Whittling...

Do you ever have the urge to whittle? I sure do! I love to grab a piece of wood (or anything else for that matter that is hard and able to be whittled) and whip out my pocket knife and see what I can create. For the longest time I would think to myself "If I had a whittler, I would whittle in the morning, I would whittle in the evening, and I'd whittle at suppertime," but the problem was I did not have good whittling equipment. Now I have a great knife and go and whittle stuff often. You may find me in a random person's yard whittling a bear out of a stump.

I mean who does not like to whittle. I think that whittling is a hobby for some, an obsession for others, and a joy for all! I got that from the World of Whittling web site. Words to live by I tell ya!

Anyway, my most recent whittling project was a sign for Catherine and I to put in our yard. This was about a week long project, but the final results are pretty good if I do say so myself.

First we had to dig a hole for the sign. Since it's hot, and I am not so much for using a post hole digger to make a 4 foot hole in the ground, I enlisted two of the ranch workers, Frank and David and the use of one yellow tractor with an auger attached.



The ground was incredibly hard and for a minute I thought that we struck oil, but it was nothing. We had to let the hose run in the hole over lunch to soften up the soil a bit so we could dig deeper.



Frank and David (who the ranch could not function without) made quick work of the digging after the soil was wet and soft.

The next picture is of the sign that I have been whittling on. Not quite what I had hoped for when I started, but once I get better skills I can make another.



Not to bad for a novice whittler huh?

As you can see, I still need to wipe off the bottom part of the sign with our last name on it, but after all the hours of whittling that I did, I just wanted to be done with the sign for awhile.

Look at all the detail that I put into this sign, magnificent.

Ok, ok. Much to your surprise, I did not make this sign. I got it as a wedding gift for Catherine. You see, we also got a really large sign for the ranch entrance. We got this as a Christmas gift for Catherine's parents and I sneakily had one made for Catherine. So when the big sign came in we had a big to-do over it and made Catherine's parents come out of the house with blindfolds and then unveiled the new sign. Then when everyone was gasping in amazement at the new sign I brought out the smaller sign that I got for Catherine. We had hoped to have the big ranch sign up before the wedding, but the weather was not cooperating so we did not make that deadline and it still happens to be waiting to be put into the ground.

But I could not wait any more for our sign to be put in, and this past week I have been working on getting it assembled and put up. Now we just have to decide how to decorate around it. Feel free to leave suggestions of thoughts you have. Flowers, just mulch, stone? I don't know.

If you like this sign, I would suggest visiting Sign-It Signs to look at all the great signs that they have made. Noella was the greatest person to work with and I could not be more happy with the end result. If you have always wanted to get a sign for your ranch or business check them out.

On another note, Wilma is doing great! We have so many pictures to share with y'all of her. But having a new puppy really takes it out of a person. So we will try to find a way to manage keeping up with our blog and keeping up with our sleep. It is a little more complicated than we thought.