Project Sundays 5-10 & 5-17-15

*5-10-15*

Now that we've finally got that railing out of the way, it's time to start on our next project, which is to fix up the two raised garden-beds in the front of the house. And by "fix", I mean "completely re-do from scratch". You see, the previous owner of the house left us this:

A friend of mine described it as "A masterpiece. No finer landscaping has ever been done..." So yeah, we had to start from scratch. The first step was to sit down and get very overwhelmed. We've never done any real landscaping before, and this is sort of a big project to take on. We found some tutorials and a youtube video, and decided that it was time to get started. We decided to start on just the left side and see how it went before committing to doing the entire yard. Also, the left side was a lot worse, and needed fixing more desperately.

I yanked out that ugly-ass plastic liner and chopped it up with a sawzall so that I could throw it out. Then it was time for the daunting task of removing every single one of the pavers that were already in the ground. We saved them all, of course, and we'll reuse them when we're ready to re-build the wall.

After everything was neatly stacked on the porch, it was time to start digging. At this point, we took a break and went to the hardware store (a pattern in our lives) to pick up some supplies. We got some marking paint, pea-gravel and landscaping cloth. When we got home, we marked out the line where that we wanted to dig to, and then... then it started raining. 

We got a little bit of trenching done, but the ground was getting muddy and gross. So uh, we took another break. But it was a productive break, we went down into the basement and did a lot of demo work. Some previous owner had put up some really shitty studding, that at this point, wasn't even holding anything up anymore. Our house flooded last summer, and I guess the ugly paneling that was in the basement had to get ripped down, so all we were left with were these weird studs. We spent a couple of hours with a friend ripping down the studs and removing the falling drop-ceiling tiles. It was a productive afternoon, and we got a lot done.

At this point, we left to go back to the apartment and get cleaned up. It was Mother's Day, and we were taking our moms out to a fancy-ass dinner. Okay, we went for pizza, but everyone had a good time and it was a lot of fun.






 
*5-17-15*


We started out strong this weekend! We got to the house and worked on finishing up the trench for the left garden bed. We were going to dig down to about 2-3", but got a bit carried away, and dug to about 4-5" instead. But I've been told that this is good, as you want your first course of bricks in a retaining wall to be as deep into the ground as possible so as to provide a stable base to build up on.
I had purchased an expensive tamper to squish down the trenched ground into something resembling a flat plane, and it turned out to be exactly the tool we needed (good thing too, it wasn't cheap).

The next step was to lay out all of the bricks (or pavers) in a row to check on how flat the round is, and if the stones sit where we want them to, and a million other little finicky details. Like I said, it's super important to get this first row perfect, because you're going to be putting 2 or more rows on top of it, and you want them to look good, and not to fall over. Once we determined that yeah, it looked good, it was time to move all of the bricks and use our landscaping cloth.

I cut the cloth into sections with a utility knife, and laid it out about half-way across the trench, so that it would be covered by the bottom course of bricks. The cloth serves a few different purposes, but it mainly prevents weeds from growing up in between the layers of bricks. While we were doing all of this, some of our friends stopped by and got busy moving all of the bricks from the right-side retaining wall onto our porch, and in the time it took us to lay out 1 course of bricks to our satisfaction, they even managed to trench out the whole right side! Needless to say, hubs and I felt like we weren't getting nearly as much work done as them! But it all looks pretty damned good, if I do say so myself.

Here you can see the left-side bed with its first course of bricks, and the right-side bed all trenched out! This all took us about 5 hours of work in the hot sun, so we decided that it was time to call it a day. We're not going to be having a Project Sunday next weekend, and I've been a bit under the weather, so I don't know when we'll have a chance to come back and finish this up, but I'm hoping that it'll be soon! I want this project to be done with already!

Also, we're having the house painted right now, and I can't wait to show you some shots of the interior (which also needs some fixing up and some TLC), and to give you guys an over-view of some of the inside projects that we're going to be taking on!

So stay tuned!

Project Sunday 4-26-15

I know it's been a long time since I've done a Project Sunday (grad school will do that to you), but now that we're home owners, expect to see more of them coming your way! Let's start with this one...

