Five Fridays Finds 5 February.

Well I have been considering what my Friday post will look like going forward but I still come back to this point so I thought that since my blogging was forced into a break I would keeping going....well for this moment any way.

So my food finds for this week are.....

• I have a whole bucket of plums am going to make jam....the sugar free variety.  I really love the  plum jam recipe for the diabetic community.

image from Diabetic Connect.

•  Then there is my favourite homemade  ranch dressing  from Nancy at Skinny Kitchen

•  Cloud bread.  Accoding to the post the internet is going crazy over this recipe.  I have not tried it out but when I do I will sure let you know if it is worth being crazy about.

•  I have some left over fruit from Christmas and thought that this fruit cake recipe might just work.....well when I get my stove hooked up.

•  Finally the homemade bread.   It was lovely.  

I am so Lucky....

Well we have been living in a house under renovation.  It is a story for another post but let me say that the house we have was built in 1959 and its framework is made of rimu and native New Zealand wood.  We have a large pile of undressed rimu sitting in a pile outside.

The pile of rimu sitting outside after being removed from inside the house.

Yes the wood came from inside the internal wall of the house.  It is fulled with nailed and rough sawn.  I had this ambitious project of using the wood to help make a table studying on.  Luckily we had the top of the table (recycled from the laundry and nearly two meters long) and time on our hands.

So armed with a tool for pulling nails out of wood, a plainer, wood glue, clamps, some screws and little brackets.  Not much really....ha ha.  That was the easy part.  My husband and I have never made furniture.  So I started with the bit I knew how to do.......remove the nails from the wood that had been selected from the pile.  Then I got the measurements drew a couple of lines on the wood and there it sat for about a week with nothing happening.  But it became quickly evident we could no longer think about this project.   In our house with no tables in it at the moment, doing homework and study was an issue especially as the school year had just started.

So the next phase started.  The legs and framing for the table were plained to make them lovely and smooth and show off the all the character of the old wood.

The underside of the table looking fabulous after being glued, screwed and braced into place.

Then there is the character of the wood.  Just lovely with nail holes and these beautiful spots like we have on the leg.

The top of the table was gently sanded back and trimmed to get rid of the water damage obtained while it was the laundry bench.  Out came the wood glue and it was all glued in place, clamped and left with crossed finger to see if it would happen as we had planned.  Then while I was at work, yes that's why there are no photos, screws and little brackets were put into place.

I just love it.  It just needs varnish on it.  I will post an update when that is done.