Little Memos

Does anyone else have little elves that come and steal every spare scrap of paper available for little arts and crafts projects?  My daughter's teacher must seriously think we are crazy because I am always sending in notes on little scraps of handouts that she has sent home.  She is probably wondering why i don't invest in a notepad.  It is not that i don't buy them, it is that when i do, they disappear and I can never find it when i need it or if i do find it there is one giant letter from the alphabet on each page.  There must be something exciting to a 5 year old about having all that paper stuck together to write one little thing on each page and flip back and forth. 

Either way, I do need something in my kitchen to write little memos to myself.  And since I have an ample amount of chalk thanks to the big mama chalkboard in my kitchen, i decided to make a little chalkboard baby, to set on my counter.  I went to JoAnns to see what i could find and as i was in the wood aisle, i saw a few cheap little nick knacks that reminded me of a frame these clever girls at Shanty2Chic came up with.  So I bought some similar stuff, and got to working. 

I ran into a few glitches.  The chalkboard I bought was a poor excuse for a chalkboard, seeing as how chalk didn't actually show up on it, and for a buck and change, you get what you pay for I suppose.  Then to make a simple project worse my chalkboard paint ran out, and it really was such a small space I didn't want to go out and buy a whole quart for it.  So instead I had this great idea to let it sit on my counter unfinished, and get in the way of everything i was cooking, for about a month.  That is, until my daughter broke it because I was too lazy to use a screw to keep the post on the base (even though my husband told me i should, and i said, no this glue holds anything . . . i was wrong, sorry honey).  I used only E6000 to keep in in place which works well for it just sitting there, but apparently does not withstand the force of a 20 month old in an application such as this. So it was fix it or flop it time. . . and I gave it one last go.  I pulled out what I had during nap time and finished her up.  So with black craft paint, some satin spray poly, and a screw in the bottom I now have a usable little memo chalkboard. (I was pretty excited at how well the black paint and satin poly work for a chalk surface. You could make a chalkboard out of a piece of wood with that know-how).  So, finally my big mama chalkboard has a little baby on my kitchen counter, congrats big chalkboard, I hope you baby works better now.  .   . that is, until it too goes missing.

This won't help with notes to the teacher, but it will definitely improve the amount of little scrap notes I have lost in the stack of papers on my counter :)

P.S  I've been featured today on TIP JUNKIE for the Jewelry Board.  Go on over and Check it out!