Hello again world!! We have been having some computer trouble here at home lately, so our updates are coming a little fewer and further between... Hopefully we will have that corrected in the not too distant future though! Here are some new pics that you may or may not have seen from the last couple of months:

One of the new blinds in our kitchen had to be re-ordered because it was broken, so in the meantime the blind company hung up some paper just to cover the window. Since the new blind didn't make it in time for Thanksgiving (which we hosted at our house), Keisha told me to do something to make the paper look more "festive." Behold - Turkey Tom!!


Jackson in his Turkey Day duds...


It was nice to have a formal dining room for a change - we had so many people over that I actually had to pull out BOTH leaves to put into the table!!


Jackson and his Mimi (Keisha's mom)


We had to shuffle our furniture around a little bit to make room for our Christmas tree, and as a result we pushed our loveseat in front of the fireplace. As you can see here, we left a little space at first and Jackson found it in about 2 seconds!!


Keisha and Jackson coming home from a walk...


Keisha's family rented out a cabin to host a big Christmas dinner about a week ago, and here I am getting mauled by a group of crazed kiddos...


Jackson with some of his little cousins...


Keisha's mom bought Jackson this leather chair for Christmas - it matches our living room furniture perfectly!!


When you own a Santa suit for your child - he or she will HAVE to wear it on Christmas...




Here's Jackson playing Xbox - I think that he has been watching his daddy too much =)


Jackson vacuuming next to his new ball-tent (both gifts from Mimi...)


Uncle Dave and Aunt Carla got J-Man this roller coaster. I put it together this morning and he played with it for hours and hours!! It turns out that he likes walking up and down the track while pushing the car better than he likes actually riding in the car! That may change as he gets a little older. And in case you were wondering: Yes, I rode the car down this thing about 20 times.




Jackson sporting his new outfit from Keisha's Aunt Janet...




Cheesin'

My cabinet project...

Hello internet - long time no talk!! Keisha usually keeps everyone up to date on our family, but I wanted to share my latest home improvement project with you. We decided that it would be nice to have some cabinets in our bonus room / play room to beef up our storage space, so I built some! It took me almost 3 weeks (because I could only work on them for a few hours a night), but I installed them today and I think that they are looking pretty good! As usual, I documented the process...

Here are the materials I started with:


These cabinets are 182 inches wide in total, so I made them in 3 pieces so that they would fit up the stairs. The first thing I did was was build the base pedestals for the cabinets to sit on.


I made this jig out of a facing piece so that it would be easier to make long cuts with the circular saw.


Here's all the cabinet pieces after being cut out - ready to be assembled!

Attaching the base pedestal to the base board...

This jig guides the drill (and special bit) so that it drills out perfect pocket holes to attach boards at 90 degree angles.

These are the holes that it drills out:

I tacked these boards in with a nail gun before attaching them for good. If you don't own a compressor and nail gun, you should go get one - they are awesome!

To make the shelf height adjustable within each cabinet, I hand drilled all these holes. There are 252 in all!!

Here's the shell of one of the 3 main cabinet sections:

I filled and sanded down all of the holes before staining the cabinets...

I used the same jig to cut out the shelves, but this time I cut them out two at a time...

I finished the edges of all the shelves with a trim piece

I had to trim 1/2 inch off of all the facing pieces to get them down to 2". 2 1/2 inches was going to be a little bit too big!

Here are the three sections with the constructed facing piece:

I attached the three cabinet pieces together with bolts to make sure that everything lined up properly.

Final assembly

Stain time!

I ran all of the TV wires through the wall so that none of them would be visible when the cabinets are installed...

This is the official "Before" shot with the TV hanging and the wires running behind the wall...

Last time in the garage - headed upstairs!

TA-DA!!

To complete hide all the wires, I added this valence piece - this will also help to keep Jackson out! He loves grabbing bundles of wires!!

Here's the bonus/play room (I still have to hang that picture on the left...). As a side note, I also built that activity table in front of Jackson's green chair from scratch! =)

30th Birthday Party!!!

Ryan and I had our 30th Birthday Party - combined - at Grub's on Dickson on Saturday night. We had SO many friends come out and hang with us!! It was such a great birthday present - just being with our friends! I, unfortunately, left my camera in the car so my friend Rachael and my dear love Katie pie sent me these pics! Here we come 30's - Ryan and I are ready to make 30 the new 20!!!!

me and my handsome hubby


me and katie - my soon-to-be sis!!!

Kristen (my cousin Tyler's girlfriend), Katie and I