Christmas countdown blocks

last year I made countdown blocks using scrapbook paper and I love how it turned out (sorry about the lighting):

But this year my color scheme is different from last year so I decided to make new blocks. here's the finished product:

First I cut my blocks with my saw and my miter box.

Then I painted the blocks silver using craft paint.

Once the first coat was dry I painted the blocks white.

Once the second coat was dry I sanded the blocks down a bit so the silver with show through.

I cut out stencils with my silhouette SD. On one block you'll need numbers 0-5 and on the other you'll need 012678. Number 6 can be turned around and used as a nine as well. I painted the numbers red.

And I also added a little stencil on each corner which I filled in with a silver permanent marker.

For the bottom block I didn't add any embellishments and I tied a ribbon around the whole set. Oh, and the font I used for the numbers is called St. Nicholas, it's a free font and I love using it at Christmas time:) Enjoy!

gift plaque

A month ago I had to go to a meeting at my daughter's school but my husband was out of town...so I was in desperate need of a free babysitter. Luckily A sweet lady from our ward was happy to help me out and I wanted to give her a little something to say thank you so I made her a plaque:

This project was very fast, choosing the fonts and the image took the longest but I did that the night before while the kids were sleeping. The rest took about 30 minutes of my time here and there because you do one step and then have to wait for paint or glue to dry so you can still play with your kids and not feel like you are neglecting them :)

I had the supplies on hand, I used a piece of molding that I cut with my miter box to fit the inside of my 8X8 piece of wood.

I then used wood glue to glue the molding and let that dry about 20 minutes.

Because I'm not an expert at sawing and my miter box isn't in great condition anymore I used wood paste to fill in the gaps in the corners and let that dry a bit.

Then I painted the whole plaque with blue craft paint. I like craft paint for small projects like this because it dries fast:)

I used my silhouette to cut out what I wanted to put on the plaque and took out the insides of the letter so I could use it as a stencil.

filled in the letters with white craft paint and pulled off the stencil.

And there you go!