Chalkboard from a Cutting Board

Since I had been sick with a doozey of a head cold, I haven't done too much. Having a tissue stuffed up your left nostril while using the bottom portion to sneeze into kind of puts a damper on doing anything. Especially when you have to change it out every 5 minutes, if you're lucky.

That's why when I seen a cool project by Stephanie on "The Cozy Old Farmhouse" blog, I thought I could manage that one with said tissue sticking out of my nose. Well, there is a teensy little drawback to doing it with a runny nose, but I'll get to that in a bit.

One of the best parts about doing a project is when you have everything on hand already. 

Then next best part to having everything on hand is KNOWING where everything is too! ;) Around here, that can be the trickiest part to any project.

Isn't that a darling idea?! I actually think I seen it before on Pinterest from someone else, but didn't pin it and didn't remember it either, until I seen Stephanie's. I really liked the rustic look it had. Mine is a tad different from hers, since she was trying to fix a faux pas that ended up working out for the better. I think she taped off the shape for hers, but I set out on the wild side & decided to go freehand. 

I took some Minwax gel stain in Aged Oak and coated the entire cutting board, front and back. You just never know if someone doesn't want the chalkboard look and may want it to be plain, so now they have that option. I know, I fret over all kinds of little things that other people may not even dream up. But I like to create multiple uses for things where ever possible. You'd be surprised at some of the complaints I hear as to how someone wishes it looked like something other than what I did.

Oh, and the gel stain? That's where the runny nose can create problems. The next thing you know, your nose is suddenly gushing & now you have brown spots on your nose and above your lip from the stain that's on your fingers & hand. Yeah, it would make for a funny picture for y'all, but I don't live that far on the wild side.
  
Next, I just used some of my brush-on black chalkboard paint (that I purchased at Walmart) - applying 2 coats and letting it dry between each coat. I used a medium sized artist paint brush, so I could have better control for crisp lines around the edge and a smoother finish, in spite of all the cuts in the wood.

After all that, I took some twine and wrapped it around the handle like Stephanie did, sort of. Actually, the chalk hangs down lower than in these pictures, but it kind of screws up seeing the writing on the board, so I wrapped it around the back again after tying it off so it would look nicer for the "money shot."

Now it's ready for my first ever spring craft event!

 



  
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Weekend Goody Finds!

It's that time of year for us crafty types and junk hunters, isn't it? You know....that time of year. When the true sign of spring isn't the budding leaves and newly emerging flowers. 

Oh no. Those aren't the signs.

...it's the signs that say "Garage Sale - Flea Market - Estate Sale -Yard Sale - Sale - Sale - Sale!" And, there's even those of us that are the occasional curb shoppers too, looking for the free finds from those in the midst of their spring cleaning that don't want to put the time and effort into fixing stuff or having a garage sale.


I wasn't going to go out on Friday, but by about 11 o'clock, I couldn't resist anymore. I do wish I wouldn't start that late and I usually know better. I drive around to all these sales and find nothing or see the items with the "SOLD" tags on them that I missed out on and would kill for. But. This day was different! Not that I brought home the mother load, but I was pleased with what I found. 


Then on Saturday, we all hopped in the "Loser Cruiser" to check out a little flea market in South Bend, but it turned out to be kind of a dud. There was definitely stuff there that was wanted by "yours truly", but not for the prices they were asking. We walked out with a Guitar Hero II game for $2. It works great, so that was a really good price! 

On the way home, we stopped at a church rummage sale and I found a couple of things that was only 50 each. I spent a whole dollar! 

Then we stopped at a moving sale. There was quite a lot of stuff, and the prices couldn't be beat! But I only bought a really nice quality wreath for 50 cents.

I will try to give the run down of what's in the photo underneath it.

