Wild White Bench

 Awhile back I posted about this vanity which I painted the perfect shade of white.  I custom mixed a Swiss Coffee White with some brown to get a nice cream color.  I brought the vanity and a really cute sewing chair into the store to sell, and wouldn't you know the chair sold within a few days.  Luckily I had this old bench to replace the chair. 

Noel

 Noel, Noel, the angels did sing....
This is one of my favorite Christmas decorations.  Every year I put out my ceramic angels.  I've had the one in the middle since I was a little girl.  I started collecting the little ceramic dolls (most of them Josef Originals) when I was six.  A friend of my mom's gave me one for my birthday.  I have quite a collection now, but I think the Christmas ones are my favorite.  For most of the year they are in a cabinet that my grandfather built, but this time of year I display them on some shelves between the family room and living room.  Funny thing about that cabinet, mom antiqued it back in the '70s in emerald green with black glaze.  A few years ago I had it refinished in a red mahogany thinking why would anyone paint it like that.  Now I am painting and glazing furniture, and Pantone's color of the year is emerald.  Go figure!

Well, I was happy to finally get a blog up.  I really do live in the styx, so far this week the power was out, my satellite feed for my T.V. has been out all day today, and I just got my satellite feed for my computer back about an hour ago.  It really is beginning to look a lot like Christmas at my house.
 

Merry Christmas
 Linking to:
beyond the picket fence 

Where Did Burl Go?

 Where did burl go?  No not Burl Ives, famous for Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer, but the beautiful markings on the front of this stereo cabinet.  I found this last summer while in a garage sale slump.  Have you ever been in one of those slumps where you check out dozens of sales and can't find anything?  It gets pretty discouraging.   I was on my way back from yet another overpriced, uninteresting sale when I saw this sitting in a yard sale, that I almost drove by.  The neighborhood was a little dicey, but this piece seemed worth checking out.  I didn't realize what it was until I opened it up. 

European Mount Deer Stand

I am posting a couple of different things today, first this project of my husbands which is the most creative.  The plant where my husband works was shut down for two weeks over Thanksgiving.  That left a lot of time for a man that can't sit still for two minutes.  So what's a guy to do?  How about making a custom stand, to mount a deer a coworker got this year. 
First he found this stump in the woods that was all twisted and gnarled, and ingenious guy that he is, he figured it would make a great stand for the mule deer Phillip got this year.  So out came the chain saw and the project began.

 Here is what the stump looked like cut down and in the process of removing the bark and scraping the wood down.  He did all of this by hand with chisels. 


















Then he made an outline of the bottom of the piece, and cut a base out of some rough sawed wood that he planed.  He drilled some holes in the bottom of the log and filled it with concrete to stabilize it and then attached it to the base.  He was still unsure of what the mounting plate should look like, so we went on line and found one that was in the shape of an arrowhead.  As I said, creative guy that he is, he figured out the design, estimated the size, made a pattern and cut one out.  He even beveled the edges to give it more character.  You have to understand, he did all of this without the deer head for a reference.  Calculating the angle of the mounting plate was one of the biggest challenges.  He used a picture in one of his outdoor magazines, cut off a few inches of the top, and somehow came up with the right angle.  He stained the base and mounting plate in golden oak and finished it with some poly. 
Here it is with the deer mounted on it in it's home.  Not only Phillip liked it, but his wife and daughters did too.  The plant is going to be shut down for another week after Christmas, I wonder what he will come up with then.

RH Style Zinc Dresser

 A couple months ago I wrote about a paint technique that I happened on while messing around with some old paint, when I revamped an old silverware chest (silverware chest to art box).  I found out later that Restoration Hardware has a finish for a line of their furniture called Zinc.  I am in love with this look.

Jewelry Boxes Part Deux

I have been on a jewelry box revamping kick lately.  It's fun because it is somewhere between furniture revamping and crafting.  I wrote about two blue ones last week, here are a couple more.
As you can see the one on the right was in pretty bad shape, but hey it was only $1.  I painted this one red to match the felt.

Finding the Perfect Shade of White

Last summer I hit on a really great yard sale.  The guy running it had collected antiques for years and said he just needed to clean out some of his things.  A lot of the things were broken or damaged, but he was selling them super cheap.  It was amazing what I fit in my SUV that day.  I spied this vanity in the corner with an Eastlake mirror on it.  Now I'm no expert, but I know Eastlake and waterfall don't go together.

Jewelry Boxes part 1

Last summer I found a lot of jewelry boxes at garage sales.  Some were too much for resale, but others were as low as $1.  I thought it might be fun to revamp them into something a little more interesting.  This is a picture of some of the ones I picked up this summer, and at the estate sale I helped out with last month.  Audrey seems to think they were O.K. just as they were (she's pretty, but not to savvy about jewelry boxes).

Antique Rake Table

About 6 months ago my sister gave me four pieces of metal to give to my husband to make something with.  She said she just knew he come up with something great.  Ends up they were tines off of an antique dump rake, as seen in this picture my husband found on Craigslist.

Aurora Borealis

'Aurora borealis', the lights of the northern hemisphere, means 'dawn of the north'.  In Roman myths, Aurora was the goddess of the dawn.  Many cultural groups have legends about the lights. In medieval times, the occurrences of auroral displays were seen as harbingers of war or famine. The Menominee Indians of Wisconsin believed that the lights indicated the location of manabai'wok (giants) who were the spirits of great hunters and fishermen. The Inuit of Alaska believed that the lights were the spirits of the animals they hunted: the seals, salmon, deer and beluga whales.  Courtesy of Northern Lights Centre http://www.northernlightscentre.ca/northernlights.html
The Aurora borealis are very special to my family.  My grandmother's name was Aurore, and I've been told that the night she died the northern lights were the brightest they had ever seen them in Idaho.  In March of 2001 my husband's grandmother passed away, and all of the family went to Oregon for the funeral.  I had to stay home because I was on jury duty.  I got a call from my brother in the middle of the night (the day she was buried), that I had to get up and go outside to see the northern lights, they were amazing!  November 6, 2004 my first granddaughter Aurora was born in Wisconsin. This is a picture of the Aurora borealis when she came home the next night.  I believe that the grandmothers were welcoming her into the world.  Well today is her birthday and I think she is every bit as beautiful as the lights.

Happy Birthday Aurora !