Dresser Drawers turned Under-bed Storage

When I first started this blog....I meant for it to be a place for my sister and I to 'dish' about our favorite things, projects, recipes and other miscellaneous things :) ....somewhere along the way it turned into mostly a food blog, so I started a separate blog for projects.  Now I have decided to combine the two and share some of my projects from the other blog here.

This is a project that I shared on the other blog in September of 2009 and is still one of my favorite projects :)......ENJOY :)

We have been in need of a dresser for awhile now! We had an old one that was falling apart. Part of the drawers wouldn't come out and part would not go in. Since we can't afford a new dresser now and I haven't been having much luck finding one at a yard sale....I decided to re-purpose the one that we had. I pulled out the four drawers and went to work on two of them(I am going to do something a little different with the other two for another room).

Before

I started out by going to a local hardware store and purchasing some inexpensive trim and some new knobs. I already had one knob and needed to find three more to match. I used my husband's miter-saw(my first time) and cut 45 degree angles on the trim so that I could form a 'box' around the knobs. I'll tell ya....the miter-saw really scared me at first, but once I got started...it was not too bad! To measure the pieces, I cut my first long side and first short side and then just put those up to the molding and drew a pencil line to measure the next pieces.

Next, I just used some wood glue and glued the molding into place. I'm NOT much of a perfectionist, so don't look too close! If my husband was doing this project, he would have the trim cut PERFECT and glued Perfectly centered on the drawer.

Drawer with molding glued

 

Then...I sprayed the drawers with some primer and went to town painting them. Lastly....I added the knobs. I thought about adding casters, but it would have cost me about $4-6 more per drawer...so for now they are caster-less. They seem to slide in and out pretty easily though. I will add felt pads to the bottom, if they are ever used on the wood floor. Like I said..I'm NOT a perfectionist...at all!!....BUT I LOVE the end result! So much better than the blue drawers in the dresser and now we have more floor space.

Finished drawers under bunk beds.

 

Update:  Here is a picture of one of the other two drawers....I ended up adding trim and use them for storage in another room.

 

Sorry about the picture quality...This drawer is in my bedroom and I love it!!  I use it to store all of my charging cords....books and magazines that I am reading and other misc...stuff :)

 

Biscuits

Mmmm....homemade biscuits!!  Love ♥♥♥  These biscuits are seriously THE BEST!!  My family devoured them.  This is a recipe from Paula Deen.  I found the recipe here.  I love most Paula Deen and this one may be my favorite!

 

Mostly because.....I love anything and everything that is cooked in a skillet :)  Is it just me...or doesn't everything look better in a skillet?

Biscuits

Ingredients:

2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
8 tablespoons butter, cubed
3/4 cup milk, (more or less if needed)

Directions: 
Preheat oven to 425°F.  In a large bowl combine flour, sugar, baking powder and salt, I like to whisk my dry ingredients together. Cut butter into mixture.  Slowly add and mix in milk.  Knead dough with your fingers and add more milk if necessary. Roll out dough onto a lightly floured surface and roll out to desired thickness. Cut with small biscuit cutter, I use a drinking glass to cut my biscuits....since I don't have a biscuit cutter.  Butter bottom of skillet and place biscuits in pan. Bake for 12 minutes or until golden brown.

Havasupai - Day 3

Ryan and I got the hammocks last night and the boys got the ground :)  I slept SO great in the hammock!! .....even though we saw a mouse running around in the tree above us right before we laid down to go to sleep.  I just covered myself with my sheet and pretended it wasn't even there. 

While we were in  Havasupai it was very warm at night.  I am thankful to our friends who suggested taking sheets to sleep with instead of sleeping bags.  The last night Ryan didn't even use his sheet it was so warm.  That saved us some weight in our backpacks for more important things like more peach cobbler ingredients :)

We set our alarm for 2 am AGAIN...!!  By the time we got our bedding and a few other odds and ends packed up...and stopped for a drink at the spring, we ended up leaving the campgrounds at ~3:30am. 

Hunter set us a goal to make it to the trailhead by 8:30 am.  We thought that was a pretty achievable goal...we only needed to hike 2 miles per hour....SO we set out.

We hiked the two miles into the village and stopped at the last point to get water.  We refilled a couple of water bottles(our water bladders in our packs were still full) and Ryan filled an extra bladder to add to his pack in case we needed it.  Then we set out again.....still in the dark.

The hike out was great!!   

Jake and Hunter taking a break on the trail.

On the trail with a mouthful of granola bar and my 'rapper' hand going on.

