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DIY Camp Trunk Organizer – An Epic Camp Trunk

June 15, 2016 by Ashley Hackshaw

I am so excited about this DIY summer camp trunk organizer. Boo recently went to her first overnight camp and she was a little nervous about it. When I told her that I used to take a trunk to camp, and that I made organizers for it, she jumped all over the idea. She started searching the Internet and found all these great products for summer camp trunks but they all were so expensive, so we decided to come up with our own DIY trunk organization from scratch. We spent the last few weeks focusing on her “packing” excitement and it took away almost all of her jitters. When we finished the trunk she had one word for it: epic.

First, I had to find a reasonably priced camp trunk to start with. I ended up buying a blue Mercury Seward 30″ Trunk because it was made in the USA, reasonably priced, and has wheels on it for rolling.(You can purchase it in other colors here as well.) I am really happy with the quality of the trunk…it’s just like the one I used to have when I was Boo’s age:

We’d been collecting outdoor stickers and Life Outside stickers for a while and as soon as the camp trunk arrived she quickly got to work decorating her trunk. A few of you even sent some awesome stickers in the mail! Thank you! She is so excited to keep adding stickers as she goes…she even bought a camp sticker the first day to add to her trunk:

The inside of the trunk was a blank slate:

The first thing we did was make the lid a bulletin board/organizer. We took a piece of Elmer’s Cork Foam Board and used a utility knife to cut it to the same dimensions as the inside of the trunk lid:

I used E 6000 Adhesive Glue to keep it permanently in place. While it dried I place a few large books on top of the bulletin board just to make sure it didn’t warp:

To add lid organization I purchased a few different kinds of inexpensive pencil cases:

I only ended up using two of them because Boo wanted to use more of her bulletin board. We glued the pencil cases directly to the bulletin board as shown below:

Next we made dividers for the trunk using two sheets of craft plywood measuring 1/8″ x 12″ x 24″ and four strips of Balsa Wood 1/4″ x 1/2″ x 24″. This wood can be found at Michaels in the model airplane/craft wood section:

We cut the plywood into two pieces that fit the width and height of the open trunk. You don’t need any fancy saws to cut just a sharp utility knife. You may have to cut quite a few times though to get through each layer:

We also cut the basswood strips so that we had eight pieces that would fit the height of the open trunk, just under the lip. The wood was spray painted to coordinate with the trunk:

Once the wood was dry I used E 6000 to glue the strips carefully into place:

Here’s how they were glued, two on each side of the trunk for each divider to slide down into:

The finished basswood pieces:

Once the basswood pieces were dry I was able to slide the dividers down into them. Voila…removable trunk dividers:

You’ll have to plan out your own dividers as far as placement. We placed ours so that they would fit Ziploc bags at one end, a tote on the other, and a bath caddy in the middle:

I found this great canvas tote for under $5.00 at Michaels Craft Stores…it’s used for carrying paint brushes and other art tools but it’s the perfect tote for odds and ends in the trunk:

Everything packed and ready to go!

We packed each camp outfit in a plastic bag to keep them from getting that funky camp smell. Each ziploc bag holds a tank top, shorts, underwear, and socks:

This side of the lid holds pre-stamped postcards and notecards:

The other side holds odds and ends:

I printed off a few favorite photos for her to pin to the top of the lid. I covered them with layered packing tape before cutting them out to keep the ink from bleeding if they happened to get damp or wet:

The bath caddy I got from the Dollar Store and she can leave it out until the end of camp:

Everything else (sheets, towels, pillows) were packing into her huge (clean) laundry bag. I used puffy paint to put her name on it in huge letters. All the dirty laundry will come back in the same bag!

I read an article a few years ago that some parents stress out over camp so much that they pay people huge sums to pack their kids’ camp trunks. It doesn’t have to be hard or expensive. We had so much fun working on this project together. She directed the entire project and I just gave pitched in ideas on how to construct it all. Hope your kiddos have fun at camp this year!

