Guest Post: Becky from Creative Contentment

Thank you everyone for your feedback on my knock off wall pockets! And welcome to everyone who’s stopping in from Ucreate—glad to have you all here!

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While Mr. Thrive and I are tearing our house apart this week and moving all six kiddos into different rooms, I’m excited to introduce you to Becky from Creative Contentment.

And just to prove how small the world really is, I find it amazing that I found Becky’s blog even though she blogs from the Middle East and I blog from Utah.

Becky has an awesome blog and is total pro at Rockin’ What Ya Got from half way around the world. (She made a play kitchen for her daughters that I’m so copying!) I’m thrilled she’s here today to share a fun project with you while I’m waist deep in carpet shampoo, primer and sawdust. (Pictures coming soon!)

Here’s Becky:

Hello from over here in the far west corner of Turkey.  Yep, I am a Turkey dweller as well as my husband and kiddos. My name is Becky and I am a SAHM who loves to design up, make up, dream up and then create up!! 

It is super fun to be featured here on Thrive. Thank you Nike. I love your approach to life and am honored you are hosting me.

 My husband and I moved to Turkey 6 years ago with our 1 year old–crazy what were we thinking??;). Since then we have had two more cute kids here in Turkey, so 1 + 2 = 3, ages 7, 4 and 2. My husband and I can teach English and we love cultures and seeing the world through the eyes of others. My kids are bilingual (well 2 out of 3) which is so fun and a great gift. The hardest thing is missing family and our kids not seeing their grandparents.

Turkey has great tea, Turkish coffee and very good Mediterranean cuisine .  Living here has put my life in perspective and I am very glad at times for not having everything at my finger tips. It is good to live simply and ‘use what I have’. There are no big, nice, absolutely fun craft or fabric stores over here. So instead of always wishing for something else I started using what I had and that has become my theme for this season: 

“Honor God, live simply, use what you have and give the rest away”.

Well let’s start creating… with what I have on hand.

~Really the first order of business for me is to get a cup of tea.

~I had some left over chalkboard paint that I brought back from the U.S. and I have been wanting to use it up so …

~I grabbed a cardboard box. I have several. 🙂  

~ I drew a stencil from paper for the dolls and car then cut out a dolly and a few other shapes from the cardboard box.

Need to be careful not to step on the box or push your hand down on the box to hard or you end up with big dents in your cardboard buddy.  

~ I painted the chalkboard paint right onto the cardboard. It took 2 coats of paint.  

Each cardboard buddy was dry within about 30 min. total.

~Here my little traveling chalkboard buddies are painted and dry but not quite ready for travel.  They need a little beautifying.

~Covered the opposite side with the contact paper and used the ribbon to create a handle. I used my x-acto knife a lot for this entire project.

~I then used double sided tape to stick the little name card and also the ribbon to the buddies. I cut a slit at the top for the ribbon and turned the tape side of the ribbon into the slit.

And here they are:

~ All you need is a few pieces of chalk and a small package of wet wipes and off you go.

~These are perfectly fun for a road trip.

~ I used a play dough container for the chalk and easy travel.

~My girls also like the idea of playing school with their chalkboard dolls.

We have our buddies hanging on a little hook by our kitchen table. Great for the kids at snack times and waiting for lunch!!

Hope you enjoyed this simple ‘use what you have’ creation.                          

This has been such a great opportunity and a lot of fun.

Thanks again Nike you are great to work with especially with me being a new blogger on the block. 🙂 Happy creating to all of you, and thanks for joining me in my  ‘use what you have’ project.

Come visit me anytime over at Creative Contentment.

All for now, time for a cup of tea.

                                               ~becky

Thanks for an awesome project Becky and be sure to check out Creative Contentment for more of her great ideas!