 

One day at camp Ryan asked Jake to take a picture of the two of us.  Jake kept taking picture after picture for awhile(seriously probably 15-20 pictures).  SO after awhile I told him to stop and put the camera down.  I was moving my hand as I was telling him this and he was still taking pictures.  When we were looking the pictures later he kept going back and forth between two and told me I looked like a rapper with my hand movements.  So when Ryan was taking a picture of me on the trail, he told me to show him my rapper hands....haha.

 

AND....my SPF 70 sunscreen worked so well....I might be even more pale after this trip than before!!  Also, once I changed into my swimsuit and running clothes when we got to camp....I pretty much didn't change again until we to back to the trailhead. 

Me and Ryan.  I brushed my hair on Saturday and not again until we got home Tuesday afternoon....can you tell?  I don't think Ryan brushed his hair the entire trip either.

 

AND.....we made it!!  Check out all of those bags we packed out!!  haha...just kidding.  Those are peoples packs waiting to be packed down by the mules.

 

We ended up making it out just before 7:30am....so we crushed our goal of 8:30 by an hour!!  Since we started hiking out so early in the morning, we were in the shade the entire time.  We also had a nice little breeze most of the time.  I wish I would have taken a picture of the switchbacks on the way up.  They looked quite intimidating, but they were not bad at all!! 

 

I had so many favorite things about this trip!!  Everything was SO beautiful, but my favorite thing was who I got to share the experience with.  Also....probably my favorite thing was just listening to our boys talking and enjoying each others company!!  They talked to each other and to us SO much.  In fact the last night, while they were sleeping on the ground they were talking, making up stories and laughing so much....Ryan finally had to tell them to be quiet and go to sleep.  During the hike in and out they talked, laughed, made up songs....it really was SO great!!

 

The boys did SO great on the hike they both carried in their own packs...packed full!!  In fact, Jake wanted more weight(for some additional strength training :)), so he carried my pack on the front of him of a couple miles on the hike in.  Ryan's pack was pretty heavy on the way out with all of the extra water he packed out(at least 1 gallon, maybe 2) just in case we would need it.  We didn't end up needing the extra water....thanks to the shade and the breeze.  At least he only had to carry the extra weight 8 miles and not 10, since we waited until we got to the village to fill up the extra water.

 

This was an AMAZING trip and I can't wait to do it again and bring our other boys with us.

 

Click to read....Day One and Day Two

 

A little gear info.  My husband has the BEST backpacking gear!!  He loves to backpack and buys good gear....so that he can enjoy it even more :) 

 

**These are the hammocks we bought and loved!!  They had others that were cheaper, but heavier.  When you are packing all of your supplies in, every ounce counts :)  We LOVE REI.  They are expensive, but we have found everything that we buy there to be great quality and their customer service is AWESOME!!  They don't pay me to say that.  REI has no idea who I am, even though we spend too much money there every year :)    When we got to our campsite at Havasupai, we found a tiny hole in one of the hammocks that we bought.  We used it for the two nights we were there because we needed to.  We stopped at REI in Flagstaff on our way home to see if we could exchange it.  They said of course.  No questions!  We told them that we used it the two nights we were down there and she said that was fine and exchanged it for a new one.

 

Two of our favorite backpacking meals are:  Mountain House Breakfast Skillet with tortillas and Mountain House Biscuits and Gravy



German Pancakes cooked in muffin pans

I really like German pancakes, but my favorite parts are always the edges.  When I saw this idea at Latter Day Mommy, I knew this is how I would make German pancakes from now on.  I love the idea of individual size pancakes...and everyone gets the yummy edge pieces!!  We like to serve ours with fresh strawberries and a sprinkling of powdered sugar.

 

German Pancakes cooked in muffin pans

Ingredients:

6 eggs

1 cup all-purpose flour

1 cup milk

1 Tablespoon granulated sugar

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 cube butter (1/4 cup)

2 muffin pans

 

Directions:  Preheat oven to 375 degrees.  In a bowl, beat together all ingredients except for the butter.  Cube the butter into small pieces and evenly disperse between the 2 muffin pans(24 muffins).  Put the pans in the oven for a couple of minutes while it is preheating to melt the butter.  When butter is melted remove from oven and pour some batter into each compartment of the muffin pans until each muffin compartment has approximately the same amount of batter.  Cook for about 10-15 minutes, or until it is golden brown.  The muffins will rise quite a bit, so make sure that your rack isn't too high or too close to the rack above it.

