the cheapest love i ever made

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alternately (and less open to sketchy interpretation) titled: DIY pallet statement sign tutorial. so cheap, so easy, and makes a huge impact on any wall or space.

what i call this little number is my shine sign. or just the diminutive m'shign if i'm feeling caffeinated and friendly.

my inspiration was this pin which i was instantly ready to love full blast, and then was SUPER confused by. like, why are we embedding the intimate song of solomon verse on our privacy fence? then i realized it was actually created as a wedding backdrop (brilliant!) and thought, "shwew."  and my full on love for this idea proceeded as planned.

knowing that i wasnt gonna nail any words into our beloved fence (because of , #1: pretty and #2: forehead punctures on children), i sought about for a way to adapt this idea. my eyes fell on 4 pallets we had snatched up about a year ago when pinterest convinced me that gold was worthless and the true specie of the american crafter was now PALLETS. SO MANY PALLETS.

i have used one plank so far in a year. i want my gold back.

but this time, the pallets were mad handy to have. and even my stubborn refusal to get rid of them despite their being neglected was perfect. since we had dumped them next to our driveway (for classy) nature had attempted to reclaim the wood for her own, so the planks i harvested have a nice weathered look that i didnt even have to work for.

everything else that went into this project was on hand and free (and even if i hadnt had the stuff i could have bought it all for maybe $10).

this is how [montell jordan and] i do it:

MATERIALS:

-4 pallet planks (or any wood 5"x44" ish)
-2 pieces pf scrap wood about 14-18" long and 1" thick
-a mess of little nails (with at least a bit of a head)
-hammer
-various colors of yarn
-paint and a nice little paintbrush
-pen, paper, tape.

i put that "4 pallet planks" up there in the material list all casual like it was nothing. if you've ever deconstructed pallets you know it isnt NOTHING. it takes muscle. and grunting. grunscle.  i am actually a little offended that no one on our street called an emergency veterinarian to tell them that a muskox was in labor when they heard me waging war on my chosen pallet.

if you feel like you are about to herniate a few organs, dont worry, you are doing it right. also: try harder.

line up your 4 planks in a pleasing fashion

take your two scrap pieces of wood and trim them down so the edges wont be longer than the width of your sign. these are the crosspieces that wont be seen but will bind your 4 pallet pieces together.

nail the pallet wood onto the cross pieces. nothing exact or precise needed here. save your OCD for a later step.

we only had long nails, and i wanted it super secure, so i flipped it right side up and nailed front to back into the cross pieces, and then bent off the extra nail length with my hammer on the back so as to avoid tetanus.

print your main statement word (mine is SHINE. we have always loved that verse from phillipians and thought it perfect on several levels for this project since the sign is destined to go outside in the shiny sun and under the stars).

print out the big honking letters and lay them out on your wood to make sure you like the size and look. one letter per page (maxed out to the edges) was the perfect size for mine.

 we used the font BEBAS NEUE (free from dafont) at size 900 or something monstrous like that. and i printed with the embossed format to save ink.

cut your letters out carefully and place them in the exact place you want them. you can tape them down if you're working someplace breezy.

trace your letters with a sharpie (dont sweat what color it is. it's gonna be all covered up in the end anyway).

toss the paper letters and peep your outline.

grab your hammer and nails (grunscle optional). dont just start hammering like a mario bros. bonus level villain though. 

first you need to nail the corners of each letter. these will dictate the spacing of the others and we KNOW we need the corners of our letters to be defined so nails definitely go there before anywhere else.

here is my E completely cornered

ok once everything is cornered, go ahead and put your midpoint nails in. the spacing is going to vary here. for the mostly straight letters, it's very straight(HA)forward and you just want to halve or third each straightaway by adding another nail or two along each line.

the bottom of my E. i decided it only needed one more nail. the more you add the more colored in and less string-y your finished project has the potential to be.

for the curves, it's kind of a pain because you want them to LOOK curvy, and that means lots of nails (and flashbacks from pre-cal where somehow straight lines turn into a curve).

