How To Make Prep A Pallet Sign For Beginners

Hi Foxy Friends! Today I am sharing a project I decided I wanted to do back in March. I don't know how the time escaped me? How does that seem to always happen? I wasn't sure how I was going to do it, and I watched A LOT of YouTube videos and figured I would combine them all together and do whatever the heck I wanted! Okay let's get started.

I did this project for my Aunt who has a wine cellar in her house and she made a tasting room out of it, so I decided to make a sign that says "Good Friend, Good Wine, Good Times". The last time I was at her house I snuck down there and measured how big the space was. So your measurements might vary. Okay let's get to it:

What You'll Need:

4" wide boards x 1" thick Boards (I bought Pine wood, length will vary depending on what you are making)
Wood Strip (thin board to hold boards together)
Stain
Polycrylic
Wood Screws
Foam Brushes
631 Vinyl (or stencil)
Mod Podge
Paint (I chose white)
Sand Paper (small grit, 320)
Spray Sealer

*Let's assume that you have a spot in your home you want this and you vaguely know how big you want your sign, i.e. 30 inches x 16 inches

Directions:

Step 1: This one is important one, go to Home Depot, Lowes or your local hardware store and find the boards that you want. Hint: Home Depot will cut boards for you, as long as you know the length they will cut for you. I know I wanted 4" boards and I wanted them to be 30 inches long. I found a board that I liked the grain in it. I can't remember what I ended up getting. I think I got Maple. Have the guy at your hardware store cut the wood to your specification. You'll also need to pick up a some wood strip, and have them cut that down for you too (if you know the size of your sign, have them cut it to that size)

I knew I wanted 4 boards wide (4 x 4 = 16 inches), wood strip needed to be smaller than that, so I had them cut it to 12 inch lengths.

Now that you have your boards cut for you, head home! Let's get this project started!

Step 2: Sand down the rough edges of the boards, no one wants splinters.



Step 3: Pick a Side and glue

You'll want to pick the side you like the best and have it face down, so you can use the wood strips to attach all of the boards together. I used wood glue to "glue" down the wood strip, but it ended up moving, so I have no idea if you really need this step. I'm fairly certain you don't...

  Step 4: Drill and Screw

I randomly picked out the screw size, based off of how many/the cheapest I could find, it was a pack of 50 and they were #12 screws. I used a drill bit to start my holes, and drilled through the wood strip and part of the wood board. Then I used the drill to screw in the wood screw, I did this on both ends of each board.

Step 5: Sand

I felt like the screws left some of the boards rough, so I sanded the wood around the screws so no one would get any splinters.

Step 6: Stain the boards then wipe

For this project I wanted to use darker stain. I painted the stain on with a foam brush, then after a few minutes I wipe the stain off the boards with some paper towels. You do this because you are not painting the boards, and you want those gorgeous knots to show through. If you don't wipe the stain off you'll be able to see the streaks of stain on your boards.

I of also made a video for those that like to watch directions, and see how it works. I decided to split it up, so here are steps 1 through 6.

Step 7: Print out your stencils,

I used Vinyl 631 and printed out what I wanted to say "Good Friends, Good Wine, Good Times". I used my Cricut, but you could use the Silhouette, or cut it out yourself. Reverse weed your stencil.

Step 8: Attach Stencil

Attach your stencil how you want it on your pallet.

Step 9: Base Coat

This part I think is sort of optional, but for me I don't want to skip it. This part is going to prevent the bleeding under the letters, because we all know that the vinyl and the wood is not perfect. By using this polycrylic base coat, that is what is going to "bleed" under the letters (which is clear), so when you paint, you get crisp lines. I let the polycrylic set for 15 minutes, then I quickly sanded it down, to make sure that the paint had something to stick to. Remember the Polycrylic was for the paint "bleeding" under the letters so you didn't waste your time doing this step.

Step 10: Paint!

Guess what? It's finally time to paint your sign! I used white paint, but you can use whatever color you want. If you look closely, you can see some of the black vinyl looks "wet", but that's the polycrylic. I did have to go over it three times with the paint. Because of how long it took me to get to the end of the sign, the paint from the beginning was dry, so I circled back to the beginning and did it again without having to stop. I went over it three times, to to make sure you couldn't see the stain behind the paint. It did the job, so I'm guessing three is a good number.

Step 11: Take Stencil Off

I waited 10 minutes before taking the stencil off. Mostly I knew that there was paint everywhere and didn't want to risk the wet paint from the outside of the stencil messing up the rest of the sign. I think the end product turned out fantastic! I wish pallet signs matched the decor of my house, so for now I'll have to settle for making them for other people.

