Chunky Wooden Houses

Hello Everyone. Sorry for the light posting schedule, I have pneumonia. And it's our birthday-birthday-anniversary week (his 45th, my 41st our 19th) so the universe has conspired against me posting regular craftiness. 

I'm so tired. Wow. Like breathing in and out is completely, devastatingly exhausting. Hope this passes super-fast.

Did I mention we also are having our floors replaced this week? 

It's kind of a good news/bad news joke as all five of us are in our master bedroom because the main floor is torn apart. It's good timing as staying in bed is pretty easy but bad timing as we're all here... together. I hope listening to me cough and sleep isn't too hard on them. Trying to feed a family of five from our bathroom while sick is a challenge. Wanna see the set up?

Kinda works. It's amazing what you can cook in a keurig. LOL And the crockpot is my best friend. Last night we had chicken taco bowls... which is pretty amazing considering all the extenuating circumstances. It was delicious and smelled terrific.

Now... On with the show!

Back in December I made these chunky wooden houses and I'm just itching to make more. They are so much fun. 

To begin I took some old wood from our garden that had been weathering for years and unscrewed the boards. Then my husband sawed them into house shapes. To do this SIMPLY you just draw an X somewhere on the board from side to side. When you cut along the lines, you get two houses, each with a peaked roof. Just occurred to me that a picture might be worth all the above words, don't mind my sharpie drawing on my youngest math scratch paper. I'm sick.

The colored in bit is the wood that gets wasted. 

Paint a base color. If you like how the wood looks (like the one in the front) leave it exposed.

Add contrasting roofs and sides.

Embellish with paper and bibs and bobs from your stash. 

Some of the details were glued on with matte Mod Podge (like the music paper) and the larger ones were attached with a glue gun. 

All the sequins were nailed in. I took extra care to make sure the nails were all catawampus  for interest. 

It's a great way to use up little pieces left from other projects.

Interweave has a tutorial for these wooden houses in their Art Lessons (that I didn't follow, but it's very good.) Karen Michel's are much nicer than mine. Check them out :-) I totally swiped her wire flag idea - so cute!

Do you have a favorite? 

I've noticed that people seem to gravitate to certain houses over the others and it's fascinating to me to see who likes what.