Railings, pt. 1

Okay, if I were to be 100% honest, this would really be "Railings, pt. 2", since this is actually the second day that we've been working on this project.  After work this part Thursday, we decided we had time to instal a railing on our front porch. Long story short, we really only had time to go to the Home Store and get all of our supplies before it got too dark and too cold and too tired to really get any work done.

The lovely hubs.

So, we got up early this morning and decided that we were going to get the railings done before we had to leave for a concert at 3pm. Long story short, we didn't. But we did make a lot of progress, and I wanted to share that with you. Here's the before picture, so that you can see what we have to work with:

Before...

We're installing a railing along the side of the stairs to make it easier to get in and out of the house. It's not super high up, but some of our relatives have had issues with it, and when it was covered in ice... ugh, forget it. Nightmare city. We're also installing a piece of railing on the other side of the porch, where there is a 2'+ drop to the drive-way. Right now it's a nice place to hand things up from the car, but I can see myself tripping and falling, and I really don't want that to happen. So yeah, railing.

We've installed railings before, and I don't remember it taking an extremely long time, so I figured we'd be able to finish the whole thing in a few hours. Turns out, I was wrong. The first step to installing railings is to put up the posts (newel columns). In order to do that, you need some of these funny looking feet-things to anchor them into. And in order to do that, you need to drill holes into the concrete, with a special masonry bit and a hammer-drill. Not a quick process.

Trust hammer, gets the job done.

After we drilled the holes, we need to pound in some masonry anchors, which are basically special screws that expand when you hit them, so they stay in place in the concrete. Pretty nifty, if you can get them to work. It took a lot of finagling, but finally we got all four holes drilled, and all four anchors in... for our first post. Then came placing the footing on, and tightening the nuts down so that everything stayed in place. Here's a joke for you: How many vice-grips does it take to instal a masonry anchor?

That's my father-in-law's foot! He helped!

The answer is: At least two (which was all we had on hand). Once all of the nuts were tightened down, we had our first footing installed. Just two more to go! Luckily the next two didn't take quite as long as the first one. We got into a rythem, and it actually went pretty quickly. All in all, installing three footings took about 3 hours, with one quick trip to the harware store and a break to mow the lawn. Not too bad. Still, we spent all morning on the railings, and I feel like we don't have too much to show for it. At least we got to use our giant shop-vac!

It came with the house, honest.

Anyway, I'm not sure when we'll have time to get back to work on these, probably Wednesday. You see, we're not actually moved in to the house yet. We're waiting to get all of the painting and flooring done before we start putting our stuff in the house, so we're still in the apartment. So we can only work on projects after work and on weekends and such, and have to allow time for schlepping everything there and back. Fun, right? Anyway, stay tuned next week for Part two! (I hope)

Project Sunday 5-4-14 & An Announcement

Hello there folks, it's that time again! Project Sunday time!

As predicted, we had another busy one this week, and that's just the way I like it! Here we go!

We started off the day in a semi-lazy fashion, sleeping in and watching some Netflix while we had our breakfast. But around 1 o'clock, it was time to pick up a friend and head out to archery!

This was only the second practice of the season, but apparently I haven't completely forgotten what I was doing:

I am the noodle-slayer!

After archery we wandered around Barnes & Noble while we decided on a game-plan for the rest of the day. My husband and I knew that we wanted a chance to work on our kitchen table, but we were hungry and tired and a bit grumpy. So my brilliant husband suggested that we take a break, go out for dinner and then work on the table if we were still up for it.

It was a great idea! Over dinner we took the time to solidify our plans for the table. So far we had purchase a sheet of B/C plywood and had it cut into 32" pieces. So we sat down and planned out exactly where to make our next cuts and tried to decide if we wanted to attach the panels with pocket holes, or dados.

Then after a delicious dinner of burgers and chilli, we were off to my in-law's house to start making those cuts!

I took like, 5 pictures but I'm trying not to post all of them every time we work on the project. I don't want to over-saturate the blog with pictures of one particular project, and besides, I'm planning on doing a big post about it when the table is all finished. I should save my pictures for then, right? Right.