Step 12: Seal

I'm not sure how necessary this step is, but I decided I wanted to seal the whole thing. I mean no one wants the paint peeling right? So I used a spray sealer to seal the whole project. I probably could have used the polycrylic from before, but I felt like the spray would be easier to use...It worked great, and I feel better that my sign is sturdy and sealed.


Side note: I did this for a 60th birthday gift. I decided to have the guest of the party sign the back, which was a great keep sake for my Aunt. I tried many different pens out and the ones that worked best? The ones from Michael's that I use for scrapbooking, so no special pens necessary.

What do you think? I think it turned out great! So what sign should I make next?  I'll have the next video with steps 7-12 up next week, so stay tuned!

Linking up here

Rompers Forever

Hi Foxy Friends! I'm linking up again with The Blended Blog and this week we're covering shorts. I love shorts in the summer. Lately I've been buying a lot of rompers. I don't know why, but they have been calling my name. I showed you one here, and now I'm showing you another one. This one is from American Eagle, I had never bought anything from there, but needed to get to the free shipping.  Does anyone else do that?

*Some of the links are affiliate links and I will  either receive a small commission, at no cost to you, if you click on it or if you make a purchase from one of these links, I may also receive a commission on the sale of the product. Click here for my disclosure page. 

Unfortunately this one is no longer available, but this one is super close.

At the time I took this picture, I didn't have a strapless bra that I liked (that has since changed, this one is my new favorite and I could wear it all day everyday if I had to, going to buy another one soon).

This lace bralette is so darn cute and right now on Costco it is $4 off plus free shipping, making it only $12...but wait for it...it's for 2! So for $6 each you can get them. They come in Black and Grey and Mauve and White. I have all four and constantly wear them.

See how cute the back is? I find that they don't really carry them in the stores all that often, so best to scoop it up online now!

Make Up Details: Foundation / Finishing Powder / Eyeshadow / Eyelashes / Blush / Bronzer / Eye Brow Pencil  / Lipstick (in Obsessed)

Some other rompers that are super cute:

1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5

Now link up your favorite summer shorts!

An InLinkz Link-up

Linking up here

5 Tips To Plan the Best Summer Vacation

Linking up with Shay and Erika for another random discussion. Last year they did a Workin' It theme, and this year they are doing How We theme. I love it. This month is about how to plan summer vacations, so I'm giving you 5 tips to plan the best summer vacation.

As a full time working parent, I try to make the most out of our weekends. It's the time we get to spend together with friends and family, so we like to jam pack our weekends. Not to say that there aren't those weekends, we actually plan to do nothing and have no concrete plans, but mostly I like to catch up with friends and enjoy each weekend to it's fullest extent. That being said, this is how I plan each summer, I like to call it the 5 phases of planning Summer.

I keep everything in my Day Planner, all written out so I can see the whole month of activities. I just don't think I could go to a digital planner.

Planner code:

Yellow = Baby Fox
Purple = Mini Fox
Blue = Work
Green = Family/My stuff
Orange = birthdays/anniversaries

You might be interested in How I Use My Planner

Phase ONE:  Save

...haha, that seems like an obvious one, but by this I mean, we decided in the Fall what we want our Summer to look like, so we can save money. Most things these days cost money, and if we want to make the most of our Summer, we need to plan how we get the money to do so. This year we are going on a big trip for Christmas, so we know we don't have enough to do two big trips, but vacation time at work...blah, work getting in the way of having fun, haha.

So each paycheck we save a little so that we can do weekends away, instead of doing one big long trip. We follow the Dave Ramsey plan, which I talk a little bit more here and how we incorporate that into our lives here.

Phase TWO:  Prior Commitments

The first thing I do, is write down the things we always do. Mostly it's 4th of July and we take the day prior off, and go to my cousins for some fun pre 4th stuff and we take the day after so Mr. and I can go on a day date and relax a bit, we've done this the past few years and it seems to work out well. Once those are written out I can go to the next phase of planning.

Phase THREE: Kids Stuff

I like to plan out what Baby Fox and Mini Fox are going to do. I write out all of the potential summer classes they can take and the times, so I can work out what will work with our schedule. Most of the classes Baby Fox is going to take are Monday-Thursday. So that makes it easier for long weekends. This year Baby Fox is going to take a computer programming class, Lego building class and Build a Fort (if you don't know what that is, check out this post for an explanation). Mini Fox is doing a VBS camp with her little friend and so far that's it. I don't think I can handle much more than that!

Yep this is build a fort, they built that...this is several camps after Baby Fox went...but how cool is this?

