Our niece's first birthday is coming up and we are getting ready to travel back down to Texas to help celebrate. I'm looking forward to seeing my family again, but I am not looking forward to the heat.

I've been away from Texas long enough now that I have grown out of my ability to deal with the super heat that is the Texas summer. But, they do have great air conditioning everywhere. Thank you a/c. I don't know what I would do without you.

Anyway, Christin and I need to come up with a gift for our niece. Of course we want to make something with our hands and I've had an idea for a while. I saw this on Pinterest quite some time ago and I think it fits perfectly for what my sister-in-law is planning for the theme.

Wooden Popsicles!

It's a simple project, but one that I have been looking forward to doing. I could have made these for my kids, but making these to go a with an ice cream themed birthday party seems like a much better idea.

Christin and I have our usual jobs ahead of us with this project: I will cut, shape, assemble and seal, while Christin will make it look pretty. (This seems a little one sided)

After drawing the shape, I cut each one on the band saw. If you watch the video you'll notice that there isn't footage of me actually doing the cutting. For whatever reason, I forgot to hit or thought I hit the record button. Oh well. I then took them to to sander to clean and shape each popsicle. After I got each popsicle to the shape I wanted, it was time to drill holes in the bottom of each, glue and place a dowel. I tested what size of dowel to use with our kids and found a half inch sized dowel works perfect. I opted to make a stand for these, but didn't want to use pine. I wanted the base to stand out a little. I dug around and found a piece of scrap from a band saw box I had made a while back. I cleaned it up, drill holes for each popsicle, sealed it and called it good.

Now, the painting is a whole other thing. In my mind, I was thinking a traditional color scheme for the popsicles. This was clearly not the way Christin was thinking.

As usual, she has to put some flair to this and go with something I would consider abstract. Angles and some bare wood showing. I just had to trust in what she was doing, because I most certainly can't do the things she can with colors.

Plus, she was following the color scheme of our niece's nursery and I would be beyond lost on that.

If you would like to see us making these popsicles, check out the video below.

Happy Birthday, Ryen! I can't wait to see the person you will become. Your dad is awesome and your mom is a little crazy (in a good kinda way). Hi, Anna!