Cub Scout Advancement Ladder

I hope everyone had a great Fourth of July yesterday. We spent it with my husband's family in Washington. My brother in law goes all out with his fireworks every year so we lucked out with an amazing show last night! Between that, the good company, and the tasty food we had a fabulous time celebrating the Independance of this great country. 

With all the travelling and visiting I didn't get a chance to try out anything from my "fourth of July" Pinterest Board this yeat, so I don't have any fun new patriotic pin-complishments to show you. 

However, I do have something that has to to do with Scouting, which seems pretty American to me, so it seems applicable for today. 

I just became a Den Leader for my son's Cub Scout group. What fun it is spending an hour a week with ten nine year old boys! 

We have a fabulous Cub Master who is always doing fun and unique things for our Pack Meetings. 

Recently she was telling me about a Cub Scout achievement ladder that she saw on Pinterest. Her husband had already built one for her, but she was trying to figure out how to get the words on it. 

That's where I came in. I am lucky enough to have a Silhouette SD machine, and can cut vinyl lettering. So I offered to help.

I didn't know exactly what she had in mind, so I jumped on Pinterest. After a quick search I found a few examples (here) of what she had seen and got to work. 

I designed, cut, and transferred the lettering onto the advancement ladder, and I think it turned out super cute! 

I definitely had the easy job for this project. 

Each clothes pin will have one of the boys' name on it and we'll have a fun way to keep track of where they are in their advancements. 

I'm sure the boys will love this, I can't wail till they see it at the next Pack Meeting! 

Chalk Paint Desk Redo

My son has been wanting a desk in his room for a while now, so when we saw this beauty at a garage sale a couple of weeks ago we snatched it up. As you can see, it needed a little love before we wanted to put it in its new home.  

I like quick and easy when it comes to my projects, which must be why the idea of using chalk paint on furniture is so appealing to me. With chalk paint you don't have to strip the furniture, or sand it, or prepare it in any way besides wiping the dust, etc. off of it. 

I have a couple big pieces of furniture in my house that I have been considering using this technique to redo, but I'm a bit wimpy about jumping right into those and wanted to try a couple of smaller items first. 

So, this desk became my latest experiment! 

Luckily I had an assistant for this project. Since it was for him, my teen-aged son got to be part of the redoing.

First we took off the old hardware and wiped everything down well. Then we mixed up some homemade chalk paint and got to work.

Here's the recipe we used (found here):

3 tbsp warm water

5 tbsp plaster of paris

2 cups latex paint

We just mixed the warm water with the plaster of paris and then stirred in the paint. 

It took us about three coats of paint to get the desk fully covered. Then we were patient and left it overnight to dry completely.

The next step was the hardest for us. When you use chalk paint you need to protect it with something, otherwise the paint will chip off easier than it would with regular paint. The popular thing to use with chalk paint is a soft wax. 

I had never used wax before so wasn't exactly sure what the best method was. I found some basic instructions  here. 

 

We just used some rags to wipe on a thin layer of wax, rubbing it in with a circular motion. After letting is sit a few minutes we took other rags and wiped off the extra wax, then buffed it up till it shined. This step did take a little extra elbow grease, so I was happy that my son was helping!

After we were satisfied with our layer of wax we left it for a bit for the wax to harden up. Then we attached some new hardware to the desk and it was ready to go.

Hopefully his snazzy new desk will help motivate my son to keep up on his homework better when school starts up again in the fall!

Welcome Post and Sign

This is a project that I was really excited about!

One of the first things I remember pinning onto my Pinterest boards over two years ago was this welcome post and sign.

I have been waiting for the right opportunity to make it ever since.

I love to build things, though my anxiety over keeping all my fingers often makes me put off doing things that require using tools with big blades. This project only had minimal cutting so I figured it was something that I could pull off.

We recently moved into a new home and the front porch was bare, and really needing something to spruce it up; so of course, this project came to mind. It was finally time to build my very own welcome post!

I went to my local home improvement store and picked out a nice 4"x4" piece of wood. The original poster made her 4x4 post piece only two feet tall. My son (who I brought along to help carry the wood) convinced me that I should make ours taller. So, I had the nice worker there cut my 10 foot 4x4 into three equal parts, which made my post piece about 3.3 feet tall.

I also picked out nice looking 1"x6" and 1"x4" boards, which I brought home to cut myself.

Out of the 1x6 I cut two 5.5x5.5 squares (a 6" board is actually only 5.5" so these cuts were easy), and then cut two more squares, each 4.5x4.5.

And for the welcome sign I cut a 3.5"x11" piece out of the 1x4.

Since I had decided to make my post taller, I thought that I should make a third level on the base to keep it a little more stable, so I found a piece of MDF board in my garage and cut one more square, I cut this one 6.5x6.5.

When I was ready to put it all together I stacked both sets of squares (one with a 5.5 and a 4.5, and the other with a 6.5, 5.5, and 4.5), and attached each set together. I drilled holes first, then spread wood glue between the layers, and then screwed them together.

If I were to do this project again I think I might attach them straight to the post one at a time. The bottom set ended up pretty thick, and I had a hard time finding screws long enough to get through all three layers and attach them to the post together.

I used wood glue and two long screws to attach each set of pieces to the post.

When I attached the top piece I drilled first and made sure to counter sink the wood before I put in the screws so that none of them would stick out on the top. When I had it all screwed together I filled the holes and let it dry.

Lucky for me I already had an extra hook at home, so I attached that to my post with a couple of screws. Somewhere on Pinterest I read that before painting metal you should wipe it down with vinegar, so I gave the hook a quick vinegar wipe down before moving on with the next step.

I had wanted to try out chalk painting for a while so decided to try that on this project. I used the recipe found here, and mixed one part warm water with one part plaster of paris, and then mixed in three parts of black paint. I only made a little bit because I knew this project wouldn't take much paint. 

I did three coats, and still had paint left over. Next time I may use a bit more plaster of paris in the mix to thicken the paint up a bit.

I probably could have just used regular paint on this, I didn't really notice a big difference, but it was fun to try out something new! 

 

After the paint had dried overnight I sprayed it with a couple of coats of polyurethane sealer. I had actually wanted to put a coat of wax on it (something else I've seen on Pinterest and have been wanting to try), but fortunately realized that it wouldn't be a good idea to wax something that will be kept outdoors and susceptible to the summer heat... a mess of melted wax would not be fun!

Between waiting for coats of paint and sealer to dry I painted the welcome board tan with craft paint, and inked the edges with a black ink pad. Then I used my Silhouette machine to cut out the "welcome," and transferred that onto my board. Afterwards, I gave that board a few coats of sealer too.

 

Then I drilled a couple of holes into it and added some craft wire to use as a hanger for the sign. To top it off, I tied on some raffia, a piece of torn fabric, and clipped on a flower clip that I had laying around. The flower is interchangeable so I have the option of switching it up for different seasons, or just for variety's sake! 

 

I love how my welcome post turned out! It was really fun to do. Now I just need to add a cute set of table and chairs, and a few flower pots and my front porch will be officially spruced--just in time for Spring!