So we actually made a lot of progress in one evening. We have all of our pieces cut out (except for one that didn't come out super-straight due to a warped fence), and we know what the next several steps are. I have a feeling that this table is going to get done a lot sooner than the night-stands! *fingers crossed*

Well, I think that about wraps everything up... oh right, I promised you guys an announcement, didn't I?

If you follow me over on twitter, you've probably heard this one already, but here goes anyway:

I STARTED GRAD SCHOOL!

Yup, yesterday (5-5) was my first official day as a graduate student. I'm taking two classes this summer and working towards my Master's Degree in Library and Information Science. Yup, I'm gonna be a librarian! Well, someday. I'm very excited and more than a little bit nervous about grad school, so please be patient with me for the next several months while I adjust.
Right now I'm working 2 jobs, I have this blog and another one that I'd like to get back to, and once in a while I attempt to have a social life. Add school back into the mix, and it gets just a little bit overwhelming.

But I don't want to bore you guys with all of the details. Let's just say that while I'm going to try to continue to post regularly, I can't really promise more than a Project Sunday post here and there. But please stay tuned, because you never know, grad school might inspire me to post more than ever!

Until next time folks!



Our Project Sunday sure was productive this week, even if I was busy thinking thoughts of school. What have you guys been up to this week? Do you have any big announcements? Working on any cool projects? I'd love to know about it/them! Leave a comment and tell me all!

Project Sunday 4-27-14

Woah, it's been a busy few weeks. Passover is over (and I think I'm finally fully recovered), but it certainly was a whirlwind of family and food and activity.

Then immediately after Passover I go to go to my new campus for orientation. I mentioned that I'm getting a Master's in Library and Information Science (MLIS), didn't I? I'm doing my entire program on-line (to cut out a lengthy and inconvenient commute) so this was one of my only chances to meet my professors and advisers, not to mention my fellow students. I met some great people, got some good information and actually had a good time, so it was very much worth going to for me.

I could go on and talk about other exciting things I did this past week (like attend the first meeting of a new writer's group), but I think I'm going to try to stick to the topic at hand, which is:
Project Sunday! And it was a good one this week, check it out:

Saturday was my grandfather's yartzeit which marks the anniversary of the day he passed away. In honor of his memory we had a breakfast at our synagog Sunday morning, which was a very pleasant way to start off our day. We went for morning services, and then stayed for breakfast, all the while taking the opportunity to remember my grandfather. 

After that it was off to our favorite park to go for a long walk with a friend. We picked her up and did 5 laps around our track, which is 5k. We've been trying to stay active and walk outside a lot now that the weather is more or less permitting. 

Then it was a quick lunch and back out to see a local production of Neil Simon's Rumors with my parents. It was uproariously funny and I had a fabulous time. My husband had a good time too, even though he claims that it wasn't quite his sense of humor (but I saw him laughing plenty, don't worry). And afterwards, my parents insisted on treating us to a dinner out, even though we had sort of just had lunch. Oh well, it was delicious anyway!

Back home for a quick rest and then it was off to my in-law's house for a meeting with a dear friend of theirs. Now it seems that at some point in the last year or so, my mother in-law and her friend B got it in their heads that they should build an outdoor clay oven. Which is, granted, a fabulous idea, and I can't wait to have a loaf of home-made bread straight out of the oven, but somehow we got recruited to help in this whole process.
Many ideas were tossed around, and the words "structural integrity" were used. Legos were gotten out and we all consulted a book called Build Your Own Earth Oven. I am beyond excited about this project. Even though I've got about a million other things going on, how often do you get the opportunity to build a clay oven? Some preliminary plans were drawn up, some numbers were crunched and we set a date for our next meeting.

I promise that I'll be blogging about this oven building process. I'm not sure if it's going to be one "OMG We Built a Clay Oven" post, or if I'll just blog about it as it happens, but it'll be here. Don't worry.

So that's it. I know right, that's it? What an amazingly busy yet productive Project Sunday! And there's always more to come, so stay tuned!



