DIY Log Planters

Posted on August 14, 2015 by Ashley

Hi Friends! Sorry I’ve been quiet this week, came down with the stomach flu, worst 24 hours in a long time. Good news is I’m feeling 100% better and I’m ready to get back at it!

Today I thought I’d show you a little project that my husband dreamt up and implemented. Now I’m not sure if you realize how big of a deal that sentence is. My husband is an amazing carpenter. Years ago in his home country he was trained from a very young age in furniture carpentry. He learned how to build beautifully ornate furniture, then he moved on to concrete forming and excels at that. You’d think with having such a handy husband that I would be able to get lots of my hands on – power tools needed projects completed. That is not the case. While my husband is very good with his hands he really doesn’t like to do anything carpentry related at home – I can’t really blame him but sometimes that’s uber frustrating for me. BUT this project was his baby and it turned out so lovely!

This is my new upright planter on my front step that is made from a hollowed out log and I adore it! In case you didn’t notice we love to use things found in the outdoors to repurpose and decorate our surroundings – outside included. We also LOVE flowers and plants. I have no idea how Carlos came up with this idea but once it entered his mind he was obsessed with finishing it.

We started by sourcing out the stump. We actually found one when we were camping in June but my parents also found two really great stumps and brought them for us to use so that’s what we ended up using.

Carlos was so obsessed with finding these stumps that while we were camping we drove off to the middle of nowhere and he got out and walked forever by the road farther into the forest to find trees that had already been cut down. This is him after finding what we thought was a perfect stump – he’s obviously excited.

The next part was the most time consuming – hollowing out the log. I don’t really know if there’s a better way to do this because this took a long time and was super hard on our power tools. Carlos bought a large spade style wood bit and just drilled holes all around. He did shallow drilling all the way around and then drilled deeper until he reached the depth he wanted.

He also drilled diagonal holes from the inside to the outside to let water drain through. Then we simply planted the flowers!

He also made two of the long planters for either side of our steps and I’m so in love with those as well. They make great conversation pieces for people walking by our house. The only problem I see with these is that eventually the wood will rot out. The large stumps will last longer than the long ones for sure but I’m trying to brainstorm how I can make them last. I may use some sort of epoxy on them next year. Definitely we’ll have to store them somewhere dry over the winter but I’m not convinced they’ll last very long at all.

What do you guys think? Is this a project you’d be willing to invest your time in? It really cost us nothing but time.

Table Center Piece DIY

Posted on July 22, 2015 by Ashley

Today I’m going to show you a super simple, super budget friendly DIY.

I think I’ve mentioned before how my husband and I enjoy natural decor – lots of plants and wood, and white. We have so many visions of what we want to do with our house and our decor and slowly but surely we are getting there!

In June we took a trip with some friends to Cypress Hills in Alberta, Canada for a weekend get away. While there we did some scavenger hunting for some cut down trees and luckily for me I found a fantastic piece of driftwood. I was actually looking for it for some baby shower decor for a shower I was throwing later in the month. After the shower was over I brought the piece home and brainstormed what I could do with it now. I got the idea to use it as a centre piece and put some succulents in it. I’m so happy with how it turned out!

First my husband used an electric planer to plane both sides so it sits evenly (for the baby shower I used it to place mini cupcakes on). Then while my parents were visiting he used a large drill bit to hollow out 5 holes – three larger ones and two smaller ones. At that point we needed to brainstorm how to now plant the plants. You can’t just plant right into the holes – first it would rot, and second there are some holes in the side where the dirt would fall out. My dad – being the mr.fixit and problem solver that he is, searched the house high and low to find appropriate sized containers. Eventually he found pop cans that fit perfectly! Brilliant!

Next was to make the look acceptable. He cut them down and then snipped all around the top and folded the metal in to make the edge dull instead of sharp – sorry I don’t have any process photos of that, hopefully that’s a good enough explanation! In the photo below you can see the inside edge folded over

This weekend I spray painted two coats of white Rustoleum to make them look a bit more aesthetically pleasing. I went to a small local plant shop that I absolutely adore and picked out some tiny succulents and airplants. I repotted the succulents into the cans and placed them in the driftwood. In the smaller holes I put a bit of preserved moss I had left over from a Terrarium I had made and put the airplants on top.

I’m seriously so in love with the results! It’s taken a little bit of attention to make sure my toddler doesn’t touch, thankfully he’s used to momma saying “plants are to look at not to touch” and he’s fairly good at listening! All in all this cost $20 for the plants and that’s it, the rest of the supplies I had on hand. You could even recreate a smaller version, and I definitely plan too. It’s amazing the beauty you find in nature that can accent your home decor!

What’s Up

Posted on September 4, 2014 by Ashley

I read quite a few blogs and there’s a few that do a bit of a round up weekly about what’s going on in their day to day lives (Elise Cripe, Ali Edwards, A Beautiful Mess to name a few) . Those are my favorite posts, so I’m doing my own version.

Here’s what’s up:

We’re taking lots of walks to distract us from short naps and new teeth.