…with not one, not two, but three paddles! When Coach brought a pile of old wooden paddles home last year (5 in all), I was pretty ticked off, because at the time, we just didn’t have any place to store them and I had no use for them. These are not the type of paddles you would use for kayaking, and since that is the watery mode of transportation we are sporting these days,

it just didn’t make much sense to have a collection of wooden paddles. (For the record, these are paddles, not oars, as I kept calling them until Coach corrected me enough times.)

So they sat in the barn over the winter until 1. I sold a couple of them to Pat from Perfectly You, A Decorating Service for her awesome nautical hallway project

and 2. I discovered this decorative box at, where else, HomeGoods,

which became my inspiration for this month’s nautical theme at the Vintage Thymes Market. With three paddles remaining, I decided to paint and distress them to look the ones pictured above. Except those are oars, so I am taking some artistic license here. Do you know the difference?! I made the necessary repairs to the handles, sanded them down, taped off the lines and stripes,

painted in the red and white and blue,

added the number 3 (found the one I wanted online and printed it out on a piece of paper. Cut it out, traced it on and painted it in. Easy!! You know you don’t have to paint perfectly when you are planning on sanding and distressing a piece, right?

I re-sanded the painted sections for that worn-out, been used to row across the ocean and back kind of look,

then added a coat of Annie Sloan Soft Wax,

which restored the original luster of the exposed, unpainted wooden areas.

Lovely. So I brought them, and the box to market, and only the #3 sold! So now there are two paddles remaining, which are presently hanging proudly in our summer porch.

The good news is that they are all painted and shiny and pretty. The bad news is that there is one short and one long-in case you have a lop-sided canoe. Which, thankfully, I do not. Hope you don’t spend your entire day paddling upstream!! Susan