Rebecca's birthday Hope Chest

This is my "little" girl, Rebecca. She JUST turned 13 and I just love her to pieces! She is homeschooled and we have a very good relationship. We share a lot of the same likes such as crafting, sewing and cooking. LAST year, I bought a series of home ec type of books for part of her homeschool year from Pearables. Two of them include books about a Hope Chest. They encourage girls of all ages and their mother to go through their skills and learn how to start a hope chest. It not only focuses on the actual hope chest, but more importantly, on the character that we are instilling in our girls based on Godly principles. I've also read a LOT of good information and encouragement on www.achristianhome.com . (Pamela Spurling's site. I love her!!) We started looking around for a hope chest to buy or refinish for Rebecca's birthday or as a Christmas gift but they were just way out of our price range.
I also found these LOVELY dishes for her and had them hidden until her 13th birthday!
I eventually found an old wooden toy box at...of course...Goodwill...for $15 and have been working on sanding, repairing, painting, staining and adding trim to it. This is the end product.....

I am soooo pleased with the results! I hand painted the Virtuous Woman verse (as recommended by Mrs. Spurling...and one of MY favorite verses as well!) and Roger painted the wood (the wonderful leafy part!)...last night....and he added the trim and varnished it last night as well.

These pictures are the "middle" project as I worked on it on our back porch. It was hard to find a sneaky time to work on it since I homeschooled her. I sure wish I had thought of taking the total before pictures but this gives you an idea of what the "toy box" looked like prior to being sanded and refinished. It had a scratched and dented shiny brown finish on it.

I hope she is happy with it...I think she is. By the way, isn't my hubby adorable??????????

She got other "fun" presents, too, and a book about table setting and manners AND a Dooney and Bourke purse from .....GOODWILL....of course! (Authentic and priced at $19.99! I wouldn't pay the full price of a new store for the purse and I thought that even $19.99 was a bit much but I knew that it was a bargain that wasn't likely to present itself again so I splurged!)

Thanks for sharing in Becca's birthday! God bless you!