Now that the kid stuff is all planned out, next phase.
 
Phase FOUR: Who

Plan who we want to visit and when it's going to happen and coordinate with those people. This part takes some time, usually I suggest what is going to work for our schedule and hope that it works for theirs too. This year, we're doing two things, we're going to visit some good friends in Northern California and we're also going camping in Yosemite. The Yosemite took a lot of effort, as it's so hard to get camping reservations, but we knew which weekends would work for us, and hoped for the best and it worked out! I love when that happens.

 Phase FIVE: The Small Things

You know during the year when you tell people, yea we should do that this summer, or we should go there this summer. I find that if you reach out to those people and plan those things...it will actually happen. So after all that other stuff is planned, I start reaching out to friend and asking them, hey want to go to the zoo on this day? Want to do a beach day on this day? Of course not every weekend is full, it just seems like it. But those things that we really want to do, like the zoo, we make an effort to get those on the calendar, instead of making it a last minute decision a few days prior. I find things actually get accomplished when it's written down.

After all that is planned, there is still time to plan unscheduled things with friends, like ice cream dates at 7:30pm.

So that my friends is how I schedule our vacation. Next year we are planning our long vacation during summer, instead of winter break, so I'll probably start with that (we'll probably have already bought our plane tickets before we even get to Summer planning) and then schedule all of Baby Fox's and Mini Fox's Summer classes around that.

How do you plan your summers?

Linking up here

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10 Favorite Places To Travel

Last year I participated with Erin for 10th on the 10th and she's continuing it this year, click here for those posts. As we head into Summer we are talking about 10 favorite places to travel to.

Mr. and I have gone on some pretty awesome trips. I decided to break it up into 5 places I have been and 5 places I really want to go to. These might not be my favorites, but I think they could be.

5 Favorite Place I've Been:

| ONE | Bora Bora

I've recapped it here, but who wouldn't love over the water bungalows, and didn't see one kid for 2 weeks.



This was 13 years ago.



| TWO | Santa Barbara

This is one of our favorite places to go, before we had kids we would go on a whim on weekends. Now we have to plan a bit better, but it's pretty awesome to relax and unwind. Here's our last trip.



| THREE | Yosemite

So much fun, we love camping and driving up. There is so much to do there. Mr. and I have hiked half dome before (highly recommend), it was a hike of a lifetime.



We are loving that we can share this with our kids.

| FOUR | Italy

We went on a 3 week trip to Italy and Switzerland, but my favorite part was Italy. We had so much fun in Rome and Cinque Terre and Florence. Each place contains it's own beauty. I would love to take the kids one day and explore some other parts of Italy.




| FIVE | Park City, or any place we can snowboard

We love taking snowboarding trips. Fun fact: we didn't start snowboarding till our late 20's and actually postpone trying to have kids so we could have one more season of snowboarding. Mostly we got to Park City...I mean when the mountain looks like this, what's not to love. We found a run that mostly no one goes on...see no people here. Not sure why as it's so pretty.



Same fun as above, but just after that view.




Places I would like to travel to:

{ ONE } Italy, summer vacation

One day Mr. and I would like to take the whole summer and live in Tuscany...although we'd be open to any country side sort of thing. We think it would be so fun to take the kids whole summer vacation and live there. One of the reasons we contemplated homeschooling, so we could live somewhere for a few months while we teach them the history behind it. A picture from when we went to bike riding in Tuscany.

{ TWO } Whistler

One day we will snowboard in Whistler, we always here how amazing it is, and how everyone thinks it's the best place to snowboard, who wants to meet us there?

{ THREE } Maui

Mr. love Hawaii and in our 14 years together we've never been. We were going to go this summer, but it didn't work out as Mr.'s Best Friend is getting married at a destination, so we've got to do that, more details to come on that! But Maui...we're going summer of 2019, anyone want to join us?

{ FOUR } Europe

I know this sort of is a copy of number one, but I want to travel all over Europe and explore all of the small towns, and eat all of the local food. I think would be great life experience for the kids to see different parts of the world. We'll start with Europe and work our way around.

{ FIVE } Great Barrier Reef

I want to go here and snorkel and scuba dive before it all dies away and it's a distant memory. Mr and I have done a few resort dives (meaning you don't have to be certified, and they only take you as deep as you can hold your breathe and swim to the top). It's really an amazing thing to do, and if we got to the Great Barrier Reef, we will definitely be getting certified!

This is us snorkeling in Cabo.

So where is your favorite place to travel? Anything I need to add to my list?

