Homemade Donations

I mentioned earlier that I made some wooden pumpkins to be sold in a silent auction at my church.  Well, the pumpkins will have some company from our workshop at the auction.  Last night we finished up just about everything we've been working on. There are just a few last minute touch-ups to make before everything gets delivered to the church on Thursday. Along with the [three sets of three] pumpkins, will be this cute plant stand made by my dad,

as well as some wooden picture frames where the picture is held on by nail heads.  (Picture inserts made by my mom, frames made by me.)

I saw some wooden crosses at an art festival I attended recently, and tried to make some similar to them.

In the years past, we've learned that the members of our church looooove their Hogs. Anything Razorback-ish usually gets the most bids, so, in an effort to make sure that our auction items get lots of attention, we made some AR stuff.

An Arkansas sign and a Razorback sign made by my mom (frames made by me and Dad).

 

And finally, some Razorback blocks made by me. This was my first attempt at something like this and I think they're ok for the first go-round. I think they'll look cuter when they're sitting up on a shelf and you can really see their different sizes and heights, but here, they were still laying out to dry.

I think last year our donations may have been bigger things, but the great thing about all of these is that they were made out of scraps. No money spent is a win to me!

Hopefully on Saturday we'll bring in some cash for our church. If you're in the area, you should stop by and place a bid. There are usually lots of good items in the silent auction, plus there's a country store, a rummage sale, tons of food, and games for the kids!

Family Work Day

Happy fall, y'all!

We had a beautiful day here yesterday! The weather was so nice we were able to leave the doors and windows to the shop open and enjoy the nice fall breeze. In honor of the season, I made a set of these wooden pumpkins.  They'll be going in a silent auction at my church this weekend.

Along with the pumpkins will be several other things that we've made - a plant stand, a couple clocks, some picture frames, Razorback paraphernalia.  We have been super busy getting our donations ready! In fact, yesterday I had to enlist the help of Anna to be my personal helper so we could get everything finished in time. She is an excellent painter.

Also in the shop was a father-son carpenter team. They worked hard all day building a bench together.  The son did all the measuring and marking.

And the dad made all the cuts.

Once they had all their materials cut and ready to go, they assembled the bench together. Doc let Wyatt use the drill to screw in the screws.

And after a few short hours, they had completed their first father-son woodworking project!

Looks like a perfect bench, if you ask me!  Hope you all had as nice a Sunday as we did.

The Making of a Stage

[Edit: turns out the voice bubbles in my pictures are a little blurry, so I'm adding the quotes beneath each photo.]

Lucy: I got an email from Mary today. Doc: Cool. What'd it say?

Lucy: She bought a hutch at Goodwill and asked me to turn it into a puppet stage. Doc: Rad.

Doc: I'll go ahead and nail in some extra supports so it's not so wobbly for her students.

Lucy: Awesome! I'll start sanding this brown paint off.

Lucy: Oh hey, Dad. Can you cut a 42" by 26" piece of thin wood for me? Dad: Of course. Anything for you, daughter.

Lucy: I'm going to paint that piece with chalkboard paint!

Lucy: Hmmm...and I think I'll paint the puppet stand green, just like my house!

Lucy: Heeeey, Mom.  Wanna sew a curtain? Mom: I'd love to!

Lucy: Thanks for all your help guys! Now all I have to do is put it all together!

Phew! Did you make it through all of that?

Ok, so my puppetry skills may be a little lacking, but the stage is cute, right?  As mentioned in the show, my friend Mary Elizabeth purchased the original hutch from a Goodwill. I'm not sure how much she paid for it, but I'm guessing it wasn't much.  Here's what it looked like when she brought it to me.

It looks brown, but that's not the stained wood you see. Instead, whoever used to own it decided to paint over the stain with brown paint. Who does that?

I didn't take any pictures as I went along, but here's another shot of the finished product.

Mary Elizabeth teaches music to all ages, and she's planning on using this in her classroom. I think her kids are going to love it!

As you can see from the back view, they have an extra shelf to store the puppets that are waiting "backstage."

Special thanks to my mom who played along with my crazy puppet show idea! It was super hot outside but she was still a good sport about holding up the puppets while I took pictures.

And, just for laughs, here's a shot of our puppy puppets.

Mary, I'm sorry it took me so long to get finished! But it's officially done and ready for you now.  Maybe you could show us all what a good puppet show is supposed to look like!

Potting Station

My parents' neighbors got a new fence so my mom got a new potting stand. How does that work? I'll show you. Here's the new fence the people next door put up:

Pretty nice, I guess. But this is the part I was drooling over...the pile of wood they were discarding.

I didn't know what I wanted to do with it, I just knew I wanted it. So I conned my dad and Doc into helping me drag it over to our yard. We stacked it up behind the shop and called it a day.

