Monday, October 8, 2012

Thankschristmastrickortreat-ness

Without really meaning to, my holiday decorations have taken on a theme.  The theme is not due to planning or a well thought out blogging topic, but rather a desire to be cheap.  See I don't really get to far into holiday decorating because it seems kinda silly to invest a bunch of money into stuff that stays in a box 10 months a year.  But I am not a grinch.  I love me some holiday cheer.  So this year I have set out to conquer my need for thankschristmastrickortreat-ness and be practical at the same time.

So you ask..."Jill, how the heck are you going to pull that off."  And I say "multi-purpose multi-tasking".  Which means I'm gonna make and buy stuff I can use throughout the year as well as the holidays!

I have already started with that here - jars that can be used for all of the holidays as well as in a multitude of ways all over the house.

   

My next project fills two needs already!   The idea began when I was trying to come up with a fun way to display Christmas cards.  And my thought for this Christmas is to create a natural lodge look for my decorations (but more on that later).  So I thought I would create a bulletin board out of all the wood scraps in my garage.  It could rest next to the fireplace for a warm homey look.  And then as school started my fridge started piling up layers deep with hand outs, reminders, fliers, book orders, phone lists and I knew a bulletin board in the kitchen would come in very handy.  Which equals two uses for one project...yippee!

OK so now to this bulletin board that I'm going on and on about.  Well, it looks like this...


And to make it I collected some scraps of wood from my garage.  They where all the same thickness but varied in width, length and finish.


I decided what size I wanted the frame of my board by determining what would fit both next to the fireplace as well as above the kitchen desk.  Then I cut down the boards to match.

I also cut down a thinner piece of leftovers about 2 inches shorter then the total height of all the boards put together.  I attached this board to the back of all the other boards.  First using wood glue.



I let it dry overnight by placing some heavy 4x4's on top.  Now if you have clamps they work best.  But I do not so I had to improvise.


The next day I put one screw or nail into each board.  One screw or nail?  What the heck does that mean?!?!  What it means is I had 4 screws the right length so I used those first.  Then I had to use nails which were a little bit to long so I didn't hammer them in all the way, but no biggie cause no one will ever know since they are on the back.


Next I picked up some cork board at Michaels.


You can buy this in a sheet or in squares.  I opted for the squares since the squares come in more colors and thicknesses.  $12 for 4 squares but a 50% off coupon turned 12 into 6 and put a big smile on my face.  With a little bit more measuring I decided how much real-estate I wanted to cover in cork and I cut down the four squares.  The cork comes with little sticky thingies.


But I opted for wood glue instead.



Once again I weighted everything down and let it dry overnight.


This picture cracks me up.  Totally how a DIYer gets it done!

In the morning it was all dry.  A few stylish push-pins from Michaels (40% off coupon) later and for a grand total of $8 I had a dual purpose holiday project done.


Now I just have to hope people send my Christmas cards this year!  Oh I hope you all like me!