A Christmas Surprise!!!

Merry Christmas, y’all!!! I hope that you are able to spend the day with the ones that you love. I pray that your day is filled with love, joy, and laughter.

I wanted to share the big surprise that I’ve been keeping!

Last year, I enlisted my cousin Chris (who happens to be my go-to for basically EVERYTHING) to make two rocking chairs for a friend of mine. Well, my mom saw and, boy, was she pea-green with envy! So this year, Chris and I started conspiring back in August to make her some.

I’m pretty sure that my normal indecisiveness had Chris a little concerned. He was amazed that I was able to pick out the paint color in just a matter of minutes. I chose the color “Red Delicious” at the Walmart.

Now, I’m not going to lie here. Chris did most of the work. I learned what a router was (and learned that it wasn’t called “rounder”). I learned that using a sander will make your hands feel funny. I learned that woodworking requires a lot of math (and they said you’d never use it after school…ha!). Unfortunately, I’m not “mathy.”

We also learned that you should always use pencils to mark boards, not sharpies…even after several coats of paint, the marker still shows through. Luckily, Chris was able to salvage some of the written on boards. The others he used to make mom two super cute foot stools for the chairs.

Chris decided to paint the screw heads that we used white. This looked beautiful paired with the red.

I’m not always the most observant, but as I was cleaning up the yard a few weeks ago (Rheba’s dog Piper likes to drag all sorts of things across our yard), and I noticed an old bench that we had still sitting on our porch. I messaged a picture to Chris and asked if it was salvageable; he said it was. So, we sanded it down and painted it to match the chairs.

I’m writing this before she gets it, so I hope and pray she’s as in love with the finished product as I am!