Tag: Learning at Home

More than just a Chalkboard

I get a lot of questions regarding our chalkboard. People are often curious where we purchased it, and I never tire of telling people we made it and letting them know they can easily make one for their homes as well! With the beginning of the school year being here, I thought it would be a good idea to refresh our little tutorial on our DIY chalkboard.

FullSizeRender (5)

When we bought this home, we were in our early days of home education and figuring out if we were really going to go for it or not. Full disclosure, I didn’t know I was going to be a home educating mother until I was one. We decided our dining room made the most sense to be a school room, but it was missing something… A huge chalkboard! 

This 1930’s beauty of a home has a lot of charm, but also plaster and lath walls. And I don’t know if you are familiar with these types of walls, but they aren’t the best to nail into. And when I started to look for chalkboards in antique stores, they weren’t really in our budget. So, Chris has the genius idea to make one that wouldn’t destroy our walls, was in our budget, and has held up wonderfully for a decade!  All we needed was some chalkboard paint and pine 1×2’s! 

FullSizeRender (3)

We got both from our local hardware store for less than $20!!! Chris measured and taped off the wall and rolled on about 3 coats of the chalkboard paint. The prices have gone up a bit since then, but these are the paints we used. Black Chalkboard Paint & Green. We had an idea of how big we wanted it so we knew what length of 1×2’s to get before we purchased them.  Then he just cut the sides to fit. Once the paint dried, he simply nailed the 1×2’s to the wall!  Our chalkboard is roughly 65”tall x 45” long. We’ve had friends stain their wood dark, use pallet wood or larger planks, add chalk holders to the bottom, use green chalkboard paint, paint the entire wall without framing it, make smaller chalkboards, etc.  

This proved to be a simple and affordable project that can easily be altered to fit your space and personal aesthetic. I’ve actually painted her green for several years and then went back to black, and maybe I will go back to green again some day. 

We have used this chalkboard as a centerpiece for our home education lessons, every birthday since we moved into the home in 2015, our home births, special anniversaries, baby announcements, going away and welcome home parties for friends, holidays, and even to celebrate an intimate backyard wedding we hosted for past friends…Processed with VSCO with a6 preset

So many meals, special events, laughter, heartaches, and valuable conversations have been shared with friends in this space. So many lessons and core memories have been celebrated in this space & even our oldest’s first portrait of me and our family was a chalkboard piece!

She nailed my, “I haven’t had any coffee yet” face 😀
Chris’ beard: Nailed it!

I feel like I can’t call this ‘just a chalkboard’  because it has been incorporated into creating so many special memories and holds so many dear moments for us in our home. When I imagine leaving this home, I get most emotional about saying goodbye to this space.

I hope this was helpful and that you’re inspired to create a special chalkboard in your home to be used for all kinds of memory-making moments and events!

Our Go-To Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe

Baking is one of my most favorite things to do with our little ladies. We have spent countless hours baking together and, when I think about this house no longer being our home, the dining area where we enjoyed all the special things we have made together, is the space I think I will miss the most. I have been thinking a lot about the moments that shape us and I want to share a special memory of a mother and moment that made a lasting impact on the life I am living. I, like most humans, had no idea how how formative my junior high and high school years would be, nor the ways our relationships to our experiences and memories would shape who we are as adults. I mean, most of us maybe don’t realize how formative so many things were until we reach these years that I like to call our ‘retrospective years’.

I have this memory from our time in Maine where we were at my friend’s house and her mom was making a massive amount of chocolate chip cookies. She mentioned that she got the recipe from some kind of baker at maybe a large camp cafeteria or maybe church event, that part is cloudy, but the recipe made A LOT of cookies. She told us that she quartered the recipe but it still made dozens of cookies. I remember her laughing and saying, “but they will definitely get eaten”, and there was just this lightness to her. Her wearing a lovely dress, barefoot and baking all these delicious chocolate chip cookies in the middle of the day in between home educating her children… I mean, not really in between though, because baking and being together in the kitchen is actually one of the best parts of what makes home education so special, ya know.

Anyways, that moment made such a strong impression on my heart and helped shape the kind of mom I am and strive to be and the life I want to create for our daughters. I recently got to hug these special friends and this beautiful mother that made this impact on me hugged me and she told me how proud she was of the life I chose and am living. I was too emotional in that moment, but what I wish I would have told her was how big of a role she actually played in all of it. What a gift it is that she modeled love so well and that, even though our time living close to one another was brief, she gave me a kind of permission to live what we are living now.. Next time I see her, I am certain I will do a better job thanking her how she helped shape my heart. Because baking cookies barefoot in the afternoon with our gaggle of gals is truly one of the best things I have ever known.

