Crafts! Vintage yard stick step stool, an auction & an anniversary

What a weekend so far.

Another project finished this week, and wow am I pleased with this one.  This is my favorite thing that I've done in a long, long time.  Goodness knows it took long enough.  The step stool came from a yard sale last year and the yard sticks have taken about a year to collect as well (flea markets and thrift stores).

The yard sticks are all vintage and mostly local, some even from our little town.  If you zoom in you can see that a couple of them are old enough that they list 3 or 4 digit phone numbers.  The step stool was unfinished wood.  I didn't prime because I wanted the grain to show through so it just got a single coat of paint and then waxed.  I marked the portions I wanted to display and my husband   cut them to size for me. Then I nailed them down  with tiny gold linoleum nails.  I used blue painter's tape to hold everything in place while I was nailing.  It's not perfect but I am so, so happy with it.  

We'll use it in the bathroom every day for brushing teeth.

Here it is in the upright position.  Oh, love.  I'd really like to do another project like this, maybe front the drawers of a dresser for the kids' room.  

In other news today, I spent the morning at the Amish community benefit auction where I got my bantam pair a couple of years back. It had stormed all night and into the morning so the farm it was held at was a mud pit when we got there.  They still had a great turnout, there were hundreds of people, mostly Amish.  For me, it's mostly a place to eat food and visit with people. I was thrilled to run into one of my old work friends there and joked with him that "You can tell the real county people around this place; our boots smelled like poop before we got here."  Honestly, there had to be 4 inches of mud/muck and some unfortunate people were wearing sandals. 

My husband stayed home with the little guy.  Being days away from having a baby it seemed a good idea to go with my father and his friend just in case, although we joked that if I were to go into labor somewhere I could do a lot worse than surrounded by a couple hundred Amish women.  I'm sure they could have delivered a baby between making batches of doughnuts without breaking a sweat, saving us a hospital bill to boot.

We didn't buy anything but food.  This year of all years (why?) someone had brought Muscovy ducks, Royal Palm turkey poults and guinea hens to sell at the livestock tent.  This is not the time for me to be buying birds and it drove me crazy because at the livestock tent critters sell for peanuts.  Like $2 for a rabbit or $1 per chicken.  I wanted those baby turkeys badly and I'm sure the pair went for like $5.  

Thanks random internet photo.  Royal Palms are gorgeous, someone the next road over has a tom as a lawn ornament and he's stunning.  Oh well, maybe next year.

The rest of the day was wonderful as well.  It rained in the afternoon and the little guy and I hung out on the porch.  "Not too far..." he said as he was sneaking down the steps and around the corner.  We ended up taking a long walk and eating fresh currants off of the bush, barefoot and in the rain. It was really, really sweet.  Then my husband and I went out for dinner to celebrate our anniversary.  It was the first dinner out for us minus the little guy in months.  A really wonderful day all around.