Friday, April 13, 2012

A little project

A few months ago, Super-dad and I decided it was time to make X-man's room a big boy room. Actually, I had decided it last summer but wanted to think on it a bit. Last night, X-man asked me if I liked his room and I told him yes and asked if he liked it. He said that yes he liked it, it was his favorite room ever.

But I am getting ahead of myself. Later I will show the entire room, today I want to show a little project me and X-man did.

I decided that he needed a cork board in his room to hang the cool things that he got at school.

So, I got a simple cork board from Target and sanded down the wood trim on it.




Then, I got out all my supplies and asked X-man what colors he wanted everything to be.


X-man wanted a green edge and red and blue letters. So, I did a few thin coats of green on the edges and then got him to help me with the letters. I will let the pictures do the talking.






(I have no idea why this picture will not rotate)
So, there you have my almost finished cork board for the X-man's room. I want to add some hooks to the sides so we can hang all his metals on it but other than that, we like it. X-man got a bit excited towards the end and that is why there is a bit of red paint smudged next to the "R" but over-all, I am very happy with the way it turned out. I already have it hung in his room but for some reason, I have no taken any pictures. Hopefully I can get some tomorrow.

Saturday, March 31, 2012

Spring time means .....

Lots of things!

The trees are blooms. The bulbs are sprouting. I am sneezing. But most importantly it means a return to this blog. Who missed me?

I have very busy over here so I have lots to catch up on but I don't want to do it all in one blog post. That would not be very much fun, now would it?

Today, let's talk about the raised vegetable bed that I made this past weekend. Last year, we had a small container garden, and it worked well. This year, I decided that I did not want containers all over my back deck and I was going to build a raised bed for the yard. I picked a spot and went out to measure. 7 feet by 3 feet seemed like a good size.

X-man and I went to the local hardware store where I batted my eyes and acted lost. A nice older gentleman took pity on me and cut all the wood that I needed and even got me the nails! At this point, I should have taken a picture but I did not. Once we got home, it was pouring down rain, so we had a bit of a break before we had to get everything to the back yard.

A few hours later, the rain had let up, the sun had come out and we were on our way. I should have taken another picture here, but I did not. After hauling all the wood up the hill in the backyard and laying it all out, I turned around and found a SNAKE! Go figure, but I got a picture of that!


Since the snake was not bothering me and I certainly did not plan on bothering him, I decided to go ahead and make my box. It is 7 feet long, 3 feet wide, and 12 inches deep.


Thank goodness that it started to rain again at this point. The next day was a rainy one as well but I had a good two hour window of time that I got into there and was able to dig up the grass inside the box and also get it all turned up. That was no easy chore and my hands certainly hurt afterwards.


The next day was Monday but after work, I went and got just a small amount of dirt....like 800 lbs of it. It was 20 bags that each weighed about 40 pounds. Yep. Loaded it on the cart, then into my car and up the hill in the back yard all by myself. Don't worry, I definitely felt it the next day.


At this point, I enlisted the help of a certain 42 inches tall child. What, it is not like it is child labor or anything!




At long last, the raised bed was completed! And honestly, I have not looked at it once since then. I do have some vegetables that I have started from seed inside the house. I am hoping to get them into the box around mid to late April. By then, I should be over the trauma of building a raised bed.