Hi there! I am sooo excited to show you what Hubs and I built!

I know... I know... I told you I was going to take a break until the new year, but this is sooo cool, that I just couldn't wait!

Let me tell you first... This is NOT a Tutorial! But I will show how much fun we had

Building An Outdoor Nativity

Hubby and I have always wanted one of those outdoor nativities in our yard during the Christmas season. The ones that they sell are kind of expensive and really small. So, since we are DIY'ers we decided to make one ourselves!

I could NOT have done this at all with out Hubs! He is the brains of this project. He has incredible talent and math skills that I simply do NOT have the patience for.

The first thing we did was print out a copy of a nativity scene we liked. Then Hubby made a grid out of it, like you can see here. 

This is labor intensive. We started this back in October and there's only so much time Hubs has since he does work 60-65 hours per week. Which is WAY too much!

This is a huge piece of cardboard that he is coping this grid onto, which will serve as a pattern to draw out onto a 4X8 ft. sheet of plywood.

Then he cut it out. He did this all for me! 😍

Now that the patterns are all cut out. Time to trace them and fit everything onto the sheet of 4X8 ft. plywood.

It was difficult trying to finagle all the pieces to fit onto ONE sheet of plywood. Hubby made it work. 😊

I was involved here and there. But now I can really get into the project! Power tools!! This was sooo much fun to work on! Oops... you can see another project going on in this shot.

To cut the really tight corners and detail, we used a drill bit and a hole saw to make space for the jigsaw to turn.

You can see it a bit more clearer here.

This was all my part in the construction of the nativity scene... Painting! I used one coat of primer, sanded lightly. Then I applied two coats of exterior paint. You can see one of the roof top pieces there.

Here we have most of the pieces laid out, just to kind of see how this was going to fit together.

We used 1x4's for the "fence" and the supports for the "roof". I painted them the same as the nativity pieces.

Where we live it can be cold, wet and snowy during this time of year. We wanted to make sure that this was quick to put up and tear down and that we could unassemble it to store easily. That's where the hinges come into play. We used regular door hinges, about 13 of them in all.

We wanted to be able to just pull pins out of the hinges and have individual pieces to carry and put away.

Some pieces had to be screwed together, but we can easily take those apart as well. We'll see how it goes this year.

Here we also attached hinges to the side fence gates. 

I am sooo thankful for our 3 car garage! It's nice to have room to work on projects like this out of the elements. 😊

Here we set up the nativity scene to see if it was even going to work. And it does!! Yay! I love how big it is! 

We just carried it out to the yard and set a spot light on it. It's pretty sturdy. OMG! I love it! Next year maybe we'll add some sheep or angels.

Awesome! Thank you, sweet Hubby, for all your hard work! 😘

That's how we did it! Cool, right?!

Blessings!!