Havasupai - Day Two

 

So...I told you yesterday(Day One) that friends of ours suggested we get some hammocks to take to Havasupai to sleep in.  We stopped at REI in Flagstaff on the way and got two.  We thought about getting four, but decided to get save money and only get two.  We should have bought four!!  We traded off who got to sleep in the hammocks.  Ryan and I let the boys sleep in them the first night and they slept great.  Ryan and I on the other hand....not so much. 

We slept on the ground.  We had a tarp down, then our sleeping pads, a sheet and a fleece blanket to cover us.  I probably would have slept fine, but after seeing a scorpion, snake, squirrels, lizards, mice and bugs during the day....I was nervous about what might be crawling around me.  The wind blew all night and kept blowing pieces of hair onto my face....which I kept thinking was bugs crawling on my face.  I finally ended up getting some sleep and when I woke up the next morning... I only found one tiny worm that had fallen off the tree above us onto my face that I had smashed. :)

Oh....and the boys slept GREAT in the hammocks!!  In fact Jake just kept on sleeping as we ate a delicious Mountain House breakfast of biscuits and gravy....a new favorite for us(when it comes to freeze dried breakfasts), actually it is second to the Mountain House breakfast skillet(which we accidentally left at home).  So....Jake got a packet of oatmeal when he finally woke up.

After we ate and cleaned up, we decided that we were going to hike to Beaver Falls.  This meant that we had to hike back down to Mooney first.  It wasn't quite as scary going down the second time. 

We got behind a large group heading down to Mooney Falls.....so it took us a LONG time to get down....a lot of waiting.

 Hunter hanging out in one of the caves waiting to move down a little closer to the base of Mooney.

Hunter and Jake....still waiting.

 

We finally made it down and started hiking toward Beaver Falls. 

 

On the map we got from the village, it said that Beaver Falls is a 2 mile hike from Mooney Falls.  While we were on the trail someone told us it is 3 miles.  Online we read 4 miles....it felt like 8 miles, so it probably was only 2 :)  Next time I am going to take my Garmin, so I can see how many miles it really is.  I'm sure it depends on the trail you take...how many extra times you cross the water :)....ect.  

 

I wish I would have taken more pictures of the hike.  There were a lot of times that you go up and down...with few ladders thrown in.  It was quite the adventure!

 

Second attempt at a selfie :)  On the trail to Beaver Falls.

 

Hunter and Jake on the trail. 

Check out the beam of sunlight.

 

It was SO beautiful hiking with the canyon walls on each side.  There were SO many vines!!  We are thinking they might be wild grapes.  We saw some clusters on them that looked like tiny baby grapes....but we don't know for sure.

 

We finally made it to Beaver Falls.  We were hot and couldn't wait to get into the water!! 

 

Ryan adding more air to his tube.

 

I didn't take enough pictures at Beaver Falls.  I took a few and Hunter took a few and then we put the camera away and enjoyed the water.

Ryan cooling off in the falls.

 

Ryan, Jake and Hunter all did a little cliff jumping up at the top pool, but I didn't get any pictures of that.  I don't know how we got pictures without a bunch of other people in them.  There were actually quite a few people at Beaver Falls.

 

After we left Beaver Falls we stopped at some smaller falls that Jake had spotted on the hike in.  We played there for awhile.  It was great, we had it all to ourselves.

 

Jake and Hunter having a moss fight.

 

Jake was our 'guide' on the way back to Mooney and somehow as we were getting close, we found ourselves on some random trail....we got off the main trail somehow.  We ended up at the little waterfall below.

 



Such a cool little spot.

 

I'm actually really glad we got off track somehow...because this little spot was really cool!!  Our 'guide' wanted us to hike up the side of the waterfall and get back to a trail that we saw up there, but we decided to just hike up the creek(Havasu creek is bigger than any creek I've ever seen!) since we could see Mooney from where we were.

 

The hike out seemed a lot shorter than the hike in.  Might have been because we didn't stop at every waterfall we saw thinking..."Is this Beaver Falls?"

 

We played at Mooney Falls for awhile again.

 

Ryan and Hunter at the rope swing.

Hunter doing the rope swing.

The three boys swimming by the falls.

The three boys did some more cliff jumping at Mooney.

 

When we got back to camp we were all pretty tired.  The rest of the day we stayed close to camp.  We played in the creek, played cards, ate, walked to the spring to fill up all of our water, and started getting ready to hike out the next morning.

 

Just hanging out at camp.

 

You can also read about Day 1 and Day 3, linked below.