Magazine rack = 50 cent (Sat. Church sale) not pictured here is a grapevine Christmas                                     "thing" that was also 50 cents.  
Wreath = 50 cents (Sat. moving sale)
Cute pocket basket with pegs = $1 (Fri. garage sale)
Stuffed snow family = $1 They were removed from something else, but they're so cute!                                              (Fri. garage sale)
Wooden bowl = 25 cents. (Fri. garage sale)
Stencil brush = 25 cents. (Fri. garage sale)
2 primitive styled plates = $1.50  each.  (Fri. garage sale)
Wire basket = $1 and it was bent out of shape, but I was able to bend it back and it looks                  just fine! (Fri. garage sale)
Crocheted doily = 50 cents (Fri. garage sale)
Dark belt = 75 cents (Fri. garage sale)
Light belt = 50 cents. (Fri. garage sale) I am keeping my eyes open for belts these days               because I have a special use for those! 

I know it's not even May yet, but I have my sights set on Christmas for many of the crafts I find. I had a lady at the Salvation Army talking to me like I was crazy for buying the Christmas item I had in my hands. I told her that I do crafts and I have to get interesting Christmas things when the gettin's good. She still looked at me like I was a freak. That's OK, if she comes to my craft show in Nov., she would be the one buying that stupid thing I have in my hands because she won't be able to walk out of there without it. ;)


What about you? Do you do the garage sale, curb shopping, Christmas decor in summer thing too? Tell me I'm not alone in my insanity...

 

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My Auction Treasure!

I have to admit that I haven't seen much of anything done in blog land with the auction treasure I found, but that's not to say that there hasn't been something truly inspiring done and I just ain't found it (yet).

You see, last weekend my hubby went to a farm consignment auction for some tractor tires for his IH Farmall tractor. I wasn't able to go, since our daughter had a friend spending the weekend with us and this was just not something that a couple of 8 year old princesses want to do for a few hours, not to mention it was kind of cold & yucky out. 

While there, my sweet hubby was also trying to scout out some of the items for me that were listed on the sale bill. This is where I love cell phones, and even though we don't have the fancy phones that require over-priced data plans, we can take & send pictures. We do this all the time when either of us finds something that we think the other person might be interested in. He still had quite a bit of time to kill before he had to deal on his tires and was sending me pictures of the items of interest. It turns out that there were only 2 things that I actually wanted him to bid on. Some wooden cheese boxes and these.

Just in case you're not familiar with what these actually are, they're called nail kegs - obviously it states that on the yellow tag. They were used to ship large quantities of nails in, and in many cases, the stores just left the nails in the kegs to sit on the floor of their shop and you just scooped out what you needed and paid for them by the pound. The tag also shows that there were supposed to be 3, but apparently, the third one had legs and walked off or rolled away. ???

I told my husband that my maximum bid would be $20 for the lot. It ended up being only $12.50! After he got them home, I went online to see how much these bad boys go for. Are you kidding me?? These aren't that cheap. I found ONE for $40 on Ebay and it was missing a ring! There were some on Etsy for around $20, but you have to pay for shipping and that can't be cheap either. 

As far as I can tell, these are both in excellent shape and I'm trying to come up with something clever to do with them. I have one idea, but I'm not 100% sold on it & several others are floating in my head. Some days there's lots of room for floating in there. Maybe if I would have had the 3rd one, I'd do it and still have 2 left to do something else with.  Shoulda, coulda, woulda...

It's supposed to rain today, but it's taking it's sweet time getting here. I don't normally want rain, but I'm getting tired of having to water my plants already. The bad part to the rain coming is that it's supposed to get colder again. We haven't had any significant rain here in over 2 weeks & I have really sandy soil. I guess there's not many April showers for us year.  Crazy weather. 80's in March, no rain in April, kinda scared to see what May holds for us.

Have a Creative day!



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Flea Market Treasures!

Let's see...this past Saturday was going to be a fun morning for us - at least that was the plan. Alan knew he was going to have to work part of the day, but he had plans in the morning to take in a load of scrap metal in a town that is 45 minutes away from us. Then, we were going to hit a flea market just down the road from the metal recyclers and be home in time for him to get to the job he needed to go to.

