Because it is Wednesday

The Hunt for Red Oak-tober...or Grey Ash, or Black Walnut...

I stepped over my first cattle guard today.
The prize on the other side?
WOOD BABY!

Meet Glenn Beck (really, that's his name, awesome, right?)
Mule Skinner, Doggie Lover, Chicken Owner, Mill Worker, Furniture Maker, and nicest guy ever!

Does the lumber in all of these piles look the same to you?
It did to me at first, too!
Everything is weathered, so it has that lovely crusty gray, aged look on the outside, but once it is planed or hit with a sander (or pocket knife), the look completely changes.
My plan is to use a belt sander to lightly sand down some of "the woods" off my wood, but only enough to reveal the beauty hiding underneath. I like the character of weathered wood.
Can't see the beauty hiding underneath? You will when my table is done!

Pictured above by Glenn: Cherry...those planks were 2 inches thick and SO HEAVY! I would LOVE to have a chopping block made from one of those fat boards. I might buy one and make a set of benches. Cherry is so pretty, and SO expensive to purchase in planks (if you can even find them) from a hardware store. I think these are just TOO fat for my table top, though.

Black Walnut I really wish I had taken photos of some of the furniture he has made with this. BEAUTIFUL. Black Walnut is dense enough that if left outside on the dirt for like a zillion years, only 1/8 of an inch would deteriorate. A table made from these bad boys would be around for generations (should my children fall in love with it the way I will. If not, well then when I've passed on they can rip it apart and fashion me a reclaimed coffin that will rot slower than I will.) I had pretty much made up my mind that I would be using this for my table, but then I saw the ash...

Ash-notice the light spots? That is what is hiding beneath the weathered layer. I can sand as much as I want off, or leave it looking old and crusty. How will I ever decide?! I originally was turned off from ash because it is SO light, and I thought it was too soft of a wood. Turns out that Ash is a harder wood than pine...which is what I would have purchased from Lowe's (for more $).
Cedar-obviously, this was recently planed and I would have to "weather" it myself. Isn't it beautiful? Glenn had just finished a table and chairs made from this wood and it was really cool.

I couldn't make up my mind, so I decided to wait, think about it for a few days, and go back with my mind made up and the trailer ready to load.

I DID come home with a dozen farm fresh eggs, though.
Omelets coming right up.

How Much wood would a woodchuck chuck if woodchucks could chuck wood?

I am going to check out a guy in Missouri tomorrow that has a mill and a collection of salvaged, aged, and reclaimed lumber.

Ash, Oak, or Walnut?

Will Skate for Tacos.

Saturday was Big Adventure day.
It rained a lot.
I ran 6 miles at sunrise with Kasey in the rain.
We moved the firewood pile from our driveway to the backyard in the rain.
Then we both became temporarily loco and thought it would be a grand idea to take the kids ice skating.

So we drove to Springdale in the rain.

I can't even ice skate without falling on my face, so I'm not really sure what possessed us to think our girls would be able to do it. But it was a perfect rainy day adventure, it was free, and in the end, we all had a great time.

(Quincy "ice skating")

The ice skating center is about 20 minutes south of here. My oh my. I used to think Springdale was a good for nothing little town that only existed to keep us further away from better shopping in Fayetteville.
I was wrong.
There is a Taqueria on every street corner!
We pulled up and stared at the window displays with eyes so big that it might as well have been a lingerie store. I even unrolled my window in the rain and told Aaron to just follow the tacos de cabesa smell.
There we so many options, we didn't know where to begin, so we just went to the one with the least amount of correctly spelled English words and the most cars in the parking lot. I don't care if you think I am racist. I had to get some tacos in me. If I'd wanted good spelling, I would have gone to the library for dinner.
This place won our hearts quickly, as there was a cape on the quesadilla graphic in the logo. I also think it was the magnetic draw of the word "Super".

I knew it was going to be magical when I walked in and saw like a zillion unsupervised children running around THIS on the table:

GREEN SAUCE.

One look at Aaron, he rolled his eyes and said, "go order everything on the menu that you feel like eating. We won't be back in Springdale for awhile....ok if it's good, we'll be back next Saturay."

It was good.
And yes, I took extra little green sauce container thingies home with me, and they are all gone already.

That night we went on a date which involved MORE food. Then later, we joined up with friends for free breakfast-for-dinner at Mimi's Cafe and ate even MORE food. 3 Dinners? Yes, please.

To the Batmobile!

Ok, I got a message from cousin Jenny, requesting pics of my house.
My home is only 1700 sqft, and y'all have probably seen 90% of it in the background of pictures of my awesome kids. And I KNOW you've seen the bathrooms, because unlike most people, I posted pictures of myself with my arm in the sewage hole when I replaced the toilet.

But I have a zillion projects on my To Do list, so I'm thinking that the hunt for some dining room chairs will begin next week.

I'm going "treasure hunting".

Wanna come along? Of course you do. Treasure hunting is awesome, and I am super fun to furniture shop with...watching me in an antique barn is like taking a fat kid into a bakery and telling him to go nuts.

Hopefully, I'll come out covered in pink frosting.
I'll be posting pics of my adventures here.
Be excited.

{8 Months}

Perfect baby.

Inspiration.

I saw this photo on a friend's blog last month and can't stop thinking about how I want a new table. We are about to out grow our little bistro table. I love color. I love that it is crusty. More than anything, I love that it is unique.

I like to eat.
a lot.
To clarify: I eat a lot, and I like it a lot.

We spend a lot of time at our table.
It SHOULD be unique, and it definitely should be able to seat our entire family without rubbing elbows. (unless you are playing the M&Elbows game, and in that case, elbows SHOULD be touching). Anyway, I couldn't get this table off my mind. (I hate the chairs, btw)
Ok, then...so we decided I would find a crusty old table to refinish.
Unfortunately, even a crusty table costs a small fortune that I am not willing to pony up.
So then I thought...well why don't I just BUILD a table?
I have tools, I can do that!

I googled How to Build a farm table and discovered THIS blog (which ironically, is linked on like everyone's page. It was calling to me. Why didn't I listen?)

http://knockoffwood.blogspot.com/

Are you in love?
Hi. My name is Meg, and I am a furniture junkie and a project addict and this blog is the best crack ever. It has been 7 minutes since my last hit...and I have zero plans of stopping.

My thoughts:

-Um, yeah! I want to be her!

-I never could be because I talk too fast, my hair is too big, and I don't rock the cleavage when I do projects. I rock yesterday's hair, nasty t-shirts with mustard stains and kid hand prints on them, and 10 year old Dr. Martens that Stacy and Clinton would throw in a shredder and make fun of me for owning.

-I am SO ready to build something that does not:
a) make me curse
2) take 6 months to complete
d) have the word Fence in it.

I have a sickness. A love for projects, furniture, and food that is bad for me. And I've got the itch to create something FABULOUS.

Time to self-medicate with chocolate, furniture catalogs, and how-to carpentry articles. I've been dreaming of a big fat table with several antique mismatched splat and ladder back chairs seated around it for years.

Ironically, in my hunt for an image of the perfect table, I found this picture in an Apartment Living post from '09 (seriously, what apartment has space for that kind of rockin' table). Love the idea of the mismatched chair, but here, I think they missed the mark somewhere. They sort of remind me of the old chairs that you might find backstage in my high school theater. The branch thing in this one is also bugging me. Hopefully, I'll do a better job to create the look I want.

Project time!