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.)