Noah's original artwork

Recently my son made a beautiful watercolor painting. I wanted to show it off in our home but couldn't find the right frame. Instead, I found a jigsaw. And it was love. Anyway, I have lots of random pieces of wood in my basement that I've collected over the years (much to my husband's chagrin!) and traced the size of the painting onto a board. I used the beveled edge to make a 45-degree-angled cut. I spray painted the edges black. I used Modge Podge to glue the painting to the frame. Then I covered the painting with Modge Podge to give it a glossy finish. I screwed 2 short screws into the back. My next step is to get some wire and then hang this beautiful artwork on the wall.



In case you're wondering, I'm labeling this post as a kid project because of the watercoloring. Don't worry, I don't let my children near the jigsaw.

Cloth Flower Necklace

I made this last night:



Do you like it? What would YOU wear with it?

I'll post a how-to later when I have a free hand.

homemade advent calendar

I meant to post this 16 days ago. Dec 1 I was feeling pretty bummed because I wanted an advent calendar. I thought about it all the week before. Then I had an idea. When I put Noah in his quiet time, I ran downstairs and got to work. this is what I came up with:


(the yellow string "tinsel" is for day 1)

I grabbed a random piece of wood (I have lots to choose from!). Mixed together my random paints to get some decent colors. Let it dry a bit. Nailed 23 nails onto the tree (the stair is the topper and doesn't need a nail). Then I found/made little ornaments for the tree using things I already had around the house (candy, bells, buttons, fuzz balls, etc). Put one each in a muffin tin slot (no muffin making til after Christmas!). Wrapped the tin in wrapping paper and wrote numbers over each muffin slot. (I think a mini muffin tin would work better because it already has 24 slots. Mine only has 12 so I had to refill and re-wrap the tin on the 13th). Drilled two holes in the top for the ribbon. Looks pretty good eh?


(this is after 16 days)

"new" trike

I'm trying to check off the things on my to-do list before this baby comes! Here's one more thing--now our son doesn't have to ride around on a nasty pink and purple tricycle. We call this beauty "Black Thunder," although my husband says the name doesn't make any sense. Too bad. Noah asked what it was called and that was the first thing that came to mind and it stuck :)







In case you were wondering, we got this trike off the "tree lawn" (where people put all their garbage and junk every week). The "tree lawn" can be a beautiful thing...

How To Make a Bench, briefly

2 months ago, I started visiting a construction site to scavenge for wood scraps for my square foot garden. I got several 4-5ft pieces but unfortunately, all of them were treated and so I couldn't use them for my garden. Since I invested so much time and energy going to the construction site and bugging the poor workers every week, I decided to do something with the wood. I came up with a design for a bench and a table. We ended up making two benches and one short table. A friend let us borrow his circular saw which made this all possible! Here are the drawings for the bench:



The bench seat is about 46" long, 2" deep, and 12" wide. We cut the legs to be about 18" tall. The two cross beams were cut to be the length of the bench seat minus 2 x the thickness of the legs. The crossbeams are probably about 4" wide.

The table follows the same idea except we cut a board in half and put them side by side to make a squarish tabletop. We put a leg at each corner and crossbeams connecting each leg to make the table sturdy.

We primed and painted them a very bright color so that when every thing is brown and dead out here, I will still be able to look out my window and see a little color!

Noah needed a project too