 our S had more nails than the other 4 letters combined i think. i cannot say that i recommend picking SASSAFRASS or ROCOCO as your statement word, but it's your funeral

once everyone is nailed in check to make sure all your nails are about the same height and not crazy wonky bent. (yes, michael crichton's timeline is a pretty good read)

congrats! the burly hardware/woodworking portion is over. now we get to be indoor/creative-y types.

select your color scheme and lay out your yarn/string. i always have to do this to make sure a red/green havent sneaked next to each other (even though i didnt have red in this project...accidentally making christmas decor is always a fear). i still had all of these leftover from other projects and this one hardly made a dent in my skeins. my yarn lives on for more DIY!

to start winding, tie off your yarn on a nail.

as you make a turn, wind all the way around the nail heads you pass along the way for extra security (but dont pull anything crazy tight).

i would always do the outline of my letter first

every now and then, push your yarn down to the wood (rather than up high on the neck of the nails.) you'll get more depth this way.

once youve wound a base outline, go wild and start connecting all of your nails. bounce all over the place. just make sure you go back and define the outline of the letter every few layers.

when you have the coverage you like, cut the yarn and tie a tiny loop at the end of it.  then you just find the nearest nail and hang your loop around it at a tension that isnt too loose or too much of a stretch.
.

go back and snip your starting tail off if you can see it flapping around and it bugs you.

feel free to grab a studly buddy and have them string a neighboring letter to make the work go faster. (give them the curvy letter just for fun).

as you're getting all geometric connecting your points, just make sure you dont join two nails that are forbidden lovers and which would break the perimeter of the letter outline. you think this is an "n'doy, keight, like i'd ever let that happen!" but once you start crazy winding up in those letters, its like youve dumped out a  box of superballs in a bathroom stall and things get a little chaotic.

i like to think the bird knew that i would use this exact area for a WHAT NOT TO DO example and he pooped on it to drive the point home.

 from foundation to penthouse, you can see how you want to make these nails and yarn build up into 3D lettering.

when everyone is tied off, check your results. i spotted the top of my E was a little convex and some other wonky areas that looked distorted because of nail bend. 

this was easy to fix by just tapping lightly on the offending point so that the line straightened up.

next pick a font and print out your subtitle words (we used the font ANDROGYNE). tape down each word to get a feel for proper spacing and such.

i laid down a thick stripe of tape to be the "line" that all of my letters would sit on. once i made sure the tape was level, i didnt have to worry about my letters sagging if i made a mistake eyeballing their float height.

i used a pinterest tutorial for painting perfect letters on wood to do my lettering. this was way easier than cutting out my script-y font. (of course if the gods have smiled on you and you own a vinyl cutting robot slave, then you just go ahead and use that. but you wont feel as awesome as us free-handers when its over...maybe).

i just took a cheap old ball point pen and retraced the outline of each letter on top of the paper. i pushed down really hard to kind of engrave the outline into to wood below 

when you pick up your paper, you should see your outline. this will guide your painting AND provide little riverbanks so that its harder to paint outside the lines. the imprint acts as a dam to stop the flow of paint right at the perfect outline of your lettering.

because my wood was weathered, some of it was HARD and didnt want to take the imprint very deep. but i could still see it, so i just traced the outline with a pen in these cases to be sure i didnt miss the border when i painted (good light will be your friend here).

PAINT! this is where your OCD can be fun. i am a terrible painter and have shaky hands and i still pulled this off with a lot of satisfaction. (p.s. we used exterior paint since our sign will live outdoors).

if you do mess us, no worries, you have and eraser...its called sandpaper.

admire your work. no one ever needs to know you cant just freehand paint like that.

and youre done! now you can just feel extra happy and inspired and colorful every time you walk by your sign (after you hang it...i dont have pics of where we hung ours bc thats a later reveal with another project).

 

in the words of layla-boo: i LOBE it!

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blendsday

hows about a nice random brain-shrapnel post today?

-i recently received the best spam comment ever: After reading your book, I've been hemorrhoid-free for almost two years. 

um, congratulations! my heart's cry is to write to relieve rectal arterial swelling.

-my son miiiiiight be a literalist:

Judah: "we did a fire drill today"

Jesse: "oh yeah? How'd it go?"

