12 Days of Christmas, Day 10, How to Build a Stable

 If you give a mouse a cookie...

If you know this children's book, you know that it is all about one thing leading to another.  

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That is how I felt this weekend while trying to finish up my Christmas decorating.  I built a shelf and coat hook for stockings (You will see these Thursday on my home tour day!) and I thought it would be a perfect place for my WILLOW TREE NATIVITY SET.  But, it looked dwarfed on the big shelf.  

So, what is a girl to do?  Build a pallet table for the nativity set.  Which then led to me wanting a stable for my creche.  

I started with a very thin piece of plywood, cut 16" wide, with 11" sides.  The angle on the roof line is about 25 degrees.

I added barnwood sides.  This piece of wood was cracked all the way through, so instead of waiting to glue it, I secured them with scrap pieces of wood at the top and bottom at each side. I screwed through the back of the thin plywood into the edges of the barnwood.

For the stable roof I used some thin barnwood siding type pieces.  I wanted it lightweight.  At first I joined these to a small 1'' x 1" board.  BUT, this made a roof with a 45 degree pitch, oops!

So, I took off one side of the roof and attached the one side to the stable.

I then set the other roof pieces onto the stable and secured them with screws, drilled in at a bit of an angle.  See the screws up there.  Definitely not the contractor way to do a roof, but it worked an the stable is stable.

I hot glued a copper metal star from Target to the roof. 

I painted the inside grey, left the sides their natural barn red color, and added a hand-lettered O Holy Night. 

Some FAKE SNOW and battery operated lights finished the look.