Handmade gifts - bread boards...

I love making handmade gifts for Christmas when I can. I decided that this year I wanted to make something that I've been lusting over for quite some time, and that is bread boards! I think they are so beautiful! I would love a stack of worn bread boards sitting on my kitchen counter someday. Here are some pictures I looked at to give me some bread board inspiration:

 

 +

 

 +

 





 +

 

There are a ton more on my kitchen pinterest board if you want more bread board eye candy.

I have to say that I have learned that even though I have a father in law with lots of wood working tools and a very willing husband, I really do get in over my head with these wood projects sometimes. This was one of those times! My husband did most of the work. Turns out I get a little scared of using the band saw and it's hard to work in the garage with a newborn that can't be out there. I'm so grateful that my husband was a good sport and did most of the cutting for me and that I was able to do the sanding and the oiling on my own ;).

But here is my first attempt at making my own bread boards...

Not too shabby! We did two different types of handles, and I loved them both!

We spent an afternoon at MacBeath Hardwood looking at all the different pretty wood they have there. I loved the walnut, but that stuff is so expensive! So we went with this pretty Ash wood.

The board on the left is after I rubbed the food grade safe conditioning oil on it. The other boards are the raw wood. I found some butcher block conditioner at Home Depot that I rubbed them down with once they were all sanded and ready. 

It was a fun project! But a lot more work than I anticipated and could really handle on my own ;). They aren't perfect, but made with lots of love.

Pallet flag...

I've been itching to work on another pallet wood project lately. I just love taking a pile of old wood like this...

And turning it into something pretty like this...

Here is my new July decoration! I've decided to make at least one new decoration for each holiday a year. That way it's not over kill but I can build up my holiday décor slowly but surely. It was pretty simple, paint the boards, nail them to a frame,  put some stars on, simple right?

Sheesh... those stars were nearly the end of this project. Lets just take a moment and look at these perfectly circular and evenly spaced stars shall we?

I had the hardest time figuring out how to do the stars like this. That Betsy Ross... she's my new hero for sewing those 13 stars on the first flag. I wanted to do it like the first original flag but almost gave up.

After thinking about it for a few weeks I decided that I really needed to find a projector so that I could just project the image and trace it on. As fate would have it, one Sunday afternoon we were taking a walk and our neighbor up the street had an old projector out on the curb. So I knocked on her door and asked about the projector. She said that they had never been able to get it to work and I was welcome to have it to see if we had better luck. So we took it home and Trent changed all the connections in it, and we ordered a new light bulb. We got it to turn on but it wouldn't focus on anything at all... so I was stumped.

Then one day I came home and found this lovely box sitting on my front steps.

Turns out this same neighbor had a son who had a projector that he was going to take to the DI and they brought it down to me. They said that it worked just fine but there was a mirror inside that had fallen off and needed to be put back in place. We put the mirror back where it belonged and now I have a beautiful, functional projector!!!

Look at this beautiful thing! I love this projector... oh the projects I could do with this thing. I love that it folds up nice and small to be put away, and that it's not too heavy to move around.

This projector was the answer to my Betsy Ross wanna be star problem. I just printed off the star template onto a transparency and projected it onto the flag and traced the stars with a paint pen. Then I hand painted in all the stars. I'm super happy with how it turned out! If anyone wants to make some pallet art (or a Betsy Ross flag...) let me know! Cause I have a projector!!

So here is a bit of a sad crafting story. My whole idea about making one new craft for each holiday a year went bad in a bad way.

Remember this wreath I made last year? Well, here is a picture of it last year...

And here it is this year...

I'm calling this one a Pinterest fail. I had read somewhere (on Pinterest of course) that you could take a pool noodle and duct tape it in a circle and use it for a wreath form. So that's what I did for the wreath, and as you can see it now looks like a saggy old bag. It's awful. I still totally hung it up on my door... because this was my July craft for last year dangit! But I need to fix it... it's bad. I just don't know if I really want to spend the time again.

So just a word of warning... plastic pool noodles sag and do not make good wreath forms! Just buy a real wreath okay!

Wood + White Entertainment Center...

 We finally finished up the project that we've been working on for the past 3+ months. Our TV stand is done!!! We finished it on Monday and I'm still giddy about having it in the living room...

