Quick Hits

Posted on by Jordan

Five weeks left in the “Baby N” countdown…

Heather has a cold, and is starting to feel uncomfortably large. I think we both are a little worried that the remaining five weeks are going to feel very long.

I confiscated my first cell phone tonight! (Yay Scouting?)

I was in Nebraska last weekend looking for deer, but didn’t manage to cross paths with anything worth shooting at.

Meanwhile, Heather was in Florida participating in a wedding. To make a long story short, she did just fine, but wouldn’t advise unnecessary trips this late in the pregnancy game. The important part is, I suppose, that she and the baby are home safe, it was a beautiful wedding, and she really enjoyed herself while she was there.

-Jordan

Pulling Out The Stops

Posted on by Jordan

We are now under 50 days until the expected arrival of “Baby N”!

 

So far we have:

  • Prepared a room
  • Found and reconditioned baby furniture
  • Ordered and assembled a new crib
  • Decorated the room, complete with large hand made initials
  • packed enough clothes into the room that I suspect “Baby N” will never wear the same outfit twice until well after age 2
  • Performed extensive tune-up maintenance on our designated baby hauling vehicle.

What could be left you ask?

A photography studio! Not to fear though, pintrest has guided us to a whole host of ideas to build one right here in our living room!

As you can kind of see, the design is fairly simple. Just some 2×4 stands over some hardwood flooring, a piece of nice wide trim and a fabric backdrop and you have your very own mock room!

We found the flooring (Real bamboo!) at the local Habitat for Humanity “restore.” We were looking for, and found, a partial box of flooring to use, rather than having to pick up an entire case of something. We also found some scrap wood with neat texture to it that may end up in the background if we manage to get it cleaned up a little before it gets too cold.

Now, you may also be wondering, why this was all setup in our living room? Well because Heather had a friend with a two-week old baby who was willing to let her take some pictures. Sadly I forgot to clear it with Heather and the mom so… just to be on the safe side I will avoid posting anything from their session except to say I think you can look forward to some very nice pictures of our daughter in the near future!

-Jordan

 

 

Initials, Part One

Posted on by Jordan

Every time I think the baby’s room is done, Heather reminds me of something else we had talked about doing…

Case in point, the unadorned wall over by the changing table. Heather was saving that space for the baby’s initials!

Technically I suppose this should be part two, as initial one won’t be revealed here for quite some time…

 

Anyway, after an extensive font search, and then some tracing (did you know that the easiest way to print an image across multiple pages is Microsoft Paint!?) We had some letters on plywood ready to cut out.

This wound up being the first time I have used my jigsaw, despite having been really excited to get it and try it out. The initial project I had in mind is still waiting for me to resolve some of the planning gaps. The letter cut out nicely, and Heather was happy with the results.

She had tried to describe her plans for the letters a few times and I just couldn’t envision what she had in mind. A few hours after I handed it off to her, and it was much easier to see the plan.

For obvious reasons we won’t be showing any pictures of the first initial for another eight weeks, but the baby’s room is one step closer to being completely ready!

-Jordan

 

Pumpkins (2012 Edition)

Posted on by Jordan

It’s been a surprisingly busy weekend here!

Friday night, Heather and I went with some friends to a special worship event put on by a church in the area. The theme was vaguely bluegrass, but it appears that just giving an electric guitar player a banjo doesn’t alter the style of the music as much as one might have expected. That being said, it was a fun evening, and they had a great worship team.

Saturday morning, Heather headed down to the capital to participate in the annual breast cancer awareness walk. She had a great time, and was happy to discover that her friends from the office were more than happy to set a pace that accommodates someone 32 weeks pregnant.

At the same time, I headed out to the building our church is slowly working to clean up for a new location. The good news with that project is that the demolition is nearly done, and the city has nearly figured out all the kinks in the permit issuance process. I still managed to get completely covered in cobwebs and dust in no time! It appears that we are going to clean by simply hauling dust out one shirt load at a time 🙂

Heather and I then met up to head to the Habitat “restore” to see about getting some flooring to use in building a photography studio style backdrop she had seen online. We found something that might work, along with some other odds and ends Heather thought might be useful.

When we got home, we proceeded to spend the next few hours cleaning up (this line may make a new low in mundane things I typed into the blog… ah well)

Some friends came over that night to carve pumpkins, and brought their newly born daughter!

Heather was happy to take breaks from carving to entertain her, and by the time the night was done I had managed to rock her to sleep in my arms for a while (the baby, not Heather)

As a small tangent we discovered that, for larger cuts, a “keyhole saw” is wildly superior to a knife! I also had rigged a handle onto a jigsaw blade, and we found it surprisingly easy to maneuver around the tight corners of our designs. The end results were something everyone was proud of, and I think that’s all we can ask for 🙂

Sunday nearly kept pace with how our weekend stared. After church, Heather had back-to-back photo sessions for friends, and then spent the evening working on her “Initials project” (more on that in an upcoming post!) I wasn’t quite as busy, but built stands for the backdrop we shopped for on Saturday, and finished prepping a bench thing we have such that it can be recovered.

