Hello, Dear Readers! I wish I had enough going on (as I do when we are traveling) to post at least a couple of times a week. Alas, we are stuck in Utah until November, at the earliest. Yes, November. Ugh! But we are in a struggle to get a grip on our finances. Never fear, with focus, you can always get things under control. We are staying at an affordable place, so that helps a lot!
I had cataract surgery on both my eyes. I am loving only needing reading glasses, but I wish I’d been able to afford the lenses that would keep me from needing those. However, reading glasses are cheap! I have gotten mine at Dollar Tree. At that time, they were an actual one dollar each. Now they are more – $1.50, I think.
So, while I’ve been sitting around the house, I stepped up to do some crafting. I had purchased some items from Hobby Lobby’s unpainted wood section ages ago. Three rounds became a tiered tray with a couple of their wooden candlesticks. I had used the same candlesticks for another tiered tray destroyed during our travels, since I made it from flimsy round stove covers that I painted to look like wood. I didn’t do a good job of taking photos of the before products, but here is after I painted the rounds in white and glued the candlesticks and a little topper in place:
Try to ignore the mess around our dining table in the background. I have craft stuff all over the area, and I’m working on organizing it better. The rose wooden designs on the left in the above photo will be placed on our slides in the center area. The area I’m referring to is here:
This one is above the sofa, and there is a duplicate, with a different decor item on top, above the dining room. I use that as my writing desk, so we eat our meals on wooden TV trays. I thought I’d like to add these rose designs for a little punch. I only whitewashed over the wood. Hopefully, I’ll like them. The two frames at the front of the photo, I have no plans for at this point. A close-up of the rose design:
And here is the after photo:
I also got out several candlesticks I’d bought at garage sales or from ‘damaged’ sections of stores, repaired and painted them. I only took photos after I’d painted them, but before I put some sort of top on two of them to hold the candles in place:
Two of the candles did not have tops on them, so that’s what is on the right side of the table. And the one with the carved design on it on the far left was in gold. Not my style. I like a bit of a rustic look. Not too much, though. That’s the farmhouse/country side of my style. And here they are finished with my decor on the tiered tray – I’ll show each level better on that:
Yep, that’s my love, Jay, on the sofa watching TV. Here are the close-up tiered tray levels on the front, bottom level first:
The middle:
And the top:
I made the bead strand design and created the wreath on the window shape on the bottom tier, but nothing else. Many of the items on the tray were gifts from our child, Shiloh, or we picked up on our honeymoon over thirty-one years ago. One is from my best friend of fifty years, who passed away in 2024, and a couple of things I purchased. The back side is one photo and looks like this:
I have several other crafts I’ll be working on while we are here in Utah, where our storage unit is for now. That way, if they are for holidays, I can put them back in storage until we decide what we’ll take with us. We’ve done a lot of organizing and getting things out of the RV that we don’t need or use, so that will continue as we try to make it more comfortable and I come up with ideas.
That’s it for now, though I will have another post in a day or two about some lighting we put outside since we are here for a bit. And you never know what else I may get up to. I’m trying to talk Jay into spending a little bit on diesel (so outrageous right now!) and taking some small trips here and there.
Have a wonderful week, Dear Readers!
On Hummingbirds Wings 