Friday Favorites #166

Happy Friday Foxy Friends! Slowing getting back at it after taking 10 days off of work. The week was long, but at least next week is my off Friday, so that helps. Plus it's Baby Fox's last day of school! I can't believe he's going to be a 2nd grader! But here are this weeks favorites:

If you missed it this week:

Monday: TBB Asks - Summer Edition
Tuesday:  FabFitFun Summer Unboxing (BEST BOX YET)
Wednesday:  Styling Summer Skirts
Thursday: Sentence A Day

Help me and Mr. settle a debate we're having in our household...it's about cereal, it's about to get serious. LOL, j/k.

In the spectrum of cereal to milk to soggy ratio...

One side of the speturm - Rice Krispies you don't want to be soggy at all, so you typically will pour milk and eat right away.

The other side of the spectrum - Shredded Wheat (you know the big ones, where two fit in your bowl kind), you want that pretty saturated in milk, otherwise you tear up your mouth eating it.

So the question is:

Where do you stand on Wheat Chex? My stand is that I want it to be crunchy, while I don't want it as fresh as Rice Krsipies, I definitely don't want it on the Shredded Wheat side. But I am on the camp of I want it crunchy, not soggy at all. Mr. is in the camp that he wants it to be more soggy, less crunchy.

He told me to ask all of you. So where do you stand? Close to Rice Krispies or closer to Shreaded Wheat? Sound off below so I can prove to Mr. I am right!

It's been a couple of weeks since I shared what's been going on with us? We'll start with Memorial Day weekend, we were so busy, so I'll try to pair down the pictures. Started out with Bunko Girls Night. This is a new group of friends, and loved getting to chat with them.

Then Saturday I went to a baby shower for a good friend, isn't she so cute? I look like a giant compared to her...I'm 5'3" (I am wearing heels, but you get the point).

This girl came with me and loved every minute of the girl time.

My Mother-In-Law was in town, so we went to our favorite Mexican place with her sister.

Then decided to get some yogurt so we called up some friends and we all took over the place...Literally, we took every seat in the place. Not seen in this picture are the 4 other kids and 2 other adults, haha.

Sunday was church, these kids are so cute.

Of course there has to be a silly picture.

Monday, Memorial Day, went to to a friends house for a BBQ (the same friends from yogurt and church above). This is max capacity of the amount of kids that can be in one pool by the way.

Nice when the kids can all swim...see that hat I am wearing? Mr. said I would never wear it when he bought it for me last year..I'm proving him wrong and wear it  ALL the time.

Some other pictures from the past few weeks. While we were together for a sad reason, so glad that these kids have each other (those are some of my cousins kids, plus my cousin, you know the adult on the back left).

We also got to try out a winery, which was fun and the kids got to play games while we did wine tasting, win-win.

We thought we were going to miss our good friends (our Friday night dinner friends) daughters birthday party, but we were able to finish what we had going on and get there in time. Which was a nice way to end a really rough few days.

Sunday my cousins called us up and said, hey we're coming down your way to pick up a new to us car, can we stop by and have lunch with you? Of course, love a last minute cousin visit, so we headed out to In and Out.

I got home from grocery shopping and found these two playing the ukelale together, so dang sweet, maybe time for some music lessons?

I decided to make a pot roast for dinner, so Mini Fox is watching me make the gravy...I just love that she is on her tippy toes trying to see what I am doing.

She recently got this dress from a friend, and holy cow, why does she look 7? Where did my baby go?!

I bought the kids some colored pasta, and they were freaking out about them, and we told them let's do a taste test, so we covered their eyes and taste tested them...yep they didn't get one of them right. They were fine eating the pasta after that. Parent win.

Wow, this is probably one of the most amazing things I've seen...how does that girl do that?! So happy that they got a golden buzzer! I cried tears of joy with them, they deserve it with all of their hard work!

While we're on America's Got Talent, here is a guy, dad of 6 who wanted to show his foster children that anything is possible. He is really good too, I just love this show. Simon is so nice now.

I remember growing up my favorite night with my mom was watching the beauty pageants and thinking I want to be one of them someday. They were all so smart, some of them future doctors and lawyers...I just thought it was so cool. Now I'm so happy that they are changing the platform and actually making it about the person instead of what they look like. Getting to know each contestent, because I ALWAYS picked the person i thought had the most personality while stating their name and where they are from...cause we can tell so much from that...NOT!

Also, you know how I am a part of The Blended Blog, well we've been hosting a Friday Loves and we decided to put it over on our own blogs to get the word out, so link up with us each Friday!

An InLinkz Link-up

Linking up here