Judah: "wooo-oooo woooo-ooooo" 

#thatshowitgoes

-i have been running SO behind on my etsy orders lately. like always getting them out at the last possible day in my "will ship by" window. so monday night i woefully skipped my girls small group and toiled like a house elf to finish up and actually get ahead.

this afforded me the unknown (for a few months at least) pleasure of sewing for fun last night! i used an Oliver + S pattern i bought forever ago and made layla an easter outfit last night. 

i didnt start until 11 pm (brilliant) and then i shocked myself by staying up until 2:30 am (without really noticing) working on these and was not even tired this morning. as i woke and realized i could finally fit it on my lil' peep herself, all desire to keep snoozing left me. creativity and passion do wonders for work-ethic.

 the buttons arent sewn on because i think i'm gonna get another color. what color do yall think would be best? i like the light blue and the pink in the floral patter, but am notoriously bad at these decisions.

-jesse and i went to a wonderful friend's wedding recently and they had the coolest programs i have ever seen. john, the groom, is one of only 5 males i know who read the blog, so naturally he is cool like ovaltine and was on board with these bad boys:

i would be a little nervous that they would have to requisition a "full figured gal" silhouette for me!

-so in my recent weight loss adventures i had been noticing that my scale was acting weird. like i would weight myself on the way to the bathroom (for mathtime funs...you know) and then weight right after. sometimes my scale would say i had GAINED 1-1.5 lbs during the interval. 

our scale was like $10 from rite aid, purchased in 2007 and has been subject to myriad drops, stomps, kicks and jumpings on-and-off by the kids. so i decided to retire her and get a decent one. this baby had crazy good reviews and looks slick and was not bananas expensive my any means

it arrived last night and i was excited to get my new spiffy weight in .2lb increments and to see if maybe the old clunker had been shorting me some lost pounds.

well, well, well. turns out the old scale was actually quite friendly and had been reporting me 4 lbs less than i actually am. 

so all aboard the wambulance. i KNOW the number doesnt matter. i KNOW the differential of total loss is still the same. but even so i am struggling against big-time discouragement to find out this unhappy little surprise that i was heavier to begin with and heavier now than i had realized. 

-but on the uptick of that emotional spiral: i am on level 3 of jillian's 30 day shred. i started it right after my scale debacle and it was great to have a new routine to focus on. i am still doing the beginner moves for the most part, but even still level 3 is haaaaaard and it felt good to thrash myself...especially my secret 4 lbs.

-my boudreaux post on must-haves for baby has a $100 visa card giveaway at the bottom. getcha odds on!

-i am eating these two dishes like a ravenous monster lately. i seriously cant get enough: arugula and (optional) avocado with the DELICIOUS mustard herb dressing here. 

and then a family staple that we eat once a week (yet a pinterest pariah since no one EVER repins it...only one repin in 26 weeks!): mushroom and farro salad. yall. EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAT IT!

from whatsgabycooking

if farro scares you, just think of it as rice or pasta...though it is so much yummier and healthier than both. it is SO GOOD. we get ours from amazon and cook it in our rice steamer for this recipe. the kids even love it (judah once pitched a fit for farro...hilarious!) and it's great reheated the next day. go the distance and get real fontina from the deli counter.

and with that, my mind grapes are sufficiently squozen. i'm off to judah's class easter party!

re: the other side of the pillow

this moment just fell into my lap (literally) yesterday afternoon. 

i think it's kind of flawless. i have no complaints about my own appearance that might get in the way of fully appreciating the moment: her perfect baby mouth, her pudgy hand holding my necklace, her sweet little mullet upswept into a high pony by my hand, and even the 3rd volume in my teddy roosevelt biography series looking on.

best believe i plastered this baby all over tarnation.

but lest this picture pull an internet/pinterest/social media trickaroo on you (like when i see a beautiful picture of twins on there and think, "oh i wish i had some!" based on one single frame) and you run off looking to get your most fertile egg nice and fertilized by the closest sperm within boinking distance--because, OMG motherhood is such a righteous snugfest!--let me show you just why the above photo is the elusive needle in the proverbial haystack of the moments that dont often get pinned:

