A Work in progress...

So APPARENTLY I have been nagging my husband after two years in the house to get a wardrobe done for our clothes as storing them (and finding) them in bin bags on the floor is getting tedious. Although it is not quite finished here are some photos of the epic wardorbe project... very excited about how it is coming long!!! Already got the cream paint awaiting!!!

 

Artisan coffee table for my mate

Two of our friends has been looking for a coffee table that would go nicely in their lounge, having not found anything under two hundred quid that they liked it was suggested that the blokey stay with us for a day or two and we have a go at making one.

So yesterday we got hold of some Sycamore from a wood supplier/carpenter that I like to go to in Bishops Castle and after a late start due to a disasterous water meets car incident we got cracking.

The brief (he alleges that he had design control but I think actually his girlfriend pulled the strings) was to create a rustic handmade coffee table with a bit of character that was tolerably straight - no problem with the rustic character bit anyway.

Late yesterday afternoon we therefore started milling the boards and laminated four legs (for chunkiness) and the bits that would eventually make up the top. Leaving them to glue up we grabbed some dinner, tea and a film (hard life).

Today we milled and cut the aprons, knocked some mortice/tenon joints together and did some sanding. While he's got a lillte more sanding to do and a finish to apply it is good to go (and it has).

A double waney edged rustic coffee table, boards to bodged in a day and a bit. Not bad for about fifty quid.

Keeping my puzzle-mad daughter in puzzles

My 2-year old daughter found a clock-puzzle in the bottom of her toy chest that we must have put in there when she was too young for it - and we discovered that she loves puzzles and is very good at them! We also came to realise how valuable puzzles are to teaching her things. Thanks to her clock-puzzle she learnt to count to 12, and can recognise all the numbers up to 12. So my second scroll saw project was an ABC puzzle with a "Itsy Bitsy Spider" theme - she loves this too and within about 2 weeks she learnt to read all the letters of the alphabet (she already knew the ABC song).

One of the biggest challenges was picking a safe colouring method. Internet searches suggested that there are very few wood paints that have been labelled child-safe but most people seemed to think Acrylics are ok, or poster paint. I don't know where to get poster pain from but I do have lots of acylics (and she doesn't put things in her mouth anyway) so acrylic it was!

Further projects have included her name and her nickname and she can now spell her nickname (still working on her full name) and my next project is going to be all the names of her direct family (she always asks me to spell them in the car repeatedly). I also have drawn out a Noah's Ark coat hooks and a different ABC puzzle that will require her to remember the order of the letters... watch this space!

Baking some baps

Wifey has been busy in the kitchen this week.

She regularly makes bread (we recently got a breadmaking machine to save some time which works fantastically well)  this week she used the machine to mix, knead and prove the dough before banging them in the oven to finish them off (coated with egg to crisp them up)

These had poppy seeds in and were AMAZING - the one with two sultanas are for our little girl, they are eyes (apparently).

A day in the rain...

A very rainy day last week saw me in a different part of mid wales hanging a gate.

A couple of weeks ago my dad's neighbour was trying to find a garden gate to replace an old one in her new house, however because of the existance of a very wide cement path and some pet dogs it needed to be a bit bigger than usual.

As she'd had no luck finding a suitable item my dad suggested that I make one to fit for her, which I did. He stuck a large post in the ground earlier in the week which is why we found oursleves up to our necks in rain fitting the gate into place.

Fortunately it went quite smoothly, due the gates width and hefty weight I'd opted to add a sprung wheel to the opening end to help stop the gate sagging on the hinges and this was confounded a little by the uneven cement path.

Bring on a big hammer and some agression and the path suddenly found itself smoother and flatter and all became well.