Home Rules

Back at the beginning of the year I set 6 craft goals for myself.  The end of February is approaching fast it took me until March to finish this post, I needed to tackle at least one on my list.  I really had done most of the work over the past few weeks, but just needed to pull all the parts together.  I knew when I saw a piece of plywood in the garage that it would be perfect for an update to our Home Rules.  And yes, we do have random pieces of wood in our garage, along with plumbing parts and enough electric wire for several houses.  I love my handyman tinkering husband!  I had him cut the wood down to 16.5” wide.  The board was already 36” long so I had to work with that for the space and that seemed big enough for what I wanted.  Plus free wood is hard to pass up.  The wood didn’t need much else done to it after Chris cut it besides a quick sanding of the edges.  I hate to touch sandpaper and fell in love when I found this fun tool.  Add it to your must list if you have a project that involves sanding by hand.

 

We sat down as a family in early January and came up with our own version of our Home Rules. We used the Home Rules that my mother-in-law gave us 10 years ago(when we bought our house) as a starting place and then changed them to fit who we are as a family now. Plus we added a few more. I love how much Taylor wanted to help with this even if her rules were closer to 10-15 words long. It was hard to explain to her to make them simpler but I loved her enthusiasm.  Lizzie even made sure we included “Love Your Guts”.  Chris’ cousin taught the girls this saying because she never understood why kids would say “hate your guts”.  It seemed so mean and she loved her friends, so she started “Love Your Guts” as a way to show love instead of hurt. 

Then I used the Silhouette Studio to create the vinyl for my board.  I love the ease of using this program.  If only I didn’t have so many fonts to choose from that made it so hard to narrow down.  I wanted to try to use a different font for each rule, but loved a few so I reused them.  Plus by the time I got down to the last few they all started to look the same.  Since I needed the vinyl 16” wide and my machine will only cut to 12” wide I had to break it into three 12”x16” pieces.  Here is what my screen looked like so you can get an idea. 

In case you want to use any of the fonts I have here they are in order from top to bottom: a red bucket, elephants in cherry trees, Digs My Heart, Folio, font moochers, Malihini, Grilled Cheese, Howser, Missed Your Exit, Sproket BT, Mister Sirloin, oh {Photo} Shoot, My Own Topher, cinnamon cake, wish I were taller, Digs My Heart, Clingy, Hiccups, Mr & Mrs Popsicle, and Boring Showers.

Then I stalled a few more weeks on this project trying to pick a color to paint it.  This will hang in an area that is part breakfast table area part living room.  I have lots of red in our house now, but plan on redecorating the kitchen soon and I’m still now sure what colors I will use.  I debated between red, chocolate brown, dark blue, or light brown.  Red won out over all the other colors since Chris reminded me that if we ever get rid of reds then I can make a new one.  Plus we might try to update this every 5 years as the girls grow and are able help us more.

Even though the paint is truly dry after an hour or so, I let it ‘air out’ in the garage for a few days.  The vinyl is already super sticky so I wanted to make sure the board didn’t add to the challenge.  (Too bad the vinyl decided it didn’t want to stick to painted plywood and still made for a challenge!)  I lined my three pieces of lettering up on the board like I wanted.  I wish I would have paid more attention to how much space was between each section better because there is almost too much space between ‘love your guts and laugh + giggle + be silly’.  You probably didn’t notice it until I pointed it out so it’s not a huge deal but I tend to be OCD like that.  Part of me is still considering pulling those two lines off and redoing them.  Like I said before, the vinyl didn’t play nice and I ended up having to do almost each letter one at a time. 

 

But all that work was so worth it because I LOVE how it turned out!  The red looks awesome and is a great pop of color on that wall.  I love seeing it as I come down the stairs and often find myself using these phrases for kid lessons to reinforce what we created as a family. 

So now that you’ve seen our family rules, what would some of yours be?