How did you guys spend your Project Sunday? Build anything interesting? Do you have any experience with clay ovens? I'd love to hear about it in the comments!

Project Sunday 4-13-14 *Passover Edition*

I hope ya'll aren't too sick of hearing about our Project Sundays, because we're having so much fun with them!
Here's one more, our Project Sunday: Passover Edition!

As you may or may not know (or may have guessed), Sunday was the last full day before the beginning of the Jewish holiday of Passover. Normally, this day is full of rushed, last-minute cleaning and cooking, but we didn't have to do any of that this year. Or at least, very little of it. But let me start at the beginning.

Our day actually started pretty early in the morning, when we went to the airport to pick up my brother-in-law, who's visiting from California. I'm so excited to see him, because we actually haven't seen each other since the wedding way back in August.

We then dropped him off at his parent's house, where we also got to see my new aunt & uncle in-laws, who are visiting from New York! It's so nice to get to spend time with family, especially family you get along with! (Am I right?) Then, since we were at my in-law's house we got roped into fixing a few little things. My father-in-law needed help fixing his new glasses, and then my husband had to instal one of those magnetic-snapping screen door thingies, which actually seems to work pretty well. I had a lot of fun walking through it, in any case.

After that it was back home to finish turning over the kitchen. (turning it from a rest of the year kitchen into a special Passover kitchen) Because we'd spent some time Saturday night prepping for this, it actually didn't take all that long. We cleaning and scrubbed and then put away all of our not-for-Passover pots, pans and dishes.

Guess which cabinets we won't be opening!

The whole ordeal took less than 4 hours, and only involved 1 trip to Meijers/Lowe's... And then, after we had scrubbed and toiled, it was time to move some furniture!
We enlisted the help of our uncle and my brother-in-law and our aunt came along for the ride. We took a empty cabinet from my in-law's basement, moved it into the borrowed Subaru and then dragged it up 2.5 flights of stairs to our apartment. I'm super excited, because it's going to house all of our 3D Printer paraphernalia (which means I can get that junk off of the floor!).

Not quite where it belongs, but we're getting there.

We then gave all of the relatives present a quick tour of our apartment, and they all got to meet our snake, Cecil. Then it was back to my in-law's house to help them with an emergency pizza situation. The situation was that instead of ordering 2 pre-Passover pizzas, they had some how ended up with three. We were happy to help them with this emergency.

After the airporting, and the cleaning and the furniture moving, we were pretty much done for the day. We did sit down with our aunt at some point and go over some financial records. She commented on what a productive day we'd all had, and we told that of course it had been productive, it was Project Sunday.

Well, that's about it for this post. I've still got a few more things left to do to get ready for Passover, so I'd better get to that. I'll see you all after Yontif!

What holidays are you guys celebrating this week? Did you have a productive Project Sunday? Tell me all about it in the coments!

Project Sunday 4-6-14

We had such an intense Project Sunday this week that I haven't even had a chance to write about it until now, but here we go!

Woo! Project Sunday! We started off the day with a trip to the Detroit Institute of Arts to see their amazing special exhibit Samurai: Beyond the Sword, which was amazing! And if you're interested in checking it out you can find all of the information right here! I don't have any photos (because you're not allowed to take any in the special exhibit space), so if you guys are curious, you'll just have to see the show for yourself! But I did get a few quick pix of the mummy, who's finally back on exhibit!

Horus

While the DIA was fun, it wasn't really much of a project, but don't worry we did plenty of that! After the museum we stopped at home to pick up our jig-saw and headed out to my parents house to do some chair-repair (doesn't that just sound cool?).

Lets see if you can spot the problem here:

Yeah... My parents have had the same kitchen table and chairs for over 15 years now. They've held up pretty well, but every once in a while, something needs to get fixed. This time it was one of the chairs that had broken, cracked in two places. But luckily, it was a pretty easy fix, only requiring a total of four trips to the local home-improvement store.... That was sarcasm.