Well, I think that when people speak of "Murphy's Law", they should realize that Murphy must be a pretty close relative of mine and I must have been on his mind heavily on Saturday. 

It started out that Alan's truck was having some problems staying running while on the way to the metal place. He thought he fixed the problem, but obviously that was NOT it. We made it there, only to find out that Alan required some special paperwork in order to turn in his scrap - even though he is a plumbing contractor and showed them his license. So, as not to be making a totally wasted trip, we limped the truck to another recycling place in the next town and they were totally fine with everything. We totally understand why these places want to try to be sure we're not turning in stolen stuff, but the one was just totally crazy. 

Even though my hubby should have been heading back home so he could go to his job, we limped the truck BACK to the other town again to go to the flea market. I mean, that was the ONLY reason I got our 8 yr. old daughter out of bed at 6:30 a.m. on a Sat.! We sure weren't excited about just waiting in a truck waiting for a load of dirty metal to get unloaded, that's for sure. LOL! The payment was nice, but we weren't spending it that day anyway.

We tried to whip through the place as quick as we could without 
missing too much, but that was impossible.  

After all that, I started feeling under the weather after we got home and part of Sunday morning too. Kind of flu-like, just like Alan had been just a few days earlier. Ick.

But I was happy to get what I got and hope to go back very soon and get a few more things that I spotted. I took pictures of the things I wanted with my phone, just so I don't forget what they were. 

Look at this darling little teal blue fan I found! It's kind of grungy and maybe with some degreaser, it will come clean. I love the color of it & the rust on it though. I thought $9 was a fair price. I've seen a larger one at the local Habitat store for $75!! Ouch! I realize it's for a good cause, but really? I think they've forgotten that they're not antique dealers.

I'm sorry that picture isn't the best, but it was still pretty gloomy this morning when I was trying to get the picture and I'm just too lazy to go back and get a better one.

Then I found these bread pans for 50 cents a piece. Now I need to find the idea I seen that used them.

And the best part was that I found these vintage grain sacks for $5 each (well, one was $6)! I like that they're not burlap. Don't get me wrong. I love burlap ones, but I can find those easy enough and at reasonable prices. But these I tell ya, they are like fabric gold! There were more available, but I was limited on funds and didn't want to go too crazy. I hope these clean up good, but they're not in bad shape at all and they have great colors! I thought it was cool that the red/blue one has my home state on it!

So in the end, it was a pretty good day, we made some killer money at the scrap yard and we was able to make it home with very little problems with the truck! go figure... :^/









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Garden arbor finished!!

I think I forgot to post a photo of the storm door arbor in my last post, so I'll show you the before shot here.


















Here is the finished product of the storm door arbor painted white. I thought it turned out fantastic!! I am so thrilled with the results, I can't believe it worked out so easily!! And what an impact it makes to the front of my garden shed. I can't wait to show you all the reveal of that little endeavor too, but DH still have some work to do on that still & it's full of his junk in the front at the moment.


















I think this is a pretty good excuse for not having any other paper crafting projects complete, don't you think? Actually, I have been working on some stuff, but either forgot to get pictures or I don't want to reveal them at this time.

We've also been working on a couple of garage sales that were so desperately needed & we still have one more before we're done for the season. It almost doesn't seem like we made that much of a dent, but we have to be! I know that we are, because we finally found the floor of our daughter's room! Yep! The carpet is still red! LOL!!

I also have to say that I can't believe that my little girl is growing up.... she's been talking about nothing but Justin Beiber all week! I even had to buy her her first Teen Beat magazine yesterday! She's not even 7 yet, OMG!!! Oh well, I was in love with Donny Osmond & Tony DeFranco (do any of you remember Tony???) when I was her age.

Well, this is a brief posting, Alan will be coming home for lunch shortly, so I better look like I'm doing something more than sitting at this PC.



God Bless & have a great day!!