4 minutes after the first picture, she woke up.  ponysprout erection, slack-jawed grog face, sweaty bedhead. she's still perfect and amazing but in a less "pin it!" kind of way

and then her personality wakes up:

 and yes. we are back in the wheelhouse.

i think the reason so many "perfect" pictures get internet love is BECAUSE they are the exception. just like the stories on the news are always about the 1-in-a-million thing that happens rather than exclusive interviews with the 6.5 billion people who had a normal day, didnt get murdered, win the lottery, or pull a balloon boy.

but the same tricky lies that convince us to fear those freak stories, or to waste our money on the statistically impossible (though i will always buy a $1 ticket when those jackpots get huge just to join in the fun) can mess us up, but in the opposite direction.

let me explain.

i have spent a lot of my adult life praying and wrestling and cowering my way through the crippling wound of fear. like paralyzing, imagination-on-a-rampage-until-i-am-full-on-catatonic fear. i have clung HARD to the the promises of god that i dont need to be afraid because he is with me. the exercise of NOT going there in my mind to the one in a million scenario, of taking captive those thoughts before they steal any more moments of my life has been grueling and so worth it. 

i set a boundary in jesus' name and refused to live my life a slave to the highly unlikely. if any of those things do happen, well that will suck, but jesus will drag me through it and somehow i just trust that glory will come.  but i wont live in that place until i am actually living. in. that. place.

the big scam was that i was mortgaging thousands of my here-and-nows to try to avoid one or two probably-nevers. what an easy payout for satan. i locked myself right up for him.

but in the opposite but equal way, beautiful things can steal our lives too. instead of living for the purpose of avoiding a single event, moment, or image, we can go the other way and mortgage our minds in seeking something that is just as fleeting or unlikely. 

just as much as i really couldnt stop someone from hurting me if they truly wanted to, i also can never be that effortlessly beautiful, perfectly photographed, impeccably styled mom that i see on a blog. because the reality is that A: thats just not who i am and B: it's probably not who she truly is 90% of the time either. 

when all we see is a slice, a picture, a post, a story, clip, we should be careful not to project it onto all of the stuff behind the scenes of that person nor onto ourselves. media (social and otherwise) is tricky because it reports and glorifies the exception. 

if i watch the news nonstop and look at pinterest all day i will see a ton of crime and gobs of really beautiful, relaxed, confident women. my dumb ass will instantly project this out in 2 opposite vectors: one of comparison, "how terrible! that could totally happen to me," and one of contrast--"how beautiful! but i will never be as XYZ as that," until i am some freak hanging by my mental fingernails onto sanity and unhappily convinced that i am just some ugly, frazzled, future murder victim.

WHAAAAA?!?! how did i get here!?

i have read some of the popular rants against certain kinds of pins or blogs. they typically say that these "supermoms"  make we the "normal moms" look and feel bad about ourselves because we dont concoct homemade, organic, pokemon-shaped lunches for our kids everyday and look like meg ryan (in the 90's) doing it.  

while i am all for, dont be so hard on yourself, i feel like we are missing an opportunity for introspection if we make it "their fault." no picture, post, or story can MAKE you feel anything.  but they can bring something across your radar that snags on a piece of your brokenness.

it seems to me that that's what we need to be exploring...not if that certain blogger's picture  is photoshopped or saying things like, "yeah well i bet her husband cant stand her."

this is like 1st grade sociology: the tearing down of others to build ourselves up. spoiler alert:: it doesnt work.

why does a picture of a woman with hot legs and a thick head of hair eating a picnic of carrot charizards and cucumber squirtles in a wooded vale with her 7 adoring children (3 of them adopted!) and disney-prince husband make me feel less? did the pixel-synthesizer (official term) in that camera  require a chunk of my security to create the picture?  um, i doubt it. and is it the woman's fault? hell no! she isnt trying to make a statement about what a mom in 2013 should be, she probably just wanted to look pretty and create and capture a picturesque moment for her family..

