watch every 5 minutes ("Have I forced myself to spend enough time with him yet??"), my idea of cleaning is bringing the laundry inside and leaving it in a central place where everyone can get their clothes over the next few days until there's only one pair of socks left to put away (central closeting system? ...Without the folding and hanging and general organised-ness??). But being here and seeing what A is missing out on from me is motivating me to change our relationship around to a more positive one.

Hence Kiddy Times/Mummy Moments.
I am determined that for every day over the next week I will do at least two activities every day with A - even if it's only two ten minute activities, it's a starting point.
I will take the kids to the park which is located only one block away at least 3 times a week.
If I find myself going to the shopping centre with the kids I will stop at the kids play area and let A run around for at least 15 minutes while I have a cuppa. It's a great break in the middle of dragging the kids around to all the shops, let's him burn off a bit of energy (which he has plenty of!) and distracts him from the toys I had refused to buy because he has far too many as it is!
I will bake something with A at least 3 times a week.
I will encourage him to be a bit more active in the afternoons, playing games that will help tire him out so that bedtimes go smoother.

I'll let you know how it goes :) Checkout some of my ideas and plans on my Pinterest board, Kiddy Time/Mummy Moments.

Hiatus officially over!

Well I'm finally back after a brief hiatus. In the past...4 months??...since my last post a LOT has happened! For starters we made our interstate move, moving into my in-laws house where we'll be living until the garage conversion is ready for us to move into. My husbands started a new job, started and finished a couple of courses at the local TAFE, we're getting ever-closer to a big overseas vacation we have planned to visit my family in the states, and - probably the biggest change of all! - we've welcomed the newest addition to our family: Z.

Zavien, born 22nd May.

Oh, and I got my drivers license! For those of you not in the know (which none of you are, since no-one reading this actually knows me IRL!! lol) I've had my learner drivers license for the past 8 years. I drive quite often with my husband in the car and I'm a confident driver but never bothered going for the test (don't ask me why! I thought I had a fairly reasonable explanation but came to the realisation that it was total bull!). Well I recently discovered I only had 2 weeks till my license expired and thought it was probably high time that I attempted the test! And I passed first go, woohoo!

So anyway, now that I've found where my blog was actually based (totally forgot where the hell I'd signed up for the blog - oops), I'm ready to pick back up the reins. For those of you looking forward to reading about our garage conversion I'm going to have to disappoint you here and let you know that I've made the decision not to base this blog solely on the conversion anymore since I have so many other things that I'd like to start tracking my progress on:

• My anti-procrastination challenge. I am a self-proclaimed, no holds barred procrastinator. Why do something I don't want to when I can simply put it off and do it tomorrow? (or the next day, or the next, or more likely, never!). It's an aspect of my personality that I really dislike and I'm determined to change. So from now on I'm determined to work hard at becoming a good mother and a good wife, and fulfill some of my goals.
• Mummy moments. As I mentioned above, I'm working very hard on being a better mother. A is turning 3 next month and over the past year has increasingly become more and more of a handful. I think this is largely out of boredom since A is an extremely active child and I have absolutely no idea what to do with him. I'm good with babies, I know how to interact with them and love playing with them, but I am a completely sucky mother for toddlers and pre-schoolers. I have no freaking idea what to do to engage him or keep him entertained and occupied. Over the past year I've pretty much just left the TV going all day and let his grandparents watch him for me! Slack, I know, which just proves my point about being a sucky mother. So I've been researching toddler and pre-schooler activities the past few days and am determined to tackle this mothering thing head on.

Anyway, thats enough of my blathering on about what I'm going to do and why I'm doing it, keep checking back to watch my progress and see what I achieve.