A Weekend Full of Projects!

Labor Day weekend was a, need I say, jam packed-fun-weekend! I am so lucky to not only have family living nearby (Jesse's brother's fam, and parents), but to really feel like I have another sister in my sister-in-law Cammie. Together, we quite simply rock! The week before Labor Day, Jesse and Ben's cousin and uncle were tragically killed in a plane crash in Utah. The funerals were over Labor Day weekend and so Jesse, Ben, their parents, and their sister, Miriam all drove out to Utah to attend and lend their support. Meanwhile, back in MO, neither Cammie or I wanted to stay home alone while the hubbies were away, so I stayed at Cammie's! Now, for those of you who know me and/or Cammie...we love to do projects! And of course, an entire weekend with no men, means project craziness! Well, that's exactly what we did...ALL weekend! I shouldn't even mention how we forgot to give Steve and Ali naps one day, or how we had cold cereal for dinner one night! OR, how Steve's little feet and hands and clothes turned blue from crawling over the cardboard Cammie spray painted on! Pretty much, you can get the picture, we went all out! Oh yeah, and we rocked! Every project turned out awesome! Even though we inevitably messed something up on all of them once it reached about 9:00 pm! Not only do the two of us enjoy (ok maybe obsess over) projects, we can also talk! So, when we finally tore ourselves away from projects to go to bed, we would stay up chatting way, way too late! Cammie actually fell asleep in the middle of a conversation one night! Anyway, we had loads of fun. Now on to some pictures of all the stuff we made!

Project #1 and project #2 involved wood, which of course means POWER TOOLS!! Oh, you thought that since the men were away we would cook and sew? Well...not these two rockin women! (Although we did bake some yummy treats too, or course!) Day one involved a lot of sawing and sanding and drilling. But what for you ask? We decided to attempt building book shelves for our kids, and a wall hanging to display pictures and kid-art. This involved a lot of terrible measuring, splitting wood, and saw dust in the carpet. But the end result-perfect!

Here is Cammie and our good friend the chop saw!

And then there's me with the chop saw...we rocked the chop saw! Even if our measurements were somehow way off!

Fast forward to day 2, after a night of sanding, and more sanding (when we decide to build, we go all out!). We came back to my house to fix our measurement mistakes and put the shelves together...this is where the power drill came in! Yay for power drills! Here's Cammie posing by a fully assembled shelf.

And here's me looking like a crazy person who only got 4 hours of sleep the night before! Oh, right, that is me!

After screwing and nailing and gluing everything in place, the next step was painting and then more sanding (because we both just have to like the distressed look!). So, fast forward some more to day 4-the finished product. Of course we had to hang them immediately! These are in Steve's room...and I love, love, LOVE them! Don't we pretty much rock?!

Here's 2 of the 3 shelves Cammie made for her boys (Ali's is not pictured, but equally awesome!).

Our other wood working project were these cute wall things (we seriously have no good name for them yet) that have clips attached so that our kiddos can display their art/school work/pictures/whatever! They also turned out super cute, of course! I have decided to re-hang the ones I made for Steve's room in a different spot, so I will post a picture in the future! Just imagine the exact same thing, only red.

While we were at sanding and painting and drilling, Cammie whipped up some very cute shelves for her hallway. I made similar ones for my family room stairwell a while ago. Along with the shelves, Cammie also refinished just about every frame you see on the shelves! The whole effect rocks!

While waiting for things to dry, and then once the wood projects were done, we got into the holiday spirit. We made these super cute candy machines out of flower pots! We are helping out with the Relief Society Super Saturday in November, and this is one of the projects we are in charge of!

Here's the cutest picture of Steve and Ali. For about 5 minutes they both laid down and watched a movie! Hey, it was 5 uninterrupted minutes to do projects!

Along with everything pictured, I also made 3 holiday signs, and started a holiday banner, and Cammie made 1 holiday sign and started one holiday banner. We would have finished, but we ran out of time! The husbands came home! And of course we were very happy to see them! And they were very impressed with our wood working skills!

Now, before I finally finish this post, I have to tell you the BEST part of the project weekend! The grand total cost for everything we did was around $50. That's $25 each. And when you break it down, the shelves each cost about $6. So, moral of the story, doing it yourself really can be cheaper, and way more fun! And that's priceless!