A Little Bit of This

I had a little fun today making another batch of lip balm. With the cooler weather on it's way here and with how dry it is, I decided it's time to stock up!! This time I made my lip balm with some peppermint essential oil. Let's just say it not only smells like peppermint in the house, but the lip balm is great! It took me a couple of times to get my head on straight and remember to put all of the ingredients in them. Here's a peek at the finished ones!

My pal Jeremy gave me his old Altoids tin and asked me to fill it!

While I was letting my wax melt (under a close eye, of course!), I was looking around for my next project. Sitting right next to me is this! You may remember this beauty from a previous post.

While I LOVE the look of the crackled paint, I need to fix a couple of things. Let's just say this is not Gunner proof. He has a favorite spot to gnaw on.

After constantly cleaning up the pieces of paint that come off, I decided I wanted to completely sand it and repaint it. Here's an example of what I have to clean, all of the time!

I JUST vacuumed, and I'm embarrased to say that this is on my floor. You can see how bad it is coming off. If it's touched, it comes off!

So Thursday after my clinical, this is my project to tackle. Any suggestions on how I should paint it??

Until next time,
Sarah

Fall Decor

Right after Labor Day, I got the itch to take all of my summer decorations down and to make it look like fall threw up in my house. So I ventured out to Hobby Lobby and Michael's...and spent a little more than expected. In my defense though, the fall garland and flowers were SUPER cheap and the vases I bought will serve more than fall decorations.

I replaced the summer flowers with fall flowers in my teapot.

This was fun! Got a bare wreath at Hobby Lobby for 2.99 and hot-glued various fall things on it.

With the abundance of pine trees here in the Black Hills, comes an abundance of pine cones. Not going out to the craft store and purchasing them. Nope, they are right in the backyard. I ended up about 2 miles from where we live and took a hike. I returned home with 2 plastic bags full of pine cones and a handful of different sticks and dried up grass. I baked the pine cones at 220 degree for 20 minutes. Let me just say when I took them out, it smelled like Christmas! I did the same with the sticks and grass. This kills whatever was living in the pine cones and pretty much dries up any sap on them. You have to be careful and keep a close eye on them...they can catch on fire. Here's my finished product.

What is really funny is the straw around the big pine cone bowl...that came off of a package. It was tied around to keep it closed! I think everything turned out perfect! Notice that I did end up getting some baskets for the bottom shelves of my table...they were 30% clearance at Target. What a steal!!

Until next time,
Sarah

Finished Console Table

I was SO excited to finally get this table into my house and share it with all of you! The materials were about $35 and with my hectic life and crazy schedule, I finished it in a little over a week. You can find the plans here on Ana White's website. If you haven't checked it out yet, I highly suggest doing so!

Here's my finished product.

I think it fits PERFECT in this little corner of the theater room. I'm going to look into getting some baskets for at least the bottom shelves so hid those pesky remotes and such that are sitting on the entertainment stand.
You'll also notice that my table is way off from what the plans have. Since I built it for this specific space, I shortened the length of it but also made it wider from front to back. The original plans would have run into into the door that's to the right. My old coffee table sat here, so I went off those dimensions.

What I learned:
If you do decide to tweak the plan, be sure to take into consideration that a 2x4 isn't actually 4 inches wide. The same goes for 2x6's (the bottom two shelves are made of 2x6 wood).

This was a fun project for me to work on since I could spread it out by doing a little bit at a time.

Thanks for stopping by and checking out my most recent piece!

Until next time,
Sarah

Console Table

It's the second week of school and already I've gone stir crazy. I have this weird need to always be doing something, I can't just sit still. Last week after my classes were done and the homework was finished, I wanted to get my hands on something. Something. Something to measure, cut, sand, stain, and seal. I just needed to decide what would fit in my budget.

I decided on a console table. But not just any console table. It was going to be custom, completely not according to the plans. This table has to fit in a space that's in the corner of my living room, where my glass coffee table presently sits. This console table will serve many purposes in this room. Not only will it hold some family pictures, wedding pictures, Bear pictures, but it can also hold those cozy blankets that are needed in the dead of our South Dakota winter. The shelves can also hold cute little baskets for random things we keep in that room (how about the one million remotes we have?!) So anyway, I went after school to the trusty Lowe's and picked out some (straight) pieces of wood. The original plan is 74 inches long (holy crap!), but I am cutting it down to 46 inches to fit between the wall and the french doors. The original plan also has the table 16.5 inches deep, however, I love the (actual) width of my coffee table I have now, so it will be close to 20 or so inches wide. I'm really, really hoping that my dimension turn out right. If not, we are going to have fun with some target practice. I will write up another post when I'm finished and it's finally in my house! But for now, it's patiently waiting to be cut in the garage as I finish dinner.

Until next time,
Sarah