DIY Picnic Table for Little Ones

If I haven't mentioned it before, I should now.  My husband is amazing.  He is super handy, so he's able to fix most things I break, and build awesome new things for us too (most impressively, our deck). One Saturday morning this spring, E came downstairs and said, "I'm thinking about building a picnic table," then he added, "for the kids." I think at first I probably gave him a funny look, but after thinking about it for a few seconds, I couldn't imagine how we had gone so long without a picnic table.

So the next morning we were off to Menard's to get supplies for a few other projects around the house, and of course we had to pick up supplies for the picnic table too!  Good thing the girls are easily bribed with goldfish, or I'm not sure how these trips would get done.

 A couple weeks later, E woke up on a (finally) nice Saturday morning and got to work.  Luckily Papa was in town, so he was able to help E.  Miss A was on hand to supervise the work.  The building actually went quite quickly.  So quickly that I didn't get any pictures of the building in progress, but below you can see E and Little J testing out the new table.

 For my part of the project, I decided it should be painted a fun color.  I wanted a teal kind of color, but as soon as E mentioned making a picnic table, Miss A was convinced it should be a purple picnic table.  After weeks of negotiations, I won, and we got a teal-ish picnic table (it actually looks bright light blue most of the time... but I'm happy with the color, and happy it's not purple).

Miss A helped me paint the picnic table, and she was actually a great little helper.  I was nervous getting started that she would get paint all over everything, or lose interest after five minutes, but she really stuck with it.  She helped me get the entire first coat on, with surprisingly little paint spilled.

And here's our finished product!  It's already been used for outside lunches and dinners, and a little crafting. I'm sure it will get a lot more use while the girls and I are home this summer.

In total, I think we spent around $50 on materials for the picnic table (wood, bolts, paint).  A friend of mine told me she paid over $200 for a similar picnic table on Craig's List, so I'm feeling pretty good about ours!