First of all, I want to express my appreciation for everyone’s love and support regarding last Wednesday’s post. Most of the feedback I received was very positive, and even those comments that I could tell were from people who didn’t completely agree with my viewpoint were still very cordial and understanding (except for one, but we won’t get into that today). It just really solidified that I have some of the best readers and followers around, so thank you!

Today though, let’s talk about something else, shall we? You might have noticed I missed my regularly scheduled post on Friday. I do apologize for that, but it all has to do with that whole “what things am I spending my time on” conundrum I presented on Instagram the other day.

You see, thing 1 and thing 2 had their birthdays last weekend, and their combined party was this past Friday evening. Now, I am not one to throw a big friend party for my kids every year, so yes, I had been looking forward to it. And they’re getting old enough where they actually care about stuff like that, so yes, they had been looking forward to it. And my husband is an awesome guy who smiles and nods when I share my plans with him, so yes, he had been looking forward to it was helping with anything I needed.

Anyway, so I was really busy with party stuff and I’ll go into more of the details on Wednesday’s post. For now I just want to share a super easy tutorial for some great DIY rustic wood dessert stands that I made for the food table.

My dad had recently cut down a couple of trees in their front yard so they had a lot of branches stacked up near their wood pile ready to be cut. When I saw them I knew that they would be perfec for some food/dessert platters I’d been wanting to make (Because dude, have you seen how much something like this would cost in the store?! Ridiculous! Also, do people still say dude anymore? These are the tough, important questions people.)

My sweet father was kind enough to cut a few rounds for me of some of the wider pieces of trunk, and also a couple short lengths of skinnier branches so I could make some tiered servers as well.

After the rounds had been cut and sat out for several days (allowing any excess sap to seep out) I sanded the tops with course, 80 grit sandpaper to get them really smooth. Then I picked the two rounds out that I wanted to make my tiered servers. I made each of the two a different way and the second way was easier and worked much better.

The first time around I tried to pre-drill my screw hole all the way through the wood round and the branch stand in one go. That did not work very well because it was really hard to eye-ball the middle. The second time around I pre-drilled a hole in the middle of the branch stand, then pre-drilled a hole in the middle of the wood round, and then lined them up to screw them together and in place. It’s hard to see the hole, but there were no mistakes that way. Also, since I counter sunk the screw heads so they wouldn’t be flush with the level of the wood, on one of the rounds I filled the hole in with would putty, then sanded it down, On the other stand I just left it alone so the screw head is still exposed. Honestly, you can’t tell once you have something sitting on the stand anyway so I don’t think it matters.

I love the way they turned out and I can’t wait to share more party details with you in Wednesday’s post, especially all about how the weather was out to get us this weekend. Ugh. Have you ever had an event planned that the weather decided to massively mess with? 

What have you been DIY-ing lately? Anything super simple or rustic?