No, I'm kidding. Well, we did take four trips (total) to Home Depot and Lowe's, but it really was an easy fix. We simply took the broken particle-board base out of the chair, and made a new one. All we needed was a jig-saw, a hammer-tacker and a pencil. And well, a drill didn't hurt.

Then we just put everything back together! Easy and quick. Well, maybe not so quick because we kept getting distracted by other little projects that needed doing around my parent's house. Like, re-stringing some blinds that had broken, and re-attaching some slats that had come off of the deck's built-in bench... When my husband and I show up with a box of tools, my parents can always find something that needs fixing or replacing. It's one of the things we love about them.

After the repair work, my parents treated us to dinner at our favorite pizza place. We were supposed to do some cleaning and straightening when we got home, but we were just too pooped. It was a busy day, with lots of running around, and lots of fun. And I got to use a jig-saw for the first time (it was fun!).

So that's it, our Project Sunday in a nutshell. Oh yeah, and apparently we've been hired to re-do the floor in my parent's garage? Stay tuned!



How about you guys? Did ya'll do anything fun and exciting for your Project Sunday? Or did you have a relaxing weekend? Tell me all about it in the comments!

Oh Yeah, We Built Night-Stands!

So, remember that SUPER SECRECT project I've been babbling on about for ages now? Well, it's done! They're all done! What are they you ask? Why, night-stands, of course!



 

This one's mine :)

Now, I don't have a picture of it (I should, really) but up until now I've been using an empty box as a night-stand, and I cannot tell you how many times I've knocked the damn thing over trying to turn my alarm off and had all of my things go flying. Grr. Very frustrating.
So  way back in December my husband and I decided to rectify this grievous error by making ourselves a pair of matching custom night-stands. Easy, right?

Well it was actually pretty darned easy, just a bit time consuming, but I'll get to that later. In the mean time, let me should you how we made that gorgeous night-stand from this pile of wood:

 

 

Now we absolutely have to give credit where credit is due. The original plans for this night-stand come from the amazing and talented Ana White. The night-stands are adapted from her Narrow Cottage End Table plans. But wait, there's more credit to be distributed.

When I first had the idea to build our own night-stands, I immediately consulted with my personal friend, Google. And he recommended a blog called Attempts At Domestication, where they were hard at working building their own night-stands. They had already done the hard work of adjusting Ana's plans to fit a night-stand instead of an end-table, and as you can see we borrowed extensively from their design. (We adjusted the height and such, but really... we're thieves, plain and simple). We also took to heart their suggestion of investing in a pocket jig and well, we couldn't have made this project without it, so thanks!

Okay, now back to our project. We had a pile of wood all cut and ready to go... so what to do net? Assembly, of course! We busted out or brand new Kreg Pocket-Hole Jig (at ~ $40, easily the most expensive part of the project, but totally worth it), and got to work!

First up, we put together the pieces that would become the sides of the night-stands. As you might be able to tell from this picture, we opted to make both night-stands at once. This is because we both needed night-stands, and because we're very lazy people. I knew that if we didn't make both at once, that second stand would never get finished.

Ta-Da, sides are assembled!

Next up was to put the entire "base" of the stands together. This includes the sides & back, and the drawers.

 

This involved a lot of clamping, and much use of our (by now) beloved Kreg Jig. It wasn't super easy and seemed to take a lot longer than it actually did, but we eventually got the base of the night-stands fully assembled.

We opted not to go the drawer-slide route, and instead just tacked a piece of scrap plywood onto the bottom of the stand to serve as a drawer runner. It actually worked pretty well (after a coat or two of some candle-wax) and was certainly easier. Considering how small our drawers are, and the fact that so far I've just got my kindle and my glassed in mine, I'm pretty happy with that decision.

The next step (that we actually did first, shhh!) was to put together the tops. Again, our Kreg Jig was invaluable here. It allowed us to assemble boards flush to one another without any screws or nails showing at all.

Look Ma, no screws! Well, none that you can see at least.

