Cheap Wedding Centerpiece Candles

My wedding was absolutely awesome. Alas, we had no extra money so literally everything from the cake to the smoked pig to decorations were done by family members or close friends - which made it even more special! 

Wedding decorations are SO expensive especially  if they have that 'wedding' label. For centerpieces, we got bulk flowers from Cosco and Sprouts (due to a wrong delivery and last minute need for flowers...). We got a lot of random decor from oriental trading company and the burlap on sale at Joann's Fabric.  I always wanted to get married at our local ski hill, but due to the time of wedding, I just got a thin-fallen aspen tree, cut it up and my dad and I drilled shallow holes with a drill press & 1.5" spade-bit (I call them paddle bits?) in the pieces. A tea candle fit perfectly. It was really cool to do a project like that with my dad, fairly quick, looks great, and really economical.

We used the paddle bit again to make birdhouses. This time my husband used it as a drill attachment, which I highly recommend clamping whatever you are drilling into securely or it will spin and be well, dangerous.. 

This candle went perfectly with our burlap/sunflower wedding theme. 

Each of my nieces and nephews made these, their individual styles really shine through!

Bench Makeover

This bench was too cute to throw away.  A little thought with regard to the color palette for the safari scene and some freshly-stained ash wood and voila -  it's a bit more inviting!

Made with Ash wood, stained with Minwax Cherrywood & painted with Acrylic paint. Sealed with Minwax Helmsman Spar Urethane for outdoor use.

Before picture - not bad - the bench piece wasn't actually missing I took it off to measure and well, didn't put it back...  I wanted new wood, and brighter colors for the safari scene. 

I went to the hardware store and ran into Alec Caspersen from ADC Builders. He offered to cut some scrap ash wood down for $20. They have a new Kitchen Demo room, if you need remodeling, it's worth checking out! This was half the battle - the hardware is actually steel but we spray painted it (we'll see if that stays!) Other trick: the painted animals are outlined in black sharpie to make the colors pop!

Fence Post Coat Hanger

Diaper bag, four coats, purse, baby front pack, two hiking back packs, keys - this is what you would find on our living room floor so, we needed a solution. This was a successful illustration of how being lazy and stingy pays off - we bought hooks and then decided to screw them into an old fence post  (rather than follow through with our original idea of nice finished cedar wood shelf- rack). We did absolutely nothing to this wood. It retained the rustic-unfinished look for which people pay top dollar ;) 

yep, that's a fence post.

Okay you caught me - Ian did most the work. He had to dremel off the part of the screws that stuck out. This gave me an opportunity to play around with shutter speeds on my camera. This pic is at 1/8 s.

Dresser Makeover! problems solved...

I have to admit I am pretty proud of this dresser. Not only is it a super cute color but I solved two major issues with a dresser of this size: 

1. One year-olds love opening drawers and pulling everything, I mean EVERYTHING out just for the fun of it.  Knobs = GONE.

2. Only I know the intricate ins-and-outs of these 9 drawers. Every time my husband needs PJ's or socks or a bib, he has to ask me where to find it. How awesome are chalkboard labels that can change as needed? (e.g., when onesies turn to pants/shirts) And, when my little one gets old enough to put away her own laundry (hmm, say by age  2?) I can draw pictures to show her where to put things before she can read. 

"Paint something with chalkboard paint and you're so DIY!" was the message I got from mom-blogs -  I felt like chalkboard paint was a bit over-used and over-stated. Alas, I have to admit it's all its cracked up to be. I had a bunch left over so I painted a little book shelf so it would match - the shelf is now laying on the floor and used as a chalkboard table... One-year-olds can't seem to push crayons hard enough to draw nor can they put tops back on markers - so chalk is a pretty fun alternative for scribbling all over stuff...

I bought this cute rug to tie together the red and yellow furniture in the room...

Before. 

Miniature Picnic Tables

I got the plans for these here to make tables for my nieces/nephews & my own kiddos when they're a bit bigger. They loved them! This was our first real wood building experience. Two take homes:

1. You can build just about anything with a Kreg Jig. 

2. The more time you spend sanding and staining, the better it looks. Don't plan on doing anything like this in one day because you need at least four hours per layer of stain/spar urethane. Maybe next time I will just paint them... :)

Don't be fooled- These are only about two feet tall!

Rocking Zebra Makeover: W.F.B Creative Outlet #4

Waiting For Baby Creative Outlet #4. 

I made this to go with my elephant/safari baby room. 

What you'll need:

- An ol' rocking horse. Preferably one that hasn't seen any love for a long time

- Black and white Acrylic Paint, Green for the base

- Black and White Yarn

- Acrylic Sealer (Although we skipped this and three years later it looks fine)

Pull off yarn-hair, saddles, bridles - basically strip the horse down to the wood. Paint the horse white. Look at a picture of a zebra and copy strip patterns with black acrylic paint. The end of the nose is black, and the stripes curves around the eyes - so pay attention to the picture if you want it realistic looking. (Or copy ours)

To create the mane - Cut yarn into about12 inch pieces. Chunk about twenty pieces together and then lay down a white chunk next to a black chunk on a long strip of news paper. Alternate the colors until you have about two feet (depend on size of your horse) of yarn laid out. Sew through the yarn and sewing to the newspaper, and then remove the newspaper (so it sewed together). Fold the piece in half and sew again. Glue to the horse and trim as needed. For the tail I just tied a knot and braided the yarn and glued it.

My nieces and my sista made this amazing elephant collage - so to match we refurbished this broken ol' rocking horse to be a rockin' zebra!