With that, here is our go-to chocolate chip cookie recipe we modified from Pinch of Yum.

INGREDIENTS

  • 8 tablespoons of salted butter- soft and melty but not melted all the way
  • 1/2 cup raw sugar
  • 1/4 cup light brown sugar
  • 1 tsp vanilla 
  • 1/4 tsp almond extract- almond takes them up a lot of notches we think
  • 1 egg
  • 1 1/2 cups flour
  • 1/2 tsp baking soda
  • 1/2 tsp salt, maybe a little extra flaked salt on top, ya know
  • 3/4 cup chocolate chips- I can’t explain the science, but our girls think the mini chips are best.

INSTRUCTIONS

  • Preheat oven to 350f
  • Cream together the sugars, butter, and extracts.
  • Add the egg and dry ingredients and mix as little as possible until all ingredients the ingredients form into that perfect dough.
  • Add chocolate chips- snack on some of those to resist eating the bowl of dough before you bake the cookies. Don’t eat all the dough. You can do it. I know you can.
  • Roll into 12 balls, 10 if you couldn’t resist the dough or your children really needed to make sure you got the dough just right.
  • Bake for 9-11 minutes. These are the kind you don’t want to over bake and want the tops to look just slightly brown, like maybe they’re not all the way cooked, and your husband might say every time you make them, “I don’t think they’re done”, but they actually are done and in about 30 minutes are just so gosh darn good.
  • Enjoy with milk and your favorite humans and favorite music and maybe barefoot in your favorite dress for good measure.

A very big thank you to our talented friend Megan Maree Photo for taking these special photos, to The Honeybea Shop for letting us play dress up with this lovely dress, and to the special mothers who have shaped my heart.

More than just a Chalkboard

I get a lot of questions regarding our chalkboard. People are often curious where we purchased it, and I never tire of telling people we made it and letting them know they can easily make one for their homes as well! With the beginning of the school year being here, I thought it would be a good idea to refresh our little tutorial on our DIY chalkboard.

FullSizeRender (5)

When we bought this home, we were in our early days of home education and figuring out if we were really going to go for it or not. Full disclosure, I didn’t know I was going to be a home educating mother until I was one. We decided our dining room made the most sense to be a school room, but it was missing something… A huge chalkboard! 

This 1930’s beauty of a home has a lot of charm, but also plaster and lath walls. And I don’t know if you are familiar with these types of walls, but they aren’t the best to nail into. And when I started to look for chalkboards in antique stores, they weren’t really in our budget. So, Chris has the genius idea to make one that wouldn’t destroy our walls, was in our budget, and has held up wonderfully for a decade!  All we needed was some chalkboard paint and pine 1×2’s!  

FullSizeRender (3)

We got both from our local hardware store for less than $20!!! Chris measured and taped off the wall and rolled on about 3 coats of the chalkboard paint. The prices have gone up a bit since then, but these are the paints we used. Black Chalkboard Paint & Green. We had an idea of how big we wanted it so we knew what length of 1×2’s to get before we purchased them.  Then he just cut the sides to fit. Once the paint dried, he simply nailed the 1×2’s to the wall!  We’ve had friends stain their wood dark, use pallet wood or larger planks, use green chalkboard paint, paint the entire wall without framing it, make smaller chalkboards, etc.  

This proved to be a simple and affordable project that can easily be altered to fit your space and personal aesthetic. I’ve actually painted her green for several years and then went back to black, and maybe I will go back to green again some day. 

We have used this chalkboard as a centerpiece for our home education lessons, every birthday since we moved into the home in 2015, our home births, special anniversaries, baby announcements, going away and welcome home parties for friends, holidays, and even to celebrate an intimate backyard wedding we hosted for friends…Processed with VSCO with a6 preset

I feel like I can’t call this ‘just a chalkboard’  because it has been incorporated into creating so many special memories and holds so many dear moments for us in our home. When I imagine leaving this home, I get most emotional about saying goodbye to this space.

So many meals, special events, laughter, and valuable conversations shared with friends, so many teachable moments we shared with our children, things we learned ourselves as parents, even our oldest’s first portrait of me and our family was a chalkboard piece!

She nailed my, “I haven’t had any coffee yet” face 😀
Chris’ beard: Nailed it!

I hope this was helpful and that you’re inspired to create a special chalkboard in your home to be used for all kinds of memory-making moments and events!