Wood Slab

Help needed!

The other day Matt went out to help a friend chop down some trees and mill them into wood strips.  It's a tough and dirty job, but we're excited to have some free wood to use for future house projects (including wrapping the divider wall in our living room with horizontal strips)!  Still some more work to do on the logs, but he brought me home this live edge plank that I asked for!  I still need to sand down the flat edge to make it smooth and put a protective finish on it eventually.

 front

 back

 Now the questions is: what am I going to do with it?

 Originally, I pictured something along the lines of a new coffee table made with mid-century hairpin legs:

Check out these miniature wood tables handmade for dollhouses on etsy:

 I could still make it into a long narrow coffee table by adding some metal legs.  Here is a photo I took to help visualize what it would look like in my mind:

It would end up looking a lot like this one:

I've thought about turning it into a wall shelf.  I could put metal brackets under it and sit books on top of it.  Here was my visualization (not in that spot though):

I also wondered about hanging it flat on a wall like artwork over our sofa or in the hallway:

 or using it like a headboard in the same way in our guest room:

Here are a couple of other inspirational photos I found:

Now I need your help!  Comment, and tell me what you think I should do with this slab of wood!

Jager, my model

Jager, my 5-year old pup, was recently featured on Desire to Inspire's recent "Monday's pets on furniture" post!  Check out his amazing modeling skills below!

Here is my long-haired miniature dachshund, Jager, on a few different chairs in the house (he likes to sit up high on furniture like a cat; I think it's short legs syndrome!)
- Kara

You can check out Desire to Inspire's Pets on Furniture post each Monday...if you like cooing over cute cats and dogs lying on furniture!

No more Princess!

My mom, Vicky, and I recently re-decorated my cousin Makenzie's bedroom for her birthday while they were on a cruise!  She picked out her bedding from JcPenney and knew we were painting the room, but it was a huge surprise at how much changed when she got home!!!

Her white modern headboard was $89 from csn.com with free shipping!

Her room has been a purple princess theme for many years now.  Her mom told her when she turned 10 she could redo her room...well, this year she turned 10!  My uncle actually airbrushed the clouds along the top of the walls with glow-in-the dark stars- which was kinda sad to paint over, but we kept the purple ceiling.  The castle & clouds on the wall were a decal that peeled off.

before

quick sketch

after

The back corner was more of an unused space before.  It just had her butterfly chair and dry-erase board, but was usually dark and wasted space.  Now it houses her built-in desk with chair and magnetic boards for her to draw & do her homework (as it will increase in the coming years!)

before

after

My husband, Matt, helped us build her desk out of mdf plywood, attach it to the wall studs, added a front lip to give it a chunky look, drilled two 2" holes in the back corners for chords to feed through, caulked edges, and painted it glossy white

Makenzie wanted to keep her pink butterfly chair in the room, so we added pink stripes to the wall

to tie in the chair and light she already had

The Hancock Shelf in chartreuse from cb2.com [assembly required]

(pardon my mom's glass of wine in the photo after a long day of hard work!)

The photos on the wall are hanging on magnetic green cables from cb2.com for $6.95 a piece

The Details:

 $5 table found at a garage sale, painted blue, and mosaiced with glass tiles on top; $5 chair found at a garage sale, painted purple, seat re-covered with new foam and fabric; $35 nightstand found at an estate sale, painted white, sprayed with gloss polyurethane; chandelier found at Urban Outfitters, lightkit with switch hand-rigged with materials from Lowe's

The Bathroom:

We painted a stripe of multicolored circles up the wall using stencil paper from Michael's that we cut our own circles in using an exacto knife.  The rugs and towels are from Target.  The frame was found at an antique store for $25 and spray painted white with hooks hung within for cute jewelry display.  Hooks and fabric letter "m" found at Anthropologie.  A hook on each side for Makenzie and her sister Morgan to have their own spot for their towels or robe to hang since they share a bathroom.