Day One 

Day Three

Havasupai - Day One

We just got home from an amazing trip to an amazing destination!!  I can't wait to go again!  I took SO many pictures, so I am going to break them down into three posts....one for each day.  Visiting Havasupai is something everyone should have on their bucket list :)

This post will actually start just before day one....the drive there :)  We planned on a 5 hour drive from our house to the trailhead.  We stopped in Flagstaff for fuel on the way....when I say fuel, I mean...Café Rio, Cold Stone, Duncan Donuts(for a quick breakfast before we hit the trail).  We had some friends tell us that we might want to get some hammocks to sleep in at Havasupai, so we also stopped at REI for a few last minute supplies.  While we were there picking up a couple of hammocks, REI was having their 'garage sale'.  They had some awesome sunglasses(normally ~$60) marked down to $2.83 because they were missing the screw that held one of the ear pieces on.  I have a handy husband and knew he could fix that for me, so we grabbed those too.

 

 My first ever attempt at a selfie :)  I know I need to work on my selfie skills...my son said it's all about the angle:) 

 

 

We knew we were close to the trailhead when we saw this....

 

We set-up our camp at the trailhead.  Ryan slept on a cot behind the van and the rest of us just slept inside the van....or we tried to sleep.  It was pretty loud with people coming and going, and we were just SO excited to hit the trail!

 

We talked to someone who was just hiking out and they recommended that we leave the trailhead between 2-2:30 in the morning(to beat the heat).  SO, we set our alarm for 2:00am.  By the time we actually got out of bed and got our stuff ready, we started down the trail around 3:30am.  It was dark, so we were hiking by the light of our headlamps.  Our boys were ahead of us on the trail, I stepped over a dark spot and turned around to see what it was.....this is what I saw....





Both of the boys had walked right over it and didn't see it.  We called them back to check it out.  By the time we got a picture, Jake had made him mad.

 

It was nice to start hiking early because it was cooler, but I was glad when the sun came up so I could see the view.  The following pictures are of the hike in.

 

 

 

 

 Just getting into the village....this guy was laying down, we stopped to get a picture and he hopped up and came over to get his picture taken too.  OR....maybe he just wanted a bite of Jake's nectarine :)

 

I know this picture is blurry too, but I still love it.  This is also just getting into the village.  This dog followed us for close to half a mile.  Hunter started getting nervous that it was going to follow us all the way to the campgrounds.

 



 This is Little Navajo Falls.  It is about 9 miles in from the trailhead, about halfway between the village and the campgrounds.

 

It took us about 4 hours to hike the 10 miles from the trailhead to the campgrounds, that includes the time it took us to stop in the village and check-in, pay our fees, sign all of the necessary paperwork, and get our wristbands.

 

We picked an awesome campsite.  The group that used it before us left their floating toys and we ended up putting them to good use!

While resting in the hammock, Jake zip-tied my shoelaces together.

The view from my hammock :)

Another view of camp.  Jake and Ryan are getting ready to start cooking dinner.

Helping cook dinner can really wear a guy out!

 

Ryan is getting ready to start making us some peach cobbler while a few of us nap in the hammocks...again:)  I love going backpacking with Ryan....he does all the cooking and cleaning :) 

Perfect camp peach cobbler!!

Ryan and I got to eat the second batch.

 

The first falls that we visited (besides hiking past Little Navajo) was Havasu Falls.  It was beautiful and I wish I would have gotten some better pictures of it.  We only went to Havasu Falls the first day.

I was hoping to get back to Havasu Falls a little later in the day so that we could get a picture with the sun shining on it, but it never happened so this is what we got.

 

Jake and Hunter swimming toward the falls.

 

Jake, me and Hunter

 

I think Mooney Falls was my favorite place while in Havasupai!!  Ryan wanted to stay at camp to get a little nap, so I told the boys that we could go check out Mooney.  When we got there and I saw the 'trail' to get to the base of Mooney, I told the boys I was NOT going down and they would have to go back with Ryan sometime.  Well.....they didn't like that answer and finally talked me into 'toughening' up and going down.

 

This is just before you enter the cave(see the arrow) and start the scary(for me) part down.

 

The hike in was worth it!!  I'm glad the boys talked me into doing it!!

 

Rope swing

Jake going on the rope swing.

 

These are the ladders you climb up to get out(and down to get in).  You can see one of the two caves towards the top right of the picture.

 

Jake and Hunter starting the climb out.  I can't believe Jake carried that tube in and out.

 

Jake and Hunter waiting for me to catch up with them during the climb out :)

 

Well....that concludes day one.  Hopefully I can get pictures from day 2 and 3 up soon:)  Day 2 and day 3 are linked below.

 

Day Two

Day Three