Pallet Table - Part One (The inspiration and the shop work.)

Oh Pinterest, my bane and my delight.

I am blessed to have several amazing and patient men in my life - both of whom appear here frequently. Add to that two lovely men-in-training helpers and my pinterest hobbies become a family event.

A few weeks ago I saw this amazing table on pinterest.

Let me mention several things here - First, the above picture is from an Etsy shop called triple7recycled. It is awesome. You will get completely sucked in if you visit. This also means the people who built this table know what they are doing and probably sat down and planned it all out, etc. Me... not so much.

Second, I often have "eyes bigger than stomach" syndrome when it comes to projects. The fact that my husband humors me (and will run around on a Saturday afternoon helping me collect pallets etc.) just encourages my sometimes unrealistic creative streak. (Here is an example of where it worked out well!) 

So, Zeke spent some time one Saturday helping me pull apart some pallets in my father's shop.

And a few weeks later I show up on a weekday and beg for help to figure out how to create our own fantastic piece of pallet furniture. My dad has a great space for working on projects and several amazing power tools I am kind of afraid to use. (I know perfectly well how to use a radial arm saw, etc. but if there is a man around willing to do it for me, I will gladly step aside. Yes, yes, woman power and all that - but sometimes the greatest example of power is allowing someone better suited to the task to accomplish it faster and better than I can. In this case my "mom-brain" hasn't seem to have gone away so I am happy to leave dangerous power tool usage to someone else.) 

So, here I am with a stack of torn up pallets and a picture. No plans. No measurements. Only a rough idea of what I want to accomplish and a whole lot of motivation.  

Internet to the rescue. We found a blog that gave another person's experience creating a table from pallets and away we go.

We discussed which angle we wanted to use and decided on 45 degrees (primarily because it made the math easier and required less adjustment of the table saw.) This turned out to be a great plan because the frame joints are 45 degree angles so this just makes the whole process a bit easier.

         

I prefer the pieces that were more weathered and had more character but we also had to find pieces less warped and cracked and this was a bit harder. Our next pallet project I will do a little more planning ahead of time. (Eh, maybe I will, but let's be honest - I don't generally create around planning.)




Pieces needed to be sanded.

And pieced together (just laid in place to make sure we had the pattern right.)

 

We chose to use some scrap 2x4 for the frame. 

At this point our work day ended and I packed up the pieces to take them home, finish sanding them, stain them and work on putting them together. 

 

We haven't gotten the table put together yet. Unfortunately one of the 2x4's for the frame is badly enough warped that we aren't sure we will be able to get it to line up. Will update you as the project progresses!

The Big N

Do you ever feel like Pinterest ruins your life? Ok, maybe that is a slight exaggeration, but it certainly inspires me to add to the chaos of our home instead of decreasing it (no matter how many "how to get organized" articles/tips I pin!). And I have a bad habit of looking at a picture, thinking "I can do that" and not thinking through the whole process.

Separate but related thought... the first 1.5 yrs of our marriage, I didn't really craft much (work, kids, pregnant, infant, etc.) so my poor husband had no idea what he was getting himself into. *grin*

Today's Pinterest Project of DOOM:

OK - first the blogger said this was quick and easy - second she used a large wooden letter she got from Michael's. Third, in my mind this letter was large... not 9". 

So, here was my idea (because I didn't want to pay for a letter or drive to get one, etc)

We had a huge cardboard insert from the box for the hot water heater we replaced and so I cut 4 large N's out of the box and hot glued them together and then spray painted them.

I have been collecting sticks for another project that hasn't even really gotten started yet and Zeke and I have been spray painting them. So we used those to start this project. Gold, silver, white, black and clear.

I started gluing the sticks to the board last week.

A few thoughts:

Obviously sticks are not all the same size nor are they straight.

Also, since I put 4 pieces of cardboard together for stability, it created unfinished sides. I thought about many different ways of finishing off the sides and finally decided to try putting sticks on the sides as well. We will see how that works.

It is hard to tell whether I like this or not because I don't have enough done to step away and take the long look at it.

