Upcycled Rustic Initial Carved Headboard

When we redid some of our garden space we had some leftover 1 X 8 boards.

Santanna’s bed does not have a frame and these boards have been sitting under the deck for almost 2 years, giving them a great distressed patina.

As Jon and I were talking about how to cut up…or not…the boards and how we attend to arrange them to go over her full size bed I fell more in love with the look.

I decided instead, they would go in our room…over our king sized bed.

We had taken off an outdated headboard and have also been discussing how to upcycle that one.

Headboards are apparently a big deal at our house..who knew.

I wanted to headboard to go past the bed a little so that when the bed is made the headboard would extend at least the length of the bed + bedding, the headboard is a total of 96 inches and goes about 6 inches past the bed/bedding.

The back of this headboard has 3 1 X 4 boards placed so the end 2 can attach to the metal be frame and one in the middle for support, you could use 2 X 4 or even 4 X 4 board for the “legs” if you want to change the look, I wanted a sleek profile, plus we had all the boars for this in the garage making it FREE.

When I was dreaming up Santanna’s headboard I had some thoughts about drawing some sort of graphic on it, she still might get a headboard so I won’t spill those thoughts yet.

I thought a saying that might fit, but honestly there was not one that I LOVED, so I thought how about a carving?

Aha! Initials in a tree….Awwww..right?!?

SO I used our generic Dremel tool, which I think I killed while doing this and carve d our initials, First name and Middle initial, per Hubby’s request.

It looks rustic which is great, this was not as easy as I thought it would be, hence some minor imperfections, but I do love the way it turned out.

I did not carve the heart; I painted and sanded all of the heart and initials to give it an aged look.

On the other side I added the year we were married in paint, I did many different layers and wanted that too look aged as well, I am not sure that it is exactly how I pictured it in my mind, but I can’t say how often my vision and the end product correspond.

Plus it is more discreet then the carving.

I have to say we are loving this, and that is was FREE from some repurposed garden boards makes it feel special.

We also dabble in couponing…amazing Kellogg’s deal!

Posted by Patchwork Reality

I always feel like the cook who has a spoon in every single pot….I really just am inspired by so many people and ideas which combined with my love for learning and challenging myself, I set out to mater couponing. I have to say it is very exciting, but immensely time consuming to really get the deals like they are starting to spotlight on television.

Because it takes so much time, it like many other proverbial spoons got put back in the drawer, a knowledge that I possess but only take out of the drawer on special occasions.

This week at our Hy-Vee I hit a little jackpot, the spoon went back into the pot. They had an in store coupon $4.00 off milk when you bought 4 boxes of Kelloggs Rice Kripsies cereal. This reminded me that I had peelies for free M & M’s candies when you bought 2 boxes of Rice Krispies, these were peelies that I acquired from Target. Also to sweeten the pot I had $1.00 off fruit with the purchase of 2 boxes of Kelloggs cereals. I knew I could do a bit better and went to the Kelloggs website to look at the coupons available and sure enough they had $1.00 off 2 boxes of Rice Krispies.

So let’s recap my arrangement before going to the store:

$4.00 off milk WYB 4 boxes Rice Krispies

2- $1.00 off 2 boxes Rice Krispies

2-$1.00 off fruit WYB 2 boxes Kelloggs cereal

2- Free M & M’s WYB 2 Boxes Rice Krispies up to $2.99

I also had the Rice Krispies coupon from the newspaper Red Plum insert from April 17th.

There were enough coupons for me and my husband to each do a transaction.

Total for all of this………..

$25.80!!!

The bags in the front were $1.00 each and are poppy seeds from teh bulk section, I think we got about 6 pounds for $2.00!!

The total bonus to this is that these boxes were marked with codes that can be redeemed on the Kelloggs website here. Each box has one code 4 codes earns you a $5.oo pre paid visa gas card. I already entered and sent away for my free $10.00 in gas!!!

Beautifully FREE-Cycled Crate Boxes

Posted by Patchwork Reality

I have been a regular stalker of Anna White’s blog on how to make your own furniture and other wonderful items from wood, newly purchased or reclaimed. I have to say as a mother of 4 there is no end to the amount of things that I am constantly trying to organize and manage. This “box” made from pallets gave me the nudge to get my saw and safety glasses and go out to the garage. I have to say there is something that is really liberating about using a power saw, the dust the noise, and knowing that I am making something useful.

My neighbor happened to have a pile of these pallets stacked in his garage for use as starters to neighborhood bonfires so he was more than willing to give me a few for my project.

I am by no means a girly-girl, I am a full grown tomboy, not afraid to use these power tools, however I have not had enough regular use to consider myself confident with all the tools in the garage, so this was an adrenaline rush to be wielding a power tool, and also a bit frightening knowing that I was only 95% sure what I was doing. anyway, no bodily injuries and mostly square, thanks to a little help from my husband, we made these boxes and this nightstand/bookshelf, for Avalon’s room.

Total cost for the boxes was free! The pallets were free from my neighbor, minus the beer or two we shared with him and the ends were from wood we had in the garage. The ladder table which you can tell was made by a beginner;) was about $25.00.

Now I have to decide what to store in these lovely freecycled boxes.