Dropping the Facade – Mom Struggling Well

June 13, 2016 by Ashley Hackshaw

I first met Emily Thomas of Mom Struggling Well when I was speaking at Hope Spoken earlier this year. We hit it off immediately and I started listening to her weekly podcast Mom Struggling Well. I love her tag line:

Road-weary mommas in need of a pep talk.

Yes. I could use a few pep talks every once in a while! A few weeks ago we hopped on the phone to chat for a podcast…which I was really nervous about because it’s the first podcast I’ve followed through with. I just always have anxiety about video or audio, definitely out of my comfort zone, but it was so much easier than I thought it would be. Emily has a great sense of humor and she made it really fun…she also kept me on track which is an amazing feat. Anyway, I’d love for you to listen to our conversation! The podcast is called Dropping the Pinterest Facade and you can find it here or just click the photo below:

My story has taken so many twists and turns over the last few years. A few of the things we talk about in the podcast (besides chickens ha) are:

-when cancer comes as a relief
-that changing direction is not failure but growth
-what to do when “the American dream” is not actually YOUR dream

I’d love to know what you think!

The Biltmore: The Largest House in America

June 10, 2016 by Ashley Hackshaw

The largest house in America, the Biltmore, is only an hour from Bryson City. We are fortunate to be able to visit this wonderful place often. This is the winter garden, one of the first things you see when you enter the house. There’s a secret door in the floor…and it’s the only reason I wish I was born a Vanderbilt…so that I could venture down into all the hidden places:

The Biltmore one of my favorite places in the whole world. Sienna’s too. She could be a tour guide. She has listened to the kid’s audio tour so many times I’ve lost count. She also visits with my mother a lot and my mother is a walking Biltmore history textbook. I’m just an apprentice, but I have read all the books, including Lady on the Hill which you have to read because details the life of George Vanderbilt’s wife Edith and their daughter Cornelia after his death, and what they had to go through to keep the Biltmore in the family.

“Lady on the Hill tells the inspiring story of the thirty-five-year effort to restore this fading beauty to her former glory – all without a penny of government funding or outside foundation grants.

In the late 1950’s, attorneys, financial managers, and tax accountants were united in advising Cecil [George Vanderbilt’s grandson) and his brother, George, to sell off the estate’s 12,000 acres in order to create a suburban subdivision. Cecil quietly ignored this advice and came up with a better idea: over the next four decades he would turn this down-at-the-heel mansion that was a drain on the family business in the most successful, privately preserved historic site in the United States, perhaps even the world.”

Whenever we visit we usually walk from the parking lot but yesterday we got there later than usual and took the shuttle. When we turned the corner from the meandering drive up to the house there was a gasp of awe from every passenger in the bus:

Funny that I noticed this chicken for the first time, on the ceiling in George Vanderbilt’s library:

George Vanderbilt once owned all the land to that second ridge of mountains. That means he owned at least one whole ridge of mountains!

The Biltmore Conservatory could be an entire visit in itself. Greenhouse goals:

It’s full of plants I never even knew existed…and they don’t label them because then it wouldn’t be a historical garden…so I’m always tracking down the gardeners and asking a hundred questions. They are all more than happy to help me in my quest for random knowledge. I didn’t get a chance to ask anyone about this amazing flower…but maybe one of you knows all about it:

This fiddlehead was about as big as my head! It’s from an Australian Tree Fern. It looks like it could be a prop from Jurassic Park:

Sienna and Brett above the waterfall at Bass Pond:

I found a raccoon print at the bottom of the falls:

Oh and we found real chickens at the farmyard! All born around May 10:

These photos were taken a while back while visiting in the fall season:

I love how they always keep things new, it’s great if you have annual passes like we do. Right now they have created an exhibition throughout the house of award-winning fashion from iconic films such as Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice. Here’s are two dresses from The Duchess (2008), worn by Keira Knightley and Hayley Atwell, which won an Academy Award for Best Costume Design:

I’ve visited the Biltmore so many times that I kind of think I’m part of the Vanderbilt family. And one day I’ll walk into the house and they’ll say: today is the day you can go through the door in the floor. Maybe I could convince them to make me an ambassador one day and I could stand there all day to invite people to peek down into door in the floor. I’d call it: Door in the Floor Day.