Our ward had a very late in the year Super Saturday, it was held on December 1st. I volunteered to do a few of the crafts... because well, I'm insane....
I found this idea online for Nativity Blocks, and I thought that they would be easy and fun for the sisters in our ward to do. Our ward is really small, we're lucky if 20 sisters take part in any of our activities, so I thought it wouldn't take much to do that craft.
Well, when we passed around the sign up sheet to see who would like to do which craft, 22 ladies signed up to do my Nativity blocks!
The block set contained 13 blocks, and so, you can calculate how many blocks I had to cut. I made 2 extra sets to make it an even 25 sets just in case we needed extra.
Now lest you forget, I run a wood working business that is in it's busiest time in November (we're talking 50+ orders per week), and I also teach 3 of my children at home, so I had next to no time to cut and sand the 325 blocks. So, in my usual last minute frantic way, I cut and sanded them all the day before the activity.
Here I am with my miter saw on our deck. I did it outside because of the huge amount of sawdust that would be coming from all that cutting, and I didn't feel like turning my workshop into a sawdust wonderland. I had my kids sort the blocks for me, which helped alot. It only took me about an hour to cut them all, but it took me like 4-5 hours to sand each one. I used my belt sander of course, but 325 blocks all individually sanded takes a while.....
Was it worth it?? Yes it was. The sisters in our ward happily covered their blocks with the beautiful nativity stickers I bought at hobby lobby, and then covered the blocks in modge podge. Look how nice they turned out!!
I also volunteered to be in charge of a scripture wall hanging/placque thingy. I had ldsvynl.com custom make some vinyl lettering for the boards, and I cut the wood for 18 placques (again more than I thought I would need to cut) . That didn't take nearly as long as the blocks, and they turned out really nice too.