so rather than putting up my deflector shield about these things and blaming someone else for my insecurity, or rather than just giving in and drowning in the fear, i have really tried to lean into the pain that arises for me in these situations and to figure out where it is coming from within. to discern where the cracks and wounds and brokenness are in my own life that somehow have me NOT believing jesus and what he says about my life and who i am.

he says i am awesome. he says i am enough. he says my hope is built on him. he says he loves me. 

we are commanded to rejoice with those who rejoice and mourn with those who mourn (rom 12:15). there is some sneaky evil going on in my life that makes my first reaction sniping about or cutting down others and feeling less about myself when i see my peers rejoicing (succeeding, looking good, being happy), and fearing for myself and drawing away ("i wont LET that happen to us...everyone to the bunker!") when i see others mourning. 

i really want to press in to the biblical formula for rejoicing and mourning and ditch this stupid backward one that steals joy and maturity on both sides of the coin. i want to live wholeheartedly, to explode love and joy and encouragement onto others when they are up and to walk with them in the sewers when the shit comes pouring in. 

the capitalist accountant in me says that is a fast way to have nothing left over for myself on the balance sheet, but thankfully i have bought into the upside down, backward, magic awesome economics of jesus which say that giving always leaves you with more of what counts and holding back leaves you with less. (remember his tricks with the 2 fish and the hoarded manna?...yeah, he's for real on this.)

my new loo

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one of the few areas of the house that was untouched by the scorched-earth upgrade war we have waged over this past year was the master bath. or, as it shall henceforth be known: "my bathroom" because jesse was exiled to the guest bathroom a few months after marriage as a relationship-preservation measure. 

turns out i am a psychotic morning creature and cannot get ready with anyone closer than 5 feet from me. also, walking unprepared into the after-air of a grown man's bowel movement is apparently my hulk-trigger and turns me into a hate monster who wont stop until hearts are broken. 

well, the bathroom's ability to be good "enough" to escape my new eye for upgrades finally fell short last month. like most of the stuff in our house,  it wasnt that bad, as you may have seen in many a stitch fix self-photo post. here she is:

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the room was wallpapered (i die) when we bought the house and we havent the cajones to take that stuff down correctly, so we just painted it grey (i think this is a deadly sin in the DIY world, maybe?) back in the year of our lord 2006 as newlyweds and called it a day lifetime. 

in addition, this room has 20 ft ceilings and a trapezoidal window way up high so painting, much less de-wallpapering, wasnt something we wanted to relive as 30 year olds with 2 kids.

so the grey would stay (which obviously was fine by us since almost our entire house is grey-walled) and the upgrades would work around that.

more before:

i loved the red/navy/grey combo of the original decor when i was a blushing bride, but now it just looks like a yuppie 9th grade boy's bathroom to my more mature, classy 30 year old retinas.

more stuff i hate: the cluttered look of all those bottles and labels, the slightly off-white sink, and the 4th grader painting i made which is the room's only "decor."  

oh, actually, i am just now remembering that in august of 2011 i did have a brainwave that was prophetic about how much i hated the original cherry cabinets in the bathroom and so we painted them. here's the true before:

painting these white was a trial run for seeing how hard painting the kitchen cabinets would be (answer: hard enough that we delayed THAT process until june).

but like a raging dingleberry i didnt use true white paint. i was a little gun shy about going full on #FFFFFF and so i picked a slightly warmer tone. BIG mistake. huge. the cabinets were no longer wood colored, but they also were clearly a darker white than the white counter, the tile and the sink. failbot. every time i sat in the tub and stared across at the 6 different shades of white staring back i me, i had to fight off a rage-seizure with everything in me.

another hideous before detail:

apparently satin nickel AND brass were sexy hot back when this was installed and the builder just couldnt bear to choose BETWEEN them. so that mofo doubled down with this monstrosity. dont ask me how this escaped my wrath for 6 years. and the complimentary two-tonedness of our bulbs really finishes the look.

and the real belle of the ball:

seems like a great place for a little attempted murder.

so with all of these BEFORE situations, i made a list of general problems i had with the room and set out to find the cheapest and easiest way to fix them:

1. the room has no soul or personality (much like a 9th grade yuppie boy)

