Local family business creates heartfelt, handmade wood burned gifts
My Dad & Me Everyday Ornaments is a local, father and daughter small business selling handmade wood burned ornaments and custom wood burned home decor.
Before launching My Dad & Me Everyday Ornaments seven years ago with her dad, Sarah Barnhart was working as a window display stylist in Toronto. She went back to school to pursue nursing. During this time, she discovered her love for yoga through a doula course and instead completed yoga teacher training. Since then, she has been teaching yoga and mindful movement.
In addition to being a yoga teacher and running My Dad & Me Everyday Ornaments, Barnhart also manages Fruit Salad Hamilton , which runs events for the 2SLGBTQIA+ community.
The launch of My Dad & Me Everyday Ornaments was not something Barnhart ever imagined or expected. She was bringing pickles made by her friend to a pop-up market hosted by another friend in Collingwood when her parents encouraged her to bring her dad’s wood-burned ornaments as well.
Unexpectedly, people ended up being more interested in the ornaments than the pickles and their wood burning business grew from there.
Initially Barnhart’s father did all the wood burning but now she does most of the wood burning while her dad prepares the wood. My Dad & Me Everyday Ornaments is one of the few wood businesses that continues to use traditional wood burning techniques. Most of wood burned products today either paint or use laser engraving. whereas in Barnhart’s business, her dad, Bob Barnhart, creates their cut discs and cut wood from branches, making each product unique. Everything at the store is entirely handmade by the father and daughter duo—from putting on the patterns by hand to hand burning, painting and furnishing the final product.
Today, their business has evolved beyond ornaments to include various types of home decor.
Barnhart hopes her and her dad’s products will make their customers feel like they have something special and meaningful enough to potentially pass it along the family generation as an heirloom.
“I hope [customers] feel like they have something special that is unique and they can use it like something special to create tradition,” said Barnhart.
Recently, the duo started making custom recipe boards where they hand burn a person’s handwriting onto a recipe board to be used as either a serving board or hung up as a piece of art.
“It becomes a family heirloom. It's a family recipe. It's something that somebody already loves, and then it becomes something more permanent that can't get lost,”
Sarah Barnhart, founder of My Dad & Me Everyday Ornaments
Their future plans are still up in the air, but the Barnharts plan on sustaining the business and continuing with customs as long as they can.
