KRUSE'S WORKSHOP: Wood Block Pumpkins

Hopefully everyone had a great Labor Day weekend! Three days off in a row never ever get old in my book! I know that we are supposed to use Labor Day as a time to refresh and relax, so we did just that - except our version of relaxing is a little more unconventional. Building and creating is our family's outlet for relieving stress...so when we woke up at 6:30am on Monday, Sept. 1st, the kids and I had a list of stuff that we wanted to make together!

The first thing we were going to make was, say it with me here, "this think I saw on Pinterest!" Adorable little pumpkins made out of 4x4 posts! Except we didn't have any 4x4 blocks, we only had some reclaimed lumber that is more like 3"x2.5" but with tons of texture. Better in my book! And free...the goal of most of our projects is to build them out of what we happen to have laying around.

I cut them at different heights until they looked just right. Then we sanded everything really well with a sanding block and an orbital sander.

Emma painted the large and the small with one coat of antique white. Since we were going to be sanding them after painting, we didn't bother using any primer first. Owen painted the middle sized block orange.

After the paint had dried, we taped off our patterns on the blocks. For the polka dots, we used the only circles we had - smiley face stickers. The chevron pattern was a little more frustrating because we only had the wide blue painters tape. I didn't want to go all the way to the hardware store for a silly role of tape so I cut the wider tape into skinny strips. Did it turn out perfect? Nope - but Emma kept reminding me that we weren't going for perfect. Smart girl.

With our tape and stickers securely in place, we painted each block in the opposite color of the first coat. After that coat of paint dried, we peeled off the tape and stickers and sanded the blocks again with the sanding block.

And of course, like everything else in our house, they then got a coat of brown glaze. This was Emma's first time glazing anything and she LOVED it!

For the little stem tops, we just happened to have an extra dowel laying around from a closet makeover. After I put a quick coat of American Walnut stain on them, Brent attached them by shooting a few 2" nails right down through the top of it and into the wood block.