DIY Stadium Seat

Do you sit on cold, hard bleachers at your child’s sporting events? Are you tired of a sore backside after every game?? I hate being cold and I hate sitting on freezing cold bleachers. Life as a hockey mom.

Until I remembered the warm cushions my father used to take on hunting trips. Anyone remember this roundish, bean-filled, camouflaged things? I didn’t want camo and I think I threw away those old seats anyway. I decided to make my own version of a hunting seat cushion to bring along to hockey games and practices. 

So, here’s how I did it. As you can see, I’m not much for exact measurements. Also, feel free to adjust the size of the foam to meet your needs and budget. 

Materials:

1 piece upholstery foam 15″x17″X2″ from Joanns (purchased with a coupon, of course!)
2 pieces of fleece in any patter/color about 10 inches wider than the foam (I eyeballed it)

Directions

To make life easier, I purchased 1 yard of fleece and estimated all the measuremts and cutting. With the fabric folded in half and raw edges together, lay the foam on top of the fabric approximately 4-5 inches all the way around. Then cut the folded edge. 

Leaving the foam in place, cut a 4″ by 4″ section out of each corner. 

Now, cut 1″ wide strips all the way around, stopping 1/2″ away from the foam. 
Make a sandwich out of the foam and fabric with once piece of fabric on the bottom, foam in the middle and second price of fabric on top, making sure the right sides are facing out. 
Finally, double knot the corresponding top and bottom strips all around. 

Voila!! A comfy, cozy stadium seat to keep your bottom warm and happy! 

If the fabric on your stadium seat gets dirty, it’s easy to untie and throw in the washer. 

The entire project cost about $10 and took about 30 minutes, including tying. 

**note that fleece is not the best material to use if you anticipate using your stadium seat in wet or snowy weather. For me, it works excellent for the multitude of indoor hockey games and practices each week. And it will be great for softball season as well.

Let me know how yours turned out!!

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Gratitude 

Sometimes after a vacation, it can be difficult to adjust back to every day life. Today I am not feeling super well and I think it’s the adjustment from bright sunny Florida weather to cold, snowy New York.

I didn’t sleep well last night, had a near migraine yesterday and stomach pains and anxiety over an upcoming presentation at work this morning. Still, I know things could be a lot worse. Regardless of what I’m going through, there’s always a ton of things to be thankful for and to look forward to.

Today I am thankful for:

1. My sweet, beautiful daughter. 

2. Wonderful memories from our family vacation in Disney World. 

3. Great colleagues to push me to be A better person, help me grow, and provide constructive criticism. 

I am looking forward to:

Today: a good nights sleep!! 

This week: my big presentation being over (I really hate public speaking.); full moon adventures this weekend. 

In the near future: Spring! 

I hope you all have a blessed day and weekend!!

Earn Money While Driving?!

This post contains affiliate links where I may earn a commission

Do you commute to work? Drive the kids around to a zillion different activities every week? Do you want to warn a few extra dollars without any work?

If you raised your hand to any of these questions, then you need to try MileUp! MileUp logs the number of miles you drive using the location services and Activity Tracker information in your phone. For every mile you drive, you earn 2 points. Once you’ve earned 2,000 points (or roughly 1,000 miles), you can redeem the points for $5 gift cards to retailers such as Amazon, GameStop, Dominos pizza, and iTunes. A few select retailers require 4,000 points for a $5 gift card, including Regal Cinemas. MileUp offers weekly challenges to help you reach the cash-in threshold quicker.

I love MileUp! It’s easy to use and does all the work for you. You just set it up and let it count away. I particularly like that it converts the points to dollars for you so you always know how close (or far!) you are from earning your next gift card. No calculating or guessing, all the math is done for you. 
With just my daily commute, errands and running to hockey practices, I’ve earned $20 in Amazon gift cards in six weeks. I love getting a little reward for doing something I’m doing anyway. And this is nice bits of ‘found money’ here and there that you can save up and treat yourself to something you might otherwise feel guilty about! I’ve used my rewards to purchase a hat, a decal for my car and I’m eyeballing some crafting supplies and movie tickets next.  

The only negative to the app that I have found is it somewhat frequently requires you to input your phone number and enter a code. Although slightly annoying, it only takes a few seconds. (This seems to be less frequent than when I originally signed up.)

Use this link to sign up now and start earning money just for driving! I hope you enjoy MileUp as much as I do! 

Real Life Wednesday 

As much as I try to keep my car clean, most of the time it looks like the photo above. This is an actual photo of the floor of the front of my car. 

We brought some pretzels and Cheez Its to sewing class last weekend and they are still there. One morning on the way to work this week, I was starving, reached for the box of Cheez It’s (not realizing it was open) and Bam! Cheez It disaster everywhere. 

Then there’s the iced tea bottle from somewhere. And a Girl Scout cookie order form. And some random mail. 

At the current moment, most every inch of the car looks the same. The seats, the floor, the trunk. There’s even two sewing machines clunking around! Why is it so much easier to carry everything to the car but a total pain and nearly impossible to bring these same items back into the house?!? I have no idea…

Keeping a clean car is a huge struggle for me. Again, not sure why but that’s just the way I’m wired, I suppose.