all of a sudden he wants to be paid for living here…

what is this, you might be asking yourself. a craft? could it be? why yes, yes it is. thanks for being here for my first craft in what feels like ages.

i haven’t felt too crafty lately but the topic of allowance came up and my brain went into craftland.

allowance.

it’s something we’ve never given gibson. our view is that there are certain things you do in a household and doing them shouldn’t result in getting paid. i don’t get paid to do laundry or clean bathrooms or feed them, why should a person half my size and whose only job is to go to school, get paid for doing much, much less?

but it’s probably time. and i didn’t fight it. i kinda welcomed it. because hopefully this means that he can start buying his own stuff instead of asking me to buy it for him. if he’s earning the money, he might be wiser with it. and there’s nothing wrong with that.

so i started jotting down chores that he MUST do to earn his allowance. and added some things that he could earn extra money for.

of course, pinterest, being my best friend and all, helped me along the way. 

this was the idea that i wanted to create: http://www.etsy.com/listing/83249330/set-of-10-custom-chore-magnets-custom

but wanted to make them myself, of course. so i bought wooden disks from jo-anns and decided to write on them myself. no time or patience for stickers or mod-podge for this project.

other items needed (not pictured here):

magnets, glue gun and scrabble tiles.

writing on the disks with pencil first allowed me to make mistakes without wasting anything. it erases easily.

i tried to write with the extra fine sharpie at first, but it didn’t write very well so i used the normal tip sharpie. it bleeds on the wood so write gently and make sure it’s a new one with a very pointed tip.

at the last minute, i got the idea to use the scrabble tiles i had left over from an old game. marshall helped me find all the letters we needed. 🙂 i used hot glue to adhere them to the cookie sheet.

then i glued the magnets to the back of the chore disks.

i stuck the sticky strips to the back and hung it in the hallway, close to the bathrooma nd his bedroom. basically a constant reminder.

and there you have it. 

anything he can do to earn his allowance + extras are kept up top.

when the item has been completed, he can move it down into the DONE section. if all 4 mandatory/included items are there by saturday at noon, he will earn his allowance for that week. he can get it earlier if he completes them earlier. like on thursday if he plans to hang out with friends after school on friday or something like that.


i think it will work. for him. for me. for good.

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