I realize that for some reason, I don't have a single picture of us assembling the drawers themselves. Weird, because I'm usually fairly obsessive about documenting every step, but what can you do. I promise you that we did in fact build drawers. Here, you can see them in this picture:

 

There's everything drying off in our storage space after receiving a first coat of paint/stain.
Now I should mention that one of the reasons that this project took us ~3 months to finish is the fact that we don't have a good work space in our apartment. My husband has a nice "shop" area, but it's at his parent's house. Which meant schlepping over there whenever we wanted to work on these. Add in my husband's full time job, my two part-time jobs and the fact that we had a VERY cold and snowy couple of months, and well... you can see how things just took a bit longer than we were expecting.
So when it was finally time to paint and stain, we jumped at the chance to take our night-stands home and work on them (we've got a small balcony and a drop-cloth, perfect for this task).



Our beautiful stained night-stands :)

The whole project took a bit longer than we wanted, but the cost came in at about ~$75, and that's for both night-stands. I actually have a break-down of how much we spent on each block of wood, but I don't want to bore you more than I already have. The Kreg Jig was ~ $40 and worth every penny. And I didn't document this very well, but I think that we spent about $20 on paint, stain and polyurethane. All in all, a pretty cheap project, and certainly a lot cheaper than buying night-stands at a place like Art Van (where we got our amazing, but very expensive bed).

So that's about it, our night-stands. We're thrilled to have them, and we both had so much fun making them that we're already onto the next project! I won't keep you guys in the dark this time though, I'll go ahead and tell you that we're using another Ana White design to make a kitchen table for ourselves, since we uh, still don't have one. So stay tuned for that!



Painted, stained and assembled with matching drawer-knobs.
And don't they look beautiful with our anniversary art hanging over them?

So what have you guys been working on lately? Any cool DIY projects? I'd love to hear all about them in the comments!


And P.S. Go check out www.ana-white.com and www.attemptsatdomestication.com both amazing blogs, very inspiring and well worth the read!

Projet Sunday 3-23-14

It's that time again folks! Time to re-cap yet another amazing Project Sunday! And it's been a pretty productive one, if I do say so myself!

We slept in a bit, as one is wont to do on a Sunday morning, but immediately sprung into the spring-cleaning spirit. I had decided that I was going to tackle a few problematic areas of the apartment today, so while my husband worked on cleaning our snake's cage (which badly needed doing) I vacuumed the bedroom, bathroom and kitchen.

Then we got to visit with a friend who just got back from France, and do some grocery shopping with them. Yes, this is what we do for fun. We needed to go, they needed to go, it seemed like a good idea. And... check out what they brought back from France for us (okay, mostly for me):

It's from a French medical text-book, can you tell?

Isn't that sooooo cool? I'm going to have it framed and you know I'll share some photos of the finished product!

Next on the agenda we had to decide if we were going to stay home to work on the NAME OF PROJECT REDACTED FOR SECURITY REASONS, or wander down to the university where my husband works to help the Steel Bridge team that my husband was captain of for 2 years running (and since competition is next week, they badly need all the help they can get). In the end we decided to stay home and work on the TOP-SECRET project, and I'm so glad we did because some other friends stopped by and we had an amazing visit! :o) I love getting to see our friends, especially ones who live far away, whom we don't get to see often enough.

After that, I ran off to do some actual work (super fun, I know) and gave my husband time to just relax. When I got home we got to finally put the almost finishing touches on the PROJECT THAT SHALL NOT BE NAMED. So that's a good thing. We're like, 98% done at this point, and I swear that I'll have a really big post all about it when we're done.

Whew, I guess that's about it for this Project Sunday, but that's a lot right? We worked our little buns off, but had a really lovely and amazing day, full of projects and friends. What more could we possibly ask for? Spring temperatures above freezing? Nah. Who would want that?


Hey, how did you guys celebrate Project Sunday? Working on anything interesting or fun? Tell me about it in the comments!

Project Sunday 3-16-14

Happy Monday, and Happy St. Patrick's Day to all those who celebrate! And to all those who don't, wear something green anyway, it's not worth getting pinched by strangers.

