Cute Chicken Coop

The new coop. . . complete with fake plants.  The chickens ate the real flowers!

 

I have chickens.  I actually should say that Little Papi has chickens.  We got them in March when they were tiny and fuzzy.  Now they are huge and beautiful.  Right now they are laying 4-6 eggs a day, but the best part is just having them around.  It makes me feel more grounded and self-reliant.  In a true emergency, we'd still have eggs.  And a stew if we got truly desperate.

Chickens are pretty hardy characters and are pretty easy to care for.  They need a coop or some shelter with roosts to keep them safe from predators at night.  They need laying boxes or they will lay eggs wherever THEY choose.  They need food, water, and room to scratch. 

This is the coop and the run. We keep food in one can and treats/supplies in the other.

 

There was no way that I was going to have some ugly ramshackle coop in my backyard.  I buit a smallish coop out of a large cabinet and the girls have lived in that for four months, but they needed something larger for winter.  I've looked at plans and made decisions about what I wanted, but I just never got around to building the coop. Last week I bought one!  PDog and his buddy, the WingMan brought it home for me  and the BandMan helped me paint and shingle it.  If you undertake a project like this, I strongly recommend that you own a pneumatic nailer/stapler.  It is a life saver!

A little ornamentation makes all the difference.  The wrought iron rooster on the coop was purchased at Hobby Lobby and then I used satin white Valspar paint to give it a happier look.  I love how it spruces up the coop and everyone exclaims about how cute it is.  The chicken sign on the run started with a piece of sheet metal that had holes in all four corners and the sides rolled over.  I bought it at Wooden Connections in American Fork.  I used paper to make the circle stencil and used Glossy Red Valspar spray paint to make the circle.  I used a chicken image that I found online, enlarged it, printed it in sections, taped it together, and cut it out to make the chicken stencil.  That was painted with Glossy Black spray paint by Valspar.  I used stainless steel zip ties that I found at WalMart to attach it to the fence becaust the sharp edges of the holes would have cut right through the plastic zip ties. 

All in al I highly recommend keeping chickens.  They are hilarious and worthwhile.  And my 14 Y.O. has a great sense of accomplishment from taking care of HIS chickens and selling the extra eggs to neighbors.

  The eggs.  Rinsed and labeled with the day they were laid.

Console Table Makeover

I love KSL Classifieds. Before there was Pinterest, I spent a lot of time pouring through pages and pages of chairs, tables, and sundry other items. In the fall I spotted this table for $10 and I sent my DS1 to pick it up after his college classes.  

It is a pretty small table but it is perfect for my iHome and a few little decorations.  You can never have enough drawers, so even though this one is small, it is handy.

Last June my kids all changed rooms and we ended up having my youngest son's room left empty.  The hubby wanted to bash through the wass and turn it into a closet extension, but I claimed it for an office/studio.  I teach music lessons at home, so it is really nice to have a dedicated space.  More on the makeover of the room later. . . today, just the table.

I wanted the table to have a little pop, so I chose orange.  I have a great store nearby called The Painted Daisy Floral Shop and they carry Annie Sloan Chalk Paint.  This is a video of the owner.  She is a doll!  She was actually painting a table when I arrived at the store and she gave me a lesson right then and there.  I was sold and had a little splurge. . .

Just so you know, this table went from drab to fab in about 2 hours.  Here's what I did:

1. I washed the table with a lightly soapy solution to be sure that there was no Pledge or other product clinging to the table and allowed it to dry.  This is Utah, so the drying time was minimal!
2. I used a nice paint brush to apply a thin layer of the orange chalk paint over the entire table.  You do not have to sand or prime the table. 
3. After about 30 minutes the table was dry, so I gave the table a second coat of paint.
4. When the table was dry, I used a piece of a t-shirt to apply the Annie Sloan Clear Soft Wax to the entire table.
5. The I used a sanding block to distress a few edges.  I did not want a seriously shabby look- just a happily worn look.
6. I then used a tiny piece of a T-shirt to apply a bit of the Annie Sloan Dark Soft Wax to add some aging on the edges and aroud the knob hole.  If the dark is too dark, you can use some more clear wax as an eraser.  But. . . you do need to work fairly quickly.
7. Let the table sit for 15-20 minutes.  Then buff with a clean piece of t-shirt.
8. Add a cute new knob (I love Hobby Lobby for knobs, and voila!  A whole new look! 

Sorry.  I didn't take process photos.  It had been a VERY bad day and this project was very cathartic.  Taking photos would have ruined the flow of the experience.