Burrowing Owl Vineyard Wine Crate

 Burrowing Owl Estate Winery consistently produces some of the best wines in Canada.  Their vineyard is located in British Columbia, Canada and Mr. SixBalloons took me up there this summer for my big 3-0 birthday celebration! We spent a couple days at their beautiful guest house and just relaxed. Because their wine is in heavy demand, it often sells out in Vancouver very quickly. Hardcore fans make the trip to their winery to purchase their favourite bottles.

At the winery gift shop, which doubles as a tasting room, we saw wooden crates and wine caddy's for sale. Since we had splurged with the weekend trip, we thought better of these purchases and focussed our hard-earned spending money on the wine. Luckily for us, we randomly stopped in at a Value Village one day in November and spotted a Burrowing Owl wine caddy for $2! This sells for $17 direct from the winery, so we were quite happy with it.

Mr. SixBalloons enjoys working with wood projects, so he sanded down the box to buff out any imperfections, and then applied a few clear coats to give it a nice honey hue and prevent fading. I think the final result looks great - it was a fun project for us and refreshed memories of our summer getaway!

My sister Nancy works in the wine business and reviewed the 2007 Chardonnay and 2007 Meritage at her blog for those of you who are interested!

We're looking forward to tinkering around a bit more with our thrifty finds than we have in the past. It's great to have a handy fellow in the house who enjoys these projects!