But at least I had this guy for company.

Kitchen Adventures - Setting the scene and last night's excitement

Since I have become a  SAHM I find myself seeking excitement. I mean, let's face it, 5 month olds are not the peak of intellectual engagement. (More on the SAHM transition in a future post.) One of the ways I do this is in the kitchen.

But I have a few problems.

First, my family is not very, shall we say, excited about culinary adventures. They are plain chicken with rice type folk. (Shortly after we married I tried making Eggs with Hollandaise which everyone in my family refused to eat. I don't think most of them even tried - and let me tell you, I make a pretty good Hollandaise sauce so they are just WEIRD.) I really love to bake, and about half the time the kids are fully on board. (I will post about Pretzel Night which is a family favorite!) The other half I end up giving away or throwing away. (Which for a mama on a budget is physically painful.) 

Last night I tried two new recipes.

Adventure #1

I am trying different cookie recipes hoping take some premade dough with us up North for Christmas. My son, Zeke (almost 12) was helping me pick out recipes on Pinterest and I found this one for Butter Cookies. We made the "Sand Cookies" (at first my son was not certain he wanted anything to do with cookies with sand in the name, and then he told me a story about someone who really did cook with sand in Egypt or somewhere. Almost 12 year olds are full of half learned half "fill in the blank" stories which are somewhere between amusing and annoying on the "mom has a limited band width" scale.)

These were AWESOME cookies. I give them an A+ for yumminess (but an F for good for you-ness). One other thing of note is that I don't have a mixer or a hand blender so I do all by hand.) So, here is where the cookies get exciting - since I moved in I cannot find many of my extraneous kitchen items (handblender) - like my frosting tips. So I decided to try to recreate using a ziploc bag with a whole in the corner. (the smudgy one is where I dropped my phone trying to take a picture.)

This would have worked and I think I could have gotten the hang of it except:

So I just gave up because this was happening on the counters at the same time:

All that includes pork chops, mashed potatoes, and my second adventure. (And our dog Pila who thankfully was not on the counters.)

And they tasted great. The remainder of the dough is in the fridge. I will edit with how the dough did in the fridge once we have gotten actual tips to make the cookies pretty or I decide on a plan B. Kids liked these as did husband.

Adventure #2

My friend KB posted a picture on FB of her Moravian Sugar Cake, When I worked as a Baker at the Fresh Market (many many moons ago) we used to sell these and I loved them, so I wanted to try out her recipe. 

I love making dough with yeast and this recipe required a boiled potatoe as well (hence we had mashed potatoes last night b/c if you are going to boil one you might as well boil a pot full.)

Well, I made the dough per the recipe. It looked gorgeous.

And then I put it in a pan that was too small. (Ok, how often do you make sure you use exactly the right size pan? Always? Oh... oh well.)

And I made the topping. And the dough rose. And I punched it down and put topping on and put it in the oven.

The topping on a Moravian Sugar Cake largely consists of - SUGAR. So, when the dough rose and the butter/sugar mix flowed off the pan, and the chef who was upstairs playing with baby and didn't think about the fall out got back downstairs, the mixture was on the lower heating element and smoking like a champ.

The cake was done so I took it out - but the rush of fresh air into the oven and whatever other perfect combination of events meant that I caught the oven on fire for the first time in my life. (oops!) I yelled for my hubs, our oldest daughter thoughtfully took TC from his arms because he was going to come fight fire with baby, and he came down the stairs. Fire extinguisher of course not handy, but I had been thinking enough to close the oven door which greatly decreased air and my husband leaned against it locking the seal and fire died. House full of smoke. Yahdah. 

But cake came out delicious (though so far only my oldest and I have eaten any.)

Two things of note: first - because I had it in a smaller pan it was thicker than it should have been which means the dough on the bottom did not get as saturated as it should have for a traditional cake. I am ok with this because the dough itself is quiet yummy. Second, while it was hot I did poke several holes in it with a knife which allowed hot buttery sugar and cinnamon to flow into cake. I have no complaints. As is typical of my life, my results don't look like the picture in the manual.

I am ok with that!