Christmas Tree Pallet Project

I'll admit it, I'm one of those obnoxious people who gets into the Christmas spirit about 4 weeks ahead of everyone else. I just put up Fall decor and I'm pretty sure by the end of this weekend I will have torn it down, replacing acorns and pumpkins with snowmen and santas. Thank God my husband loves me despite my crazy.

Anyway, I saw this on Pinterest and after checking out the huge stack of pallets in the backyard left by the previous owners, I knew it was about to get all Christmas up in the club. The picture is a little different than mine (aka, she used super cool font and different colors) but I'm pretty much in love with the way it turned out.

Here is my extremely non-scientific, clumsy, not-the-right-name-for-any-of-the-tools awesome tutorial for my very merry Christmas tree.

What you'll need (all of this is critical, super important stuff):

-Pallet
-Stake
-+ all of this stuff below...

STEP ONE:

Use middle beam of pallet as the backbone of your tree. Cute boards in the shape of a tree with the saw.

Hack away at other pieces of board if necessary. That's what the hammer is for. To wield against the dark forces of board-dom.

STEP TWO:

Spray paint tree green. Or don't. I wanted mine green because, well, it's a tree.

Let it DRY.

STEP THREE:

Once tree is dry, get your grater thingy out. You also may sub this for sand paper/handheld sander. I would have used the alternative had my husband not misplaced the sandy supplies in the move. Hence weird grater thing.

Sand the edges of your tree for a distressed look. Don't like distressed? Don't do it. I do. So I did.

STEP FOUR:

My first thought was to just trip down the backbone of the pallet, but then it was too thick and my saw was sucky and so I walked through my backyard and found a stake. I drilled it onto the back using two screws. Easy peasy. (Like my work boots?)

STEP FIVE:

Use coffee grounds to darken edges.

Again, not entirely necessary, but I liked that it didn't look like brand new wood underneath. I used a paper towel (could use one of those little metal scrubber things) to rub them all over the edges and then wiped them off with a rag.

STEP SIX:

Decorate.

I wrote "May your days be merry and bright" because I'm not creative and that's what the other girl wrote. It has a nice ring to it. I used glitter on the letters and acrylic paint for the writing.

The paparazzi was all up on me while I was glitterating.

The only change I may make is to outline/darken the brown. In person it is readable but in these pictures it blends in a little too much.

Are you into the Christmas spirit yet? When will you be decorating??