Friday, July 25, 2014

Ridiculously Teeny Wooden Treats


It all started when we got our windows replaced.

You know how it is with home improvement phases, right? It's never just the garage door, or the siding, or the windows, or whatever. I mean, for years, the house stays in exactly the same state of derelict (but blissful) status quo, and then one day, the furnace dies or something equally innocuous and you have it repaired and immediately, the scales fall from your eyes as the proverbial can of worms gets violently wrenched open. How did you never notice the foyer chandelier was so totally last century? Or that the deck boards need staining? Or that the backyard should've been relandscaped four summers ago? And that it's about time to also repave the front path, or also need to remodel the kitchen, or also makeover the entire house, really?

Or maybe it's just me.

So, as I was saying, we had some home improvement work done this past fortnight. Which involved the necessary but low-key moving of furniture from the affected sites to temporary holding areas. Which suddenly inspired me to paint the guest room. Which required a visit (or five) to the Home Depot to investigate paint colors. Which led to the children wandering the aisles, looking for craft supplies (they believe there is no store on the planet in which they cannot find craft supplies).


Which they found

and begged me to purchase, since (in Kate's words), "They're so cute 


and look like cakes 

and can we paint them 

for the Barbies?"

And we also dug into my Wooden Bits And Bobs stash, left over from my wooden confectionery days, and found discs to make pies,
(clockwise from top right: cherry, cinnamon cream, blueberry, cinnamon chocolate, and lemon)
plates and platters.

And then, an hour into the painting, Emily came to me, saying she wanted to make a cake stand with a wooden disc and some ball feet.

Which spun some mental gears to produce, in addition to her stand, a tiered display thingy, using more discs, a couple of dowel pins and nails.

Which caused someone (can't remember who) to suggest a muffin baking tray.

Which seemed completely do-able even though we have only the most rustic of tools.

Which continued as the Next Day's Follow-Up Project, wherein a(nother) trip to T.H.D. was needed to buy some flat trim into which holes were drilled with a 1/2" spade bit.

Which we cut into short pieces and glued together


to make a muffin tin.


Which, along with the tiered stand, 

 we then painted on Day #3.

Which all then became props 

in a photoshoot on the deck, as our obligatory Outdoor Time for the day, since up till that point, we'd been holed indoors, hunched over the kitchen table, painting.

I never got around to painting the guest room, incidentally.

(C'mon - admit it: you saw that coming.)




16 comments:

  1. Oh my goodness... what delightful teeny treats!! Your girls have such creative minds... you've trained them well! :) There'll always be another day for painting that guest room. Hey, it just dawned on me... you're teaching them to procrastinate, too! Heheh....

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  2. Seriously adorable. Such creativity!

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  3. I mean this in the nicest possible way... you and your family are insane.

    And I kinda want to make my own set now.

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  4. Haha, I think I'm with Rachel on this one! I love it :)

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  5. Love it, too. Thanks for brighting up my day.

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  6. I end up walking into the kitchen at 1 am and then I snap when I see one more ant and head to the basement and start caulking up every crack I can find. After having the house for more than 5 years and having ants for two months I just snapped. More than one projects end with me procrastinating till i snap.

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  7. Thank you for letting me know that my life is not crazy by describing something that sounds exactly like a week in the life of me :) they are so cute. I may have to try I it too.

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  8. If you give a mouse a cookie...

    These treats are so adorable!

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  9. I love the cake stand, and the muffin tin is so clever!

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  10. lovely! Sounds so much better than my excuses for not getting on with some home improvements, too (latest one is that I want to wait until the puppy is a bit older...)

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  11. Such fun Barbie treats, do you ever sew Barbie clothes, I'm always looking for Barbie clothes tutorials

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  12. I want to come live with you.

    Thanks so much for blogging all your amazing adventures and projects. And a super duper, you-deserve-all-the-Nutella-in-the-world thank you for your sewing tutorial series'! I'm working through the drafting series now. You are amazing. And so are your kiddos.

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  13. This is the cutest thing I have EVER seen EVER. I must do this too!!

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