JOY Blocks

A friend of mine was put in charge of the decorations for our church Christmas party. She quickly called me on board to come up with how to decorate the tables... all 30 of them!! With the budget we were given and the amount of tables we had to decorate, our options were limited. I could have crafted things for each table, but I wasn't really feeling up to the task of making 30+ handcrafted items per table (and craft supplies can be pricey too...) We just decided to make it easy, but still cute. We set out red and white poinsettias on each table, along with wood JOY blocks.

I followed the same basic idea as when I made the USA blocks for my Patriotic Mantle.

This time I bought 2"x3" boards instead of 2"x4" since the letter stamp I was going to use was tall and skinny and I didn't need the 4" width. I was just going to load the 3 boards into my van and cut them at home, but the friendly workers at HD offered to do it there.

69 blocks later, I was headed home. I then sanded all 12 edges of each block. Do the math... that's 828 edges. My hands were red, and I had two blisters afterwards. They I had my friend paint half of the blocks, and I (meaning I roped my hubs into helping) painted the other half. Once they were all painted I stamped J O and Y onto the blocks. DONE. I could have sanded and distressed the edges, but I had NO desire to sand those 828 edges again. (So much for keeping my crafting to a minimum.)

The morning of the party, my daughter and I went over to the church to decorate. We spread out the table cloths, put out the poinsettias, and then put the JOY blocks out. My daughter loved that part.

It was simple but nice. The best part was that we sent the poinsettias and blocks home with people to be given to neighbors, needy, or anyone to whom we felt like spreading some JOY!