That was about 2-3 weeks ago. On Monday, my dad asked what I was planning on doing with that wood. I believe his exact words were "that's not a graveyard for wood back there." So we all (mom, dad, Doc, me) headed around to the back of the shop to have a little look-see.

And then I started giving orders.

I immediately put my dad and Doc to work tearing apart a few pieces.

The gate to the fence was still mostly in tact. I wanted to use it as a table top, but it was a tad too big. The circular saw made its way out of the shop and my dad and Doc cut the gate down for me. We also hammered all the loose nails in.

Doc grabbed a hammer and pulled all the rusty nails out of some of the posts so they could be used as our table legs.

Dad cut the posts down to the correct lengths.

My job? Besides being Project Manager? I held this nail.

This is the rusty nail we used to mark all of our cuts. After dropping it about 48 times, my dad finally grabbed my hand, held it open, put the nail in it, and said, "don't let go of this!"

After the posts were cut, we attached them to the gate as table legs.

Did I mention we had the cutest little puppy cheering us on? (Note that she's also covered in sawdust.)

After the table was built, we decided to use the still-attached hinges from the gate to attach a back to the table. We used another section of fence for this and just drilled the hinges into it.

The last step was to remove the gate handle from the table top and reposition it up on the back so it wouldn't be in the way.  We screwed in some hooks for hanging things, too.

And voila! Just like that, my mom had a new potting station.

We spent zero dollars and I love the look of the reclaimed wood. Double win!

Here are some more views.

I have to say, this was some on-the-fly carpentry. We didn't really measure anything or have a plan. We just figured it out as we went. It might have a little wobble to it, but who's gonna complain about a free potting stand? Now, the true test will be if it survives the winter so my mom can use it to re-pot all of her plants in the spring. Only time will tell...

Cause for Celebration

Excuse me, may I have your attention please? I have a very important announcement to make. This is my 100th post!

Can you believe it? I feel like I just started Give Everybody Nice Sweaters yesterday, and now here we are, 100 posts in. When I made this blog one of my New Year's Resolutions, I told myself I needed to write at least 100 posts over the year. And I've reached that goal already and it's only August. Yay!

I've had several folks ask about the title of the blog, so I figured this is just as good a time as any to address that.

The title is a lyric from a song by Ingrid Michaelson.  I've been an Ingrid fan for almost two years now and it's one of her songs that Doc and I danced our first dance to at our wedding. It's not everyday that you find a love song that mentions rogaine and sewing on patches.  It was perfect for us.

So after finding her perfect love song, I started downloading more of her music and really fell in love.  The lyric on my blog header is from "You and I," now one of my all-time favorite songs. It's not uncommon for it to pop up on our iPod and for Doc and I to dance to it in the bathroom while brushing our teeth.  I love the tempo and upbeatness of it. And I really love the lyrics.

"Let's get rich and give everybody nice sweaters and teach them how to dance" is probably my favorite line.  I love sweaters. I love to dance. I would like to be rich. But most of all, I love the idea of the line.  Yes, let's do get rich (in that non-monetary way) and then let's share it with our friends by giving a hug or a smile or a warm meal or even a nice sweater. And then let's all be happy and enjoy life and dance together.  If everyone lived by the concept of this line, wouldn't life just be so much funner?

And yes, I know funner is not a real word.

So, that's the thought process behind GENS. And since I'm assuming that several of you have never heard the song (ahem, mom), I'm adding the music video here so you can give it a listen. Don't be surprised if it becomes one of your favorite songs too.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLudBmn1uK4]

Fun song, right?

Now, where were we? Oh, right...100  posts!!

This calls for something fun! How should we celebrate?

Hey, how about a giveaway?

Yea? Are you in?

This is what I'm giving away. A wooden test tube vase, made by moi.

It's distressed white and has five test vases, each with a green stem painted on.

But if green stems aren't your thing, you can always turn it around and just have it solid white.

Unfortunately, the flowers aren't included.  You'll have to do that part on your own.

My favorite thing about this particular vase is that the piece of wood has a natural perfectly round circle in it.

I painted the inside of the circle green.

This vase can be yours if you're the lucky winner! To enter to win, all you have to do is leave a comment on this post. But don't just leave any ol' comment. This is your chance to give me feedback.  Tell me what you like about GENS. Tell me what your sick of reading about. Is there a cool tutorial you want me to try? Have you been wanting to ask me something? What do you want more or less of?

Some of you may be thinking this is just a ploy for me to get lots of comments. And to that I say, so what if it is? Reading your comments is the best part of having this blog. It makes me feel like I'm not just wasting my time. So tell me how you feel. Give it to me straight. I can handle it. (I think.)

One comment per person please. Although I don't blame you if you have your spouse leave a comment too to better your chances. I'll pick a random winner (by having Doc pull a number out of  a cup) on Sunday evening.

Ready, set, comment!