I keep saying that the impending approach of the baby is going to slow our weekend pace down… so far it hasn’t, but there is still time I suppose 🙂

 

-Jordan

Nightstand

Posted on by Jordan

About the same time I was deep into the frame project, I started getting really frustrated with the little table thing that I was using for a nightstand.It was basically six boards screwed together, painted and then scuffed up enough to make it seem antique. It wasn’t particularly well made, and didn’t hold up well when Heather dealt with the issue of it being a bit short by piling seven or eight large books on top of it. Wobbly and too small more or less sums up the problems.

At that point I thought, “hey, I have a saw, and at least six boards, I should try making a better one!”

So I cut some boards:

Cutting the groves for the bottom shelf was considerably trickier than I was expecting, but the results were serviceable at least. What I had there was a table that was structurally sound, but wasn’t ever going to pass inspection with Heather to gain entry into our bedroom.

Step two, use some of this extra trim to make the table a little fancier:

A little trim, a little putty, and a lot of sanding and my little table was starting to look promising! All it needed now was a coat of “Heather and Jordan standard black” and it will blend right in! I got somewhat lucky in that it was an incredibly nice weekend, and Heather was away being the guest of honor at her (our?) first baby shower. This left me plenty of time to sand and paint.

There it is, ready for inspection… and it passed! 🙂

After moving a few large stacks of books, there was even a place for it:

As you can see, it even matches the other items in our bedroom! I came to appreciate again the brilliance of Heather’s “buy second hand stuff and repaint it” system, because if I had needed to stain that piece… well there is a lot of putty involved in making that look finished that wouldn’t have really stained correctly. Paint however, paint is forgiving as long as you are willing to do enough sanding. 🙂

 

-Jordan

 

Around The House

Posted on by Jordan

There has been a remarkable lack of blog-worthy stuff going on around here as of late.

I have a project in-flight down in the garage, but that will have to wait until it wraps up.

Heather has been busy sorting through a wave of hand-me-down clothes for both her and “Baby N.” (“Baby N,”  by the way, whom has not been born and already has more clothes than I do… this is probably not a good trend)

We reorganized the closet in our office! It doesn’t get much more exciting than that does it?

On the other hand, we probably need to rest up, as nearly every weekend through the end of November has something scheduled, so surely I can manage a post or two out of that! 🙂

 

-Jordan

Zombies? And Other News

Posted on by Jordan

This past week was noteworthy in a few ways, but the headline event was the RRV “Zombaree ” that my Scout Troop attended.

I will continue with my policy of avoiding posting pictures of random other people on here, but you can find pictures of myself and the troop scattered in here, and a deep link to our troop and the bridge that they made here (hopefully that works)

The guys had a lot of fun at the camporee, ahem, zombaree although one could be forgiven if they forgot it was a zombie event… there was a notable lack of zombies. The weather couldn’t have been better and it’s hard to complain about camping on a perfect fall weekend.

I got to pretend to be scoutmaster for the camp out due to a parental shuffle that left the actual scoutmaster at home. I was luck in that the majority of the weekend was being run by the district guys, and we had enough of the veteran scouts in our troop to comfortably lead the troop without too much input.

It’s surprisingly hard to find that balance between letting a bad plan flounder and taking over when your job is very much not to take over. I can’t say that I did a great job of it, but I probably ended up on the side of letting things fall apart instead of jumping in, so maybe it was a change for the guys.

Other notables:

Heather is 28 weeks along! This is apparently a milestone in that if the baby were to come today, odds would be in her favor to make it. Obviously we would like her to wait another three months, but it’s nice to know shes making progress in there 🙂

Also, 28 weeks is when the mom-to-be gets to drink… “glucose-up”… or some near literally named sugar concoction in order to determine if she has pregnancy induced diabetes. We had lots of good news there, Heather isn’t diabetic, and she survived the sugar drink without a massively upset tummy (A frequent problem with her and sugar)

So to recap, no close encounters with the undead, nice weekend, healthy baby, healthy mom.

I think it’s been a good week!

-Jordan

Fall Is Near

Posted on by Jordan

I don’t quite know how it always manages to surprise me but it appears fall is here.

I know, it’s marked on the calendar, but I never pay attention to those dates, and they are generally wrong anyhow!

I headed out to Boone for another shooting competition (my 3rd ever) bright and early Saturday morning only to discover that my morning would be filled with numb fingers and some shivering between stages. Had I not forgotten about aiming on the last stage I would have been really happy with the trip, but the “missed target” time penalties really hurt.