Here's a quick re-cap of yesterday's Project Sunday activities for you to enjoy:

Yesterday we celebrated the Jewish holiday of Purim. My husband and I went to morning services to hear the reading of the Megillah (the Book of Esther, which tells the story of how the evil Haman wanted to destroy the Jews because a man named Mordechi refused to bow down to him, and how Esther the Queen managed to save her people), and to stuff our faces with delicious food-stuffs.

No, I didn't make these, but don't they look delicious?





Then is was off to a Sudah (Purim party) at my in-law's house, where we stuffed our faces some more with more delicious food-stuffs.
Then it was time to get to work on my father in law's wine press. This is a project that we started working on more than a few months ago, and have been making spotty progress on ever since. It's sort of a slow going project, because we have to be at my in-law's house, and have everyone involved in the mood to work on a project, which doesn't always happen.

Anyway, we finished up the last step of the wine press, and I'm happy to report that it is now in working condition. There are more improvements that we could make, little additions that might improve its performance, but we wanted to hold off until we see how the wine press actually works. And since my in-law's won't be getting their hands on the right grapes until at least September, we might be waiting awhile. Oh well, at least that's another project done! I'd love to write about the press and its construction at some point, so keep an eye out for that.

After that, my exhausted husband and I came home and crashed. We just had no energy to work on our own projects (and it was just too cold outside for the painting we were planning on doing), so we decided to chill out and play video games for a bit.

I got some work done on a personal writing project, but other than that, we had a rather un-productive evening, and I'm okay with that.
Sure, Project Sunday is for working on projects, but we did, and we celebrated one of my favorite holidays on top of it all.

So was this the most productive Project Sunday we've had? No. Was it a fun and relaxing one? YES!

Don't worry, we'll have another Project Sunday coming up next week, so stay tuned!



And I'd love to hear what you guys are working on for your Project Sundays, so let me know in the comments!

Project Sunday 3-2-14

It's been yet another busy Project Sunday, and so I'm going to keep this very short.

Just wanted to say that our crossbow racks have been made and hung up, and they look fabulous!

And here's a close-up of my husband's crossbow on its new rack:

In case you didn't know, we're a little strange

Happy Project Sunday!

Project Sunday 2-23-14

I know it's not Sunday anymore, but I was simply too exhausted last night to possibly post this, and I'm going to tell you why.

Sunday is usually the only day of the week that both my husband and myself have free time. So we try to spend almost all of our Sundays working on the myriad of projects that we're occupying our time with. Thus we have dubbed the day Project Sunday. Catchy, right?

So what did we do this past Project Sunday? I'm so glad you asked.

First, since we're planning on going to Pennsic this year (yes, that again) I'm going to need something to wear. You might remember that last time I went to Pennsic, I had to make a bunch of funny looking cloths for myself... Well, I don't know what we were thinking, but they all came out way too big. Over the years, we took in one of the tunics and made it wearable, but nothing else really fit me. So yesterday, we went to a Garb Workshop in our Barrony and fixed up the other two pieces! I'm so excited that now I'll actually have garb that fits me! We spent the whole morning measuring and cutting and sewing and surging, and it was so much fun. There's still a lot of work to be done. One of my tunics needs to be hemmed, and I still don't have any pants, but oh well. Such is life.

After the Garb Workshop, we headed over to my mom's office so that I could do some work, and so my husband could provide some tech support to her. No matter how old your children get, they will always be your precious little IT people.

Next was a trip to my in-law's house to have "dinner" (at 4:00pm) with some friends of theirs, and then to work on a really special project that I can't tell you about now, but that I promise I will blog about as soon as it's finished!

Now you might think that we packed a lot into our Project Sunday, but we weren't done yet! We had the most important project of all waiting for us at home.
We had to finish our thank-you notes! Yes, I know that we've been married for over 6 months, and we haven't done our thank-you notes yet. But guess what? They're all done now! It took about 4 hours of solid work over Saturday and Sunday evenings to hammer out all of the details and write some of the ones we had been putting off. But it got done. I'm going to head out to the post office today to mail them! (then I just have to worry about my grad-school apps... yay)

And that was really the end of a very long, yet very productive Project Sunday. What will we get done next time?
Stay tuned and find out!