Refinished cutting board and trying to keep up…

You know, “back in the day” I could get so much more accomplished…I’d run around here and complete this or that task in mere minutes. Now I drag my sorry self around and push myself through the tasks and it seems as if I never get anything accomplished! Maybe that’s why I love crafting so much. You can see your results – you can show other people your results! It’s not like yesterday – I worked in the yard for hours – and it still looks pretty much the same! Here is one craft I did this week -

My mother-in-law and I went to a garage sale this past Saturday and I brought home this cutting board. It was in pretty rough shape but I wanted to see if I could make it better. I think it was around fifty cents or a buck. I got out my hand sander and started sanding. I started with a 60 grit paper and it got all gunked up right away. There was either a funky finish on this board or years of grease build-up. (ewwww!) Then I went to a 100 grit and finished with a 150 grit. I did all of this at the kitchen table because A – we had 40 days and 40 nights of rain and it was still raining & B – the kitchen already needed a good cleaning. I had to wipe down every surface anyways. Then I rubbed on some wood butter and here it is!

and the other side -

If I had been sanding outside I would have sanded longer. Even though the kitchen needed to be cleaned this made a BIG MESS lol! I sanded for a half an hour and called it “good enough”. I can sand longer when it needs to be refinished some other day.

Did you notice that odd assortment of things in the first picture? Well, that is part of a project that is on my kitchen table right now. Almost done. Just waiting for the paint to dry. I’m trying really really hard to tackle each new project I bring into the house RIGHT AWAY. My “someday I’ll fix this up” pile got a little out of control lol.

I also worked on a needle felting project in the evenings this week.

I’m starting a little woodland play-set.

There is still a lot to do but it’s always fun!

And here is the lazy woman’s way to clean a fleece. Let the rain pound some of the vegetable matter out of it! This is a meat sheep fleece and pretty dirty. I cleaned some of it a few months ago and it took around 5 bathtub refills…and the water was still dirty. Bummer. But it felts up really fast and works well for your foundation felting. Sooo…I’m going to experiment a bit. I got the fleece for free from a lady I met at last year’s Bazaar. She is a teacher and invited me to her classroom to teach her students how to wash the wool. They did a great job! Way better than I’ve done lol!

In other news I think I accidentally deleted all my old blog posts pictures. Oops! I just went back to try to link up wood butter and the picture is gone…all the pictures are gone! I had gone into my Google account and Windows Live Writer account checked out some settings…it seemed as if I was opening all  my pictures in Windows Live Writer and they were public! All my pictures…so I freaked out a little and started deleting things. Maybe I should have thought about it a little longer…cause I remember clicking a button that said “this delete option is permanent”. Aaaannnndddd – I’ve been cleaning out the photos in my computer and have been deleting all the craft photos…figuring they were on my blog anyways…so…a huge chunk of my life is deleted. And a huge chunk of this blog is without pictures. sigh. That’s just the way it goes. You’d think I’d be more upset about this…

Happy Crafting!!!