I really wanted to do some sort of 'countdown' for Mister getting back, and I saw the idea for Countdown blocks just before he left. There were a ton of other really wonderful ideas, but a lot of them involved candy (which I probably would have ended up eating before it was time) or small objects that I don't really want Little Mister getting ahold of.
In the first week after he left, I tried to get out of the house as much as possible. Keeping myself busy and distracted seemed to help, and I ended up spending a lot of time in Hobby Lobby, which is the only craft store in our area. I found my blocks there right away, and chose paint colors based on some scrap paper I had left over from previous projects. The only problem I had was finding some kind of stand for the number blocks to rest on, as well as where I could write 'until daddy gets home' or whatever. They didn't have anything like that, and I basically had to put the whole project on hold.
A couple days ago, I went to Target looking for a couple things, and stopped in their dollar section. It used to be called the dollar section at least... Now it's just 'deals' or something like that. Regardless! I always look, every time I go to a Target, and I almost always find something that really is a great deal. This trip, they had these little wooden signs saying things like, "Home sweet home" or "Happy Fall!" They are pretty thin, maybe a half an inch, but they were wide enough for my purposes, and less than $3. I could finally get working on this!!
I got home, put Little Mister down for a nap and got to painting! (I am really really bad about taking before/during pictures, sorry!) It actually ended up taking me three days total because I had to paint a layer, wait for it to dry, paint another... and after the paint was totally dry, I covered everything in a layer of Mod Podge to sort of seal it.
While that was all drying, I took the scrap book paper in three different colors and cut two squares of each for each block. I Mod Podged the paper on, Mod Podged over that, and then had to wait again.
I tell ya, patience is not my strong suit.
After everything was totally dry, [ie. the next night] I had to figure out a couple things. The first was how in the heck I was supposed to figure out the numbers for the blocks. Six sides isn't enough to put 10 numbers on... The second was what I was going to use for lettering and numbers. I have a very limited supply of stickers, and my handwriting is not something I want to put on display.
The stickers turned out to be pretty easy. I picked out the ones I liked best, stuck them on, then did one more final layer of Mod Podge. I actually love how it turned out. The numbers on the other hand, turned out to be much harder. Every single DIY blog tutorial I found only had the numbers for two blocks, which meant that I could only count down from 44, I think? Not great because I am still upwards of 230 days right now. I kept searching and searching and found a blog where someone had asked how to count down from 150, so I took that idea and ran with it, changing a number here and there to work better for me.
I came up with: 1,2,3,4,5,6 for block one, 1,2,3,7,8,0 for block two, and 2,6,7,8,0,5 for block three. The 6's get flipped to make 9. There are a few numbers that can't be made with these, like anything with two 4's, and I am sure there are other problems, but it was late, and I really wanted to get the project finished, so I gave up. Just like patience, numbers and I don't really play well together.
This is the end result!