2. the room is too dark and heavy

3. there is no pretty or even functional storage (remember, the maximization of vertical space is my love language)

so the first step was repainting the cabs ultra white. this was really easy since the color i was painting over was already a shade of white. that was like a 1 hour project and made a HUGE difference in the look of the room and in my cerebral integrity.

next was a pinterest project i have had my eye on for over a year. $18 bucks at home depot later and some sweet-talking of jesse into doing it and we had a framed out mirror! (heres the tutorial we used).

once the mirror frame was in, i felt a huge difference starting in the room. it just felt more expensive and more like a quality space, rather than just "cookie cutter bathroom version 2C96H4." 

the only other thing i knew for sure was that i wanted this shower curtain and would build the rest of the scheme around it, trying to avoid going too nautical. 

eleventy billion trips to target and home depot later, this is what is in now effect and making my swoon every time i enter:

and of course, after i took all of these pictures, i finally talked jesse into letting me get a new sink basin. so this isnt even the true AFTER.

the old one was beige and had been cleaned so many times with really abrasive cleaner that it had lost its enamel coating and was just so porous and rough that it was impossible to keep clean and repulsive to touch (think fine grain sandpaper). a shiny glossy white new one from HD was only $29. 

and rather than spring $60 to replace our faucet, i thought i would give my lover, oil-rubbed bronze spray paint a try at the job, and he CRUSHED IT!

here is the real sink. superimpose it over the old one in all of the following pictures, please.

so can i show you around some more?

i finally decided on "curry" as my accent color to go along with the gray and navy. target has a nate berkus collection with this color right now that provided the bath mat and hand towels with a rich pop of color for just a few shekels.

another target bathmat by the potty for some texture and more grey variation

i just couldnt make myself buy 2 new trashcans (theres another behind the toilet) just to throw out my current ones. they may have been fire engine red, but they held trash like allstars! a little tape and a can of navy spray paint and its new!

here you can see the bright white cabs and the oil-rubbed bronze spray-painted light fixture. 

plus a new medicine cabinet for storage and visual interest (the 2nd hand towel holder i had over there before made NO sense and accomplished nothing for that space) relieves a lot of the storage pressure on the tiny closet which had just become a constant avalanche risk for anyone who opened the door.

i'm artsy to show you this one. i just wanted a good snapshot of my color/pattern/texture inspiration.

again, i couldnt bear to spend $10 on new curtain hooks, so i sprayed the old ones.

a much more friendly and happy toilet alcove. the new cabinet is stuffed with about 500 tampons and 10 rolls of toilet paper.  i still need some more flair for the shelf. TBA. and $4 fresh mums in my 50 cent yard sale vase make me feel like a rich oil-baron's trust fund daughter (i dont have fresh flowers in the house very often, so that may be going too far).

oh my countertop accessories make me so giddy. they are all from target except for the striped tumbler from west elm.

again, the tissue holder was red until it got the ORB spray paint treatment. a $5 target basket holds the extra hand towels and washrags. the gilded urchin (can we please start calling me that?) and frame and nate berkus  from target too. they were more than i wanted to pay but i love them HARD and they carry on the yellow and stripes thing without being matchy matchy or literal.

i solved the bottle issue in the corner by putting them all in a dark brown basket that came lined with a pretty gray and white floral fabric. you can still see the bottles, but not all the busy labels and shapes. and if the duchess of canterburyshire stops by and i need it to look super classy, i can just stick the whole she-bang under the sink lickety split.

the towel holders (over the door and wall-mounted) got painted and i got the white with gray accents towels at walmart for $4 each. i was thisclose to springing for really nice white towels (in the name of investing in quality things for once) but realized i needed to know myself and our family a little better. a plush $20 bright white towel could never survive in the dukes jungle and would just make me crazy until it got stained or torn and then bitter every time i looked at it afterwards.

i love this room so hard now. and i am kind of proud that i came up with the general look of it on my own rather than using a pinterest photo to start from (which i almost always do). it gives me hope that some little creative seedling in my head is taking root and that i can actually bring to life something that i love using my own brain! it's in there somewhere.