Busy, Busy, Busy!

A little bit of bad news this week. Drew broke his elbow on Monday by jumping off the sofa and landing onto a hard plastic nerf gun. He walked around in a soft cast all week, and today they stuck him in a hard one. He is so funny, though! I joked with my cousin that he sky dived off the sofa, and his parachute failed. He must have thought it was funny, because now everytime a complete stranger asks how he broke his arm, he responds "Sky Diving!" I've spent all day getting mixtures of awkard, confused looks and dirty glares from people that don't get our joke. Bless his little heart.

I have gotten so much done this week, and still more to go! My bed is put together, the boys bunk bed is put together, 3 shelves, another pegboard for my bedroom "Craft/Sewing Station", and I also have everything needed to make my Skein Winder. Now if only I can decide on the design for my Skein Winder, and I will actually be able to assemble.

Andrew's Bed

Michael and Andrew's bed together!

The parts to my skein winder

Patriotic Wall un-painted shelf.



With one shelf I ran into some problems. I tried to short cut the painting process, which I should have known would run me into problems. On one of my living room walls, I have a little Patriotic Theme. This shelf was supposed to be white, with red crackled over it. Either my crackle is too old, or spray paint cannot be applied after coating crackle on with a sponge. I changed my design around a little, found spray on crackle and I will see if it matches my theme sometime tomorrow.

My floating shelf ran into problems, too. But nothing major. I mis-calculated 2 measurements, by not accounting for the width of one board. No biggie though. I just had to use the circular saw and cut off an inch from the two smaller side boards. Tomorrow I will remeasure the support board and possibly re-cut that also. Tomorrow I will also finish assembling and paint it.

After these three items are done, then it is time to start on my kitchen table. Sooo excited! My table legs arrived, and instead of doing a mosaic center, Hobby Lobby has large-"ish" stain glass pieces which I can theme into the center. 5 bucks a glass though!

Those tiles I picked up I have in mind for another project. But I have so many things going on at the moment, I cannot start another single probject until I get what I'm working on completed.

Like I said, pictures to come in the AM. My cell phone is soooo slow about sending e-mails. Especially picture mail.

Party Planning

I found out yesterday that the army is wanting me to plan a last minute surprise party for Saturday evening. It's for the going away of our Supply SGT and our Commander. The only item I've been able to acquire so far is the huge cake. The original place I wanted to actually have the party has a band playing. I have 3 more options.

I wish I'd known about this a week ago, at least. Knowing myself, I still would have procrastinated until the last minute. It's just how I roll.

Now I have until tomorrow afternoon to come up with a definite cake design. Here are some of the pictures I've seen that I really like.

Kitchen Pegboard

Alright, so I figured out how to upload from my cell phone camera. This is my pegboard in the kitchen. It looks a little bare around it, but I'm revamping my kitchen. :-)

Public Skate @ Ice Arena 07:30 pm Jul 6, 2011: the217.com

Public Skate @ Ice Arena 07:30 pm Jul 6, 2011: the217.com

The website says Skate Rentals can cost between $1-2, and it's free for U of I students, faculty, and children ages 3 and under. :-)

The 4th

Sunday we went to St. Louis Fair. Unfortunately, it started raining...hard. I had taken the boys to Union Station to wait it out, and also let them have a little educational fun. Maroon 5 was to play at the Fair before the fireworks, so about 45 minutes before they were to start I did a quick Fair Google and found out the man in charge cancelled all Fair Activities for the evening. Super disappointing. At least we got to see Collinsville's firework show, and Greenville's on the drive home.

Monday was a more productive day. I updated my kitchen pegboard setup. I'm liking it a lot right now. We'll see, after my new kitchen table is done, whether it all flows together. I have a couple pictures to upload, and I'll post a picture.

We ended up going to Grandma's and PawPaw's last night. I dug through their garage, looking for leftover fireworks. Last year, I "border jumped" when I went firework shopping, and splurged! I'd never been in a firework warehouse before. Needless to say, we barely set off half of what I'd purchased last year, and we boxed up and saved the rest for this year.

Easily we could have added some character to my parents yard. How many people have their own backyard crater? Mom didn't see it that way.

We set off a few bottle rockets, and gave the kids Sparklers. Michael kept trying to bring us the "big ones" to set off before the sun was down all the way. Little Andrew would barely hold a sparkler without whimpering.

Andrew had to go inside with Grandma before we started the big ones. We did a fountain firework, and he started screaming. Poor little guy. :-( I didn't think either of my boys would be scared of fireworks.

After everything was done, I asked if he had fun. He nodded and said "Yup!". I asked if he wanted to go outside and do some big fireworks, and he shook his head no, scooted off my lap and ran to the other room.

Safe to say that next year, maybe we should stick to sparklers only...

Update

I was in Oakland yesterday and decided to stop by the furniture store. They carry tile and I thought I could price check there first. Amazingly, he said he could probably just give me a bunch of sample tiles for cheap, since no body in Oakland ever buys ceramic tiles from him! He called the manufacturer and found out what samples they didn't carry anymore, and let me have the 12x12 and 13x13 samples for $10. I walked away with probably 16 tiles to choose from. :-)

Instead of making my own table legs, I started hunting for already made ones. The local shops wanted way too much. Almost $20 per leg! This morning I did an on-line hunt and on Amazon I found raw table legs for $7 each.

So far my cost estimation:
* Legs => $34.15 (shipping)
* Tile => $.63 p/ Tile (I may only use 3)

Total of $36.04

Lowes has a sale on lumber right now, plus an additional 15% off Military Discount. Menards also has a sale for spray paints, at $2.99 a can. I will need 2 cans of Primer, 2 cans of Black Gloss, and 2 cans of sealer (my brain jumbled and I can't remember the right name of the product).

Paint: $18 before tax and possible additional discounts.

That will not be my final paint costs, however. I have yet to price check the sale price with other places. After all, the whole point to me building my kitchen table is to save loads of mualah! Plus, I think this is fun! :-)

well, now it is time to leave. Finally everybody is done in the restroom and running around getting ready. Time for some St. Louis fun!