Well, here begins a new venture for me. I hope to include many aspects of my life in a fun collage of posts. Many will be fueled by creativity and inspiration found online and elsewhere and hopefully, some of my own original ideas! I am a “jack of many trades” including wife, mom, homemaker, cake decorator, crafter, sewer, woodworker and working farm girl! I have been married to my DH for 14 years and we have 2 great kids – both sons! I worked outside the home as a computer programmer, graphics designer and part-time office clerk for a veterinarian clinic before being able to stay home full time after our second son was born 6 years ago. Since then I have been able to help with our farm more frequently and have ventured into cake decorating for birthdays and special events. I love to do all things crafty and find myself continually trying out new things. I am looking forward to sharing some of those new ventures along with updating and decorating our home and any cakes I may make. Please bear with me as I am still learning how to do the blogging thing!

One of my favorite things that I have done recently in our house is to paint a chalkboard on a large door that goes down to our basement. This door is located in our kitchen and can be seen from the dining room. The snowman I drew on there makes me smile! I didn’t get any pictures of the door before I painted the chalkboard on it, but here are a few of the things I have drawn on it…

Family Rules Subway art

November Thanksgiving Subway Art

Happy New Year!

The subway art was all found online – I’m sorry I didn’t keep track of who I got all the designs from!  The New Year’s Printable came from Today’s Fabulous Finds . I really like the subway art and have found if I print it out large and tape the pieces together I can “transfer” the image to the chalkboard. I rub white chalk over the back of the taped original and then tape the paper where I want it to be on the chalkboard. Then I take a pencil and draw around the letters, etc. This presses the chalk on the back onto the chalkboard, thus leaving a faint line for me to follow. When I complete the outlining, I remove the paper and use chalk to darken the lines on the chalkboard.

I have been having a lot of fun with the chalkboard. I painted chalkboard paint directly onto the door after taping off the edges and roughing up the area with fine sandpaper. The frame was made using a router and table saw and hot glue! I told me husband originally that it would be a great place to write the kids’ weekly memory verses on, but it seems like I have sort of taken over the whole thing! When school starts next week, I’ll have to minimize my designs and we’ll still be able to use the bottom half for the boys.

I started out with only regular chalk, but I received chalk ink markers for Christmas, so my New Years board has a combination of both. Can you pick out which is which?

I’m linking up to …