Honesty on social media

So I had an interesting conversation the other day with a group of moms about what people post to social media. Mainly Facebook and how some people just put the best stuff out there and how others put EVERYTHING!! They put the good, the bad, the ugly and probably some more in between. 

Me personally, I don't like to share every nitty gritty detail about my life on FB. I don't have a huge amount of friends on there, but some of them are more of acquantices then they are real friends. That's just how it goes sometimes on FB though. If you want to be connected you friend the person, but sometimes they just sit there as a friend and you never talk again. Or you friend them and life happens and you don't ever really get to be more then internet friends. Others in my list are people I once hung out with and was great friends with at one time or another until life happened and one of us moved. That's the usual reason my friends list may be bigger then I even feel necessary because I want to stay connected with them even if we hardly talk now. 

It's nice to be able to see how our kids are growing and sort of stay connected with family. I'm just not one to post everything on my FB I only post occasional updates, but usually just lots of pics. The updates I do post aren't usually very personal in detail with the exception of big announcements like new babies or an upcoming move. I'm sure I posted when my oldest broke her arm, but that's something everyone would have seen in a picture eventually. 

To me I don't like to use FB to air my dirty laundry though. There's just something about posting all the downsides and the drama that I don't get! I don't feel as though my life has much drama but even if it did I don't want everyone I know to read about it either. I like to keep some things to myself because it's not like people normally start a conversation with "hey guess what kind of crap happened to me." Usually it's "hey how are you, good, good so what have you been up to." Or something to that affect I'd think. This could all just be me, but I like to keep my private life pretty private and don't tend to complain about my husband to people, now occasionally I'll complain about the kids and their antics but that's a whole other story ;) I seriously had a friend realize one day that I'd never said a bad thing about my husband while she'd be complaining about hers for a few minutes. It's not that he's perfect but I chose to not complain about it. 

I'm sure everyone has their own opinion on this and that's just fine, but this is how I feel about the topic and thought I'd share one honest moms opinion!

New Cutting and Storage Table

I posted a few days ago about "replacing excuses with fresh determination" and one of the things I mentioned doing with determination was a new table for my sewing room. So today I want to show you what I did! 

I had seen this blog post about making a custom table using storage cubbies and MDF and knew that would be a solution to one of my problems. I needed a more stable and larger space for cutting fabrics and since I tend to have OCD when it comes to things being organized so using cubbies is a bonus I wouldn't argue with. 

I wish I had taken a before picture, but I didn't so you will have to use your imagination and picture a small card table propped up on those under bed raiser things. You know the plastic squares that help give more height to a bed, yeah I used those to give height to my card table. The biggest problem with this was the lack of cutting space because my mat was bigger then the card table so I couldn't use the whole thing to cut. And I had no extra space to spread out on if I had bigger pieces of fabric. Oh and it was a little wobbly, so yeah, lots of issues with my cutting space!!!

In came the idea from the post and I had just so happened to switch out my daughters cubbies for a bin organizer so I only needed one more cubby organizer. I had MDF on hand leftover from another project that happened to be close to the right size so I went out and bought another cubby organizer and got to work. 

First I had to rearrange my room to fit my new table, so my house looked like "a training obstacle from American Ninja Warrior" according to my hubby. 

The sewing room looked pretty clean as you can see in the back ground, but the rest of the downstairs surrounding it was a giant mess!!!

In came the fitting my new table into the sewing room. I didn't need a big corner desk like the post had and frankly I didn't have the room in what is supposed to be our formal dining room for that, so I improvised. I wanted to use MDF I had left over and it measured 49 inches by 31 inches, the tops of the cubbies measure 36 inches long so my MDF ended up being a bit shorter. No big deal I'll show you what I did to make it work!

So once I rearranged the two desks I had in the room already and had turned the downstairs into the training course I assembled the new cubby organizer. Then I put it and the other one in their new space and measured from the outer edges of each to make sure that they were spaced for the MDF to go right on top.

MDF in place pushed all the way to wall to start

Then I got hubby to help out and we set the MDF in place and I went underneath to mark where I wanted to place some scrap 1 by 2 to use as sort of rails to keep the MDF in place and not shift off the cubbies. We simply attached these rails with three nails each to the underside of the MDF. (On a side note don't nail things down after the kids go to bed they get a little upset at the loud banging going on!!!)

side view of just MDF in place

I put the 1 by 2 butted against the cubbies on the inside so that the MDF stayed flush with the outside edges, so you won't see the rails when looking at the table unless you crawl underneath. By the way I also had the 1 by 2's on hand from a different project and two that happened to be the same length, I want to say that our rails were about 12 inches long.

underside of the top with rails in place

here's a side view of how the rail is butted against the cubbies

one more view of my 1 by 2 in place

After we did that I put the MDF back in place and used it for a day only to realize that leaving about 5 inches of space and not putting something to stop the MDF from sliding back into the wall while cutting was not a good idea. So I went to Lowes and got a 1 by 4 cut to 49 inches and have placed that in the back along the back side of the MDF. I'm planning to paint the whole top white, so right now there is still a little shifting, but after I paint it all I'm going to nail the 1 by 4 into the cubbies. That way the 1 by 4 will be secure and keep the MDF from moving into the wall. I also think that because I'm only nailing the 1 by 4 when we move again taking that off will be a lot easier then if I glued things down like they did in the tutorial I got the inspiration from.

My 1 by 4 in place at the back of the MDF

If you don't think you will be ever needing to move the table you could put liquid nails all over the top of the cubbies and secure the top that way. I have to plan for more moving in my future though and don't want to lose my awesome new table, so we will only nail in the 1 by 4 to prevent slipping back and the rails underneath keep it in place also.

All in all I'm super happy with my project. If you don't already have your wood on hand I would definitely recommend getting the MDF made to the size of the top of the cubbies and the length you need it. I just wanted to work with what I had though to save money. Especially since hubby thought I was crazy when I said that I really was planning to do this. I love my new table though and haven't had a chance to paint because I had a sewing request come in that I need to use the table for now. As soon as I'm done with the project though I will paint the top and extra piece of wood and can update the post with a pic.

Here's my awesome new cutting table! (minus the white paint still needed)

Let me know if you make a table too, I'd love to see it and know that I'm not the only one who was in desperate need of a new cutting surface!!!

My pretty white table completed!!!

Replace your excuses with fresh determination

I've driven past the same sign at the same church for months now. I seriously think they wrote the phrase on there after Christmas and never took it down. I'll have to take a picture as I drive by, but it's gone from wow that's motivational to man I should really freaking wake up and listen to it!!!

 

"Replace your excuses with fresh determination." 

 

Read it and then read it like 60 more times!!! It really starts to stick after you read it a few times and then BAM it hits you. It's like a big "hello" greeting you saying to stop making excuses and start doing stuff!!!

 

So I write this in hopes that it does the same for someone else! 

 

What am I being motivated to do, well, a lot actually. I'm considering becoming a realtor, working on a big sewing project for my husbands cousin, trying to blog more then once a month, start some quilts, and the list could go on. One thing I have been wanting to do since I saw this blog post is to make myself a cutting table for my sewing area. So after redoing my youngest daughters toy storage I had an extra cube organizer and I got started cleaning and deciding a new layout. My downstairs is now an obstacle course, but I have the starts of a new table and just have to find where everything will go. I'll do a post about my redo very soon. 

 

Motivation may not always be there when you have kids taking over your life, but remember you need to take care of you too! So please "replace your excuses wth fresh determination" and you will succeed!