Extra Large Gift Box with Lid (finished size about 27"x19"x8")

Extra Large Gift Box with Lid

How to make your own extra large gift box with lid for that really big present that you want to WOW your recipient with. It takes 1 to 2 hours to make. Here are my sketchy notes:

Items you will need to complete this proect.

Buy 4 poster size sheets of foam core board.  Set one aside without changing it's size.

Cut 1/2" off two sides to create box bottom.

Create short sides of both lid and box bottom from one sheet of foam core.

Create long sides of both lid and box bottom from last sheet of foam core

Build walls of lid on top of lid piece (Upside down)
Connect everything with duct tape at all corners and edges.
Wrap finished lid with heavy duty wrapping paper of your choice,
glue all folds with Mod Podge or equal. Build the box the same way
so that the walls are sitting on top of the floor of the box, not beside it.

Finished box.  Lids fits snugly over box. Tie with wide satin ribbon.

Corner detail.  Fold paper over before finishing wrap for nice edge.
I didn't bother covering the bottom of the box, just the outer and inner walls.

Extra Large Gift Box with Lid.  Ta-Da!

Peek inside to see big gift all wrapped up pretty in layers of tissue.

Repurposing kitchen cabinetry to a shoe cabinet

Kitchen before wall came down, opening the space to the living room

Cabinetry that was in kitchen, now in bedroom.  A new place to store shoes!

Shoe cabinet made from upper kitchen cabinets, with feet added and new handles.  Stained dark walnut/espresso.

The Kitchen Junk Drawer/Phone corner

It seems that in every home we have ever lived in there has been one drawer dedicated to general "stuff" that starts out with good intentions and organization but ends up a mess over time.  We have been working on remodeling our home since May so it is a good time to re-think how we use space.

We used to have a large top drawer dedicated to spices on one side of the kitchen but the stove was on the other.  We moved the "spice drawer" over to the stove side, trading with the knives which we moved over to the cutting board side. We still really needed more room for spices.  The drawer next to the new spice drawer, (okay I actually used two small drawers for all the spices that were previously in a large drawer) was the kitchen junk drawer.  A couple of weeks ago I decided to eliminate the kitchen junk drawer to use for our new Indian spices, and other spices.
So now what to do with things like pens and pencils and tape and glue…etc.  This morning I had the great idea to covert the cupboard over the phone (which I hadn't organized yet anyway) to the cookbook and mini-offie/phone desk/junk drawer space.

The Before: unorganized kitchen cupboard—a result of remodeling and then hurrying to get ready for a Christmas party.

The After—I took what used to be in drawer compartments and put the contents into vertical mini-drawers, an organizer from the hardware section of Fred Meyer.

Kitchen cabinet over phone area.

Our new spice drawer—especially Indian spices.