Later in the day I got to listen to the Huskers on the radio and work in the garage on another project. I won’t be posting pictures of that one until I know it’s not going to be a total disaster… but it was something do to anyway 🙂

Sunday Heather and I headed to the International Food Festival. We did that event two years ago and, despite what that post said, we both remembered the food as being weird and not very good.

This year it was even more crowded, to the point where we often couldn’t continue down the street without waiting for the mob to unbind itself. The food was good this year, perhaps because we were less adventurous, but that does make for a better experience if somewhat less culturally exciting.

The previous week we attended the Latin American Festival, an event with slightly less food, and considerably more dancing. I didn’t take any pictures, but it was a fun event. We have some friends who are from Puerto Rico, and were excited to show us some of the items in the Puerto Rican area of the event.

As I mentioned at the top of the post, fall is unmistakeably here, so it’s probably good that we enjoyed being outside over the past few weekends. Between the encroaching cold, and Heather’s gradually reducing mobility our opportunities to enjoy being out and about are probably diminished for the near future.

-Jordan

99 Days…

Posted on by Jordan

If our baby hits her dates, she will be here in 99 days.

It’s a distressingly long, and short, time all in one!

Heather and I went to the Hospital to take our “accelerated” baby class a few days ago.

It was overwhelming to say the least. I was expecting to have too much information thrown at me, and maybe even to walk out concerned that I might not remember something critical.

As it turns out, those things weren’t an issue at all. Despite the quantity of information we felt it was fairly easy to absorb, and the instructors were very effective.

What I didn’t expect was to not know what to do with the information presented. After the fourth or fifth “raw from the delivery room” clip the nurse showed us I looked at Heather and thought “What did I get you into!?”

Heather seems to have been less intimidated by the presentation than I was… probably a good thing given her role in the process 🙂

While what we learned was generally speaking helpful and reassuring, the majority of it isn’t anything I will bother to recount here…

With one exception: Cold Sores

The nurse running the class was adamant that we understand that people with cold active sores not be allowed anywhere near infants. I don’t know if I had heard this before and forgotten, but apparently cold sores sometimes kill babies. That topic was one of the only times truly dire outcomes were discussed.

Beyond that downer piece of news, the class really did build up our comfort level and confidence that we will manage the birth of our child. It did thoroughly drive home the idea that the birthing process is in no way glamorous or dignified.

 

Sorry if this post ended up being somewhat rambling… I wanted to get the thoughts down before it went too long. Also, there would be a picture but, the obvious picture would be of Heather… and she isn’t really in the mood to have a pregnancy highlighting picture taken these days so, just imagine 😉

 

-Jordan

 

The Frame

Posted on by Jordan

This post is purely shop-project focused, so if you aren’t interested in that, perhaps you would enjoy an essay Heather found. I have spent a lot of time thinking about it as of late, maybe you will find it interesting too: I Don’t Wait Anymore

Ok, on to the project!

I mentioned a few weeks ago that I had managed to sell the idea of buying a saw in order to frame something for the baby’s room. Well I got the saw:

But that means I had to actually try making this frame. To be honest I started feeling rather intimidated the more I thought about it. Intimidation or no, I had this fancy new saw on my bench, and knew I needed to give the frame a shot. Things did not get off to an encouraging start when I flipped a piece of casing end-for-end thinking it would be easier to cut right handed that way… only to realize that it made my cut completely backwards… after I completed the cut.

On the bright side, we had picked out some inexpensive casing, so the replacement board wasn’t a significant portion of the budget 🙂

eight painstakingly double-checked cuts later, and I was ready for the scary part: glue

You can kind of see the guide I made to help keep things square. It didn’t work out as well as I had hoped, but did at least give me something to brace against. I quickly realized that I need some clamps. Wouldn’t need to be anything fancy, but gluing doesn’t work too well when you can’t hold things together with a little pressure.

To that end, I carefully drilled some pilot holes in from the top and bottom sections to let me draw the corners together with a trim screw. My first two corners worked ok, but really should have been counter-sunk. The second two I stepped up to a larger pilot bit, and then free-handed a pseudo-countersink to finish it off, and had really good results. It really helped that the casing was blurring the lines between cardboard and wood, but I was producing respectable corners that were somewhat solid.

The picture above shows right before the last corner, where I may have become a little over-confident and let my screw pull the corner out of alignment at a critical moment. In the end however, it wasn’t so far off, and some putty, sandpaper, and black spray-paint  were next in the plan anyway.

After a few coats of paint, all that was left to do was add some hooks to the top, and double-sided poster hanging strips to the lower edges and we have a fairly nice looking map if I can be so bold:

I won’t say that I found a new hobby in frame-making, but it was a nice change of pace from my normal digital project! 🙂

 

-Jordan