Really, it's better than I thought it would be. It's always scary (for me anyway) to build something yourself. We are amatures at this for sure, but it turned out so great!

I'm still a little shocked that Trent agreed that we could do the white frame with the different colored wood doors. We have very, very different tastes in style. He likes natural colored wood, and is one of those people who thinks it's a sin to paint over nice wood. When I first showed him a picture of what I really wanted (similar to this) he said no way! So when I brought it up again when we got serious about building something and he said, "Sure, why not" I was really surprised. I kept asking if he was sure he was okay with it... and he said he was. So we drew out our plans and made it happen.

We wanted it to be very simple. Two opened slots at the top for the DVD player and current VCR we have (hoping to swap that out for something to play games on at some point here). We also wanted closed cabinets with space to store toys/blankets/games and some hidden drawers for DVD's. 

We've been going out to his dad's about once a week for the past 3 months to work on it. It took longer than I thought it would, but part of what's nice about building things with Trent's dad is that we get to spend lots of good quality time with him.

Trent cut the wood for the cabinet doors and brought them home for me to stain. Can I just say how much I love staining wood? It's kind of an addiction for me. I love it! I love taking something that I sort of like and making it into something I love with just a little stain. I went with Jacobean for the dark, Early American for the lighter brown, and made a homemade stain of steel wool soaked in vinegar for the gray/barn wood color (what I did was put a steel wool pad in a glass bottle and covered it in white vinegar for 24 hours. Then I took out the pad, wrung it out a little, and rubbed the pad onto the wood). 

Let me just show you how cool the vinegar stain turned out. These two panels are both stained with that, but they are two totally different colors because of the type of wood that was used. The wood on the left is a soft pine and the wood on the right is a hard maple. The hardwood came out GRAY! And the soft wood a light/dark brown. It was an awesome science experiment! Pretty sure this is my new favorite stain.

Simple knobs (that can be tied together for future baby-proofing)...

Simple hinges... I really think it's the simplicity of it all that makes it so pretty to me.

Here is our inside storage area.

I still need to fill in those spaces, once the boy decides to quit playing hide and seek in them...

I'm just so happy with how it turned out. We really needed to have some good functional furniture in our livingroom. It's nice to have something that looks great and provides storage that we really need.

 I love working on projects like this with my husband. Building something out of nothing for our family to enjoy.

Wooden rainbow...

My sister in law always decorates super cute for the holiday's. This year for St. Patrick's Day she wanted to find a rainbow to add to her decor, but wasn't able to find something that she loved by the time the holiday came and went. When I spotted this wooden rainbow on Pinterest I knew that we had to do it (yes, me included because I need to be better at decorating for holidays ;) ). One of my goals this year on my list is to get more into woodworking and learn to use different saws and this was the perfect project to get started with that.

Another thing about my sister in law, she is really good at following through with her projects. I went over to her house last week to just "talk" about the rainbow. Nicole does not just sit and talk about projects, she gets right on it! In the next few hours we had found a wood shop that carried wood 2 1/2 inches thick that we needed (can't buy wood like that at Home Depot...) and we had gone down there and bought our wood. The trip involved taking 4 kids with us down this industrial ally and me climbing a ladder and walking on some plywood floor in a warehouse to get our wood... yikes!!! I lived to tell the tale though and we now have some awesome rainbows!!

My father in law has lots of wood working tools so we got together Saturday to cut out the rainbows. We ended up making four, and it went super smooth. The tutorial says to mark the arches at 1/2 an inch, but when I traced it out it looked way too small. So we went with 3/4 and inch for each arch.

Me working the band saw...

Hubs on the sander...

They looked so pretty just raw wood too...

This week we got together and painted the arches. We used these water color paints from Michaels. They worked really well.

 Two coats of paint and then we set them to dry.

 We sealed them off with beeswax which really made the colors vibrant. And here is my final product...

I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. I really love it. I love that by using watercolors you can still see the wood grain through the paint. I love that my boy LOVES playing with it. My only complaint is that I'm not completely happy with the 2nd and 3rd from the bottom arches. I think I might switch those two colors around, but I'm not sure that I care enough to sand them down and re-paint them. 

 Now I have a cute rainbow for St. Patrick's Day and a fun toy for my boy to play with in the meantime. Very worthwhile project!!