Hobbies

This summer, we have had more free time than at any other time in our adult lives, especially Justin.  He had no studies and no work from the time he took the Bar on July 27 until his job starts on September 15.  That gave us the time to work on crafts and hobbies.  Here are some of the highlights:

1) Hazel's Caterpillar

Grandmom has sheets for Hazel's bed that we really liked. In particular, there was this caterpillar that caught our eye.  Whenever we have another kid, the kids will share a room, so we wanted a gender-neutral decoration that would work whether we had a boy or girl.  Caterpillars fit the bill for us.

Here was our inspiration:

And here is the finished product:

Nancy and her Mom painted the circles and the letters.  We chose colors based on the fabric you see at the bottom of the picture.  They also took that fabric and turned it into curtains for Hazel's room.  I wish I had pictures of the curtains in all of their glory (they are really good), but we've already packed them for our move.  We'll post pictures of it once we decorate our new house.

2) Kindle Cover


I got the greatest Father's Day present in history: an Amazon Kindle.  I loved that thing (I'll explain the past tense in a minute).  I could read all kinds of classics, and started my first pleasure reading since high school.

I was worried, though, that I would scratch to screen of my Kindle, so I found a pattern online to make a cover. I had to recall my Home Economics class from middle school, but with Mom's help, I was in business.

The finished product had an elastic band that held it together, and then tri-folded so that it could stand upright by itself or fold flat for reading.

Here's a link to the pattern.

Unfortunately, my Kindle cover, though awesome, was not enough to protect the Kindle when I drove off with the Kindle on my roof.  Hazel had a diaper disaster at church which involved poop and a diaper not being on her anymore, so I was distracted when I loaded my mostly naked baby back into her car seat for the drive home. See ya later Kindle.  I'm trying to scrap together money from online surveys and other online gimmicks to buy a new one (because that money seems like it's not really money since it's not coming from my job).

3) Couponing


Our friend Janelle taught us how to coupon this summer.  We're serious about it now.  Look out Ft. Lauderdale grocery stores when we get there!

Here is our first success.  We bought all 4 of these boxes of cereal for 98 cents.  Alright, true, no one likes Reese's Puffs, but we went on the last day of the sale, so our options were limited.  And now after eating 4 boxes, I can report I like it quite a bit.

4) New Bedroom Set

Another big project was refinishing a bedroom set we had.  This was Marcus's set as a kid (Nancy's dad).  All of it was rather brown and battered.  The set consists of a dresser, vanity, and a full-sized headboard and footboard.

This project took a few weeks and was a real team effort.  In fact, all of these projects were team efforts - we couldn't have done them without Mom and Dad's help.  Kathy and Marcus sanded down some of the pieces before we came for the summer.  We finished sanding them, then put a few coats of black paint and few coats of polyurethane.

As you can tell, it's really shiny.  A bit more than we wanted, really.  But we worried that the paint would feel "sticky" if it ever got wet, and we wanted something smooth.  We got it.  This thing is like a boat: it is so slick and water resistant.

Here's the vanity, without the mirror piece installed.

We also had to modify the full-sized headboard and footboard to fit our queen sized bed.  Justin got some 2x4's and cut them to fit our bed, and then attached the headboard and footboards to the new frame.  We'll post pictures of it all together once we move in.

5) Cedar Chest

This cedar chest came from some distant relative of Nancy's.  He passed away a long time ago, so this chest is pretty old.  It was covered with an ugly, chipped veneer.  Marcus and Justin struggled to remove it with power sanders, because the glue and veneer kept gumming up their sandpaper.  Eventually, we just took a planer to it and removed the wood layer by layer.

In order to avoid the hyper-shiny look of the bedroom set, but to still provide protection and a rich look, we used a matte finish polycrilic to finish it.

This is the back.

Here is the front.  One of the more difficult parts of the project was the small moulding trim around the lid.  I had to cut it to fit, and getting the angled cut was hard for me.  Then I had a problem using the nail gun to attach the trim to the lid without pushing the trim out of line or having a nail stick out into the air.  But I figured it out in the end.