Christmas is now officially over. I finally finished my sons Christmas present.







I gave it to him on Christmas morning, looking pretty shabby, with the promise that I would finish it later. In all actuality he probably didn't even need me to finish it. He was happy to play with it when it was just raw plywood. But to satisfy my own need, I had to spend countless hours working on it.

I had pictures of the castle's progress as I went along, but some mean person decided to accidentally wipe the drive clean on our computer where I keep all my stuff... (just a reminder to everyone to back up all the important stuff on your computer especially all those precious pictures of your kids.) Fortunately we got most of it all back, it's just impossible to find anything... grrrrrrrr...

So this is how I made it: We had an old 3/4 inch plywood door out in the barn that we took out of our house when we remodeled. I cut out all the main walls for the castle out of this wood, I used my table saw for this feat. I am lucky that I didn't cut off my fingers numerous times. I need to take a class or get some better instruction on how to safely use this great piece of machinery. Not only did I imperil my fingers during each cut, but I also made so many misplaced cuts that my motto became "Good thing this is going to be covered in paper mache!"

And so it was. After I screwed the whole thing together, I put a layer and a half of paper mache over the whole thing, using the strips of paper and glue method. Then I used the method of making a pulp out of paper in the blender and adding glue to make the stones.

Then I painted the whole thing and sprayed it with a sealing coat of varnish.

Last of all I made a little prison door out of wire because my kid likes to throw bad guys in jail. He's such a great kid. The other day he announced that he was going to catch all the bad guys and teach them math. He is of the belief that if you educate your inmates they are less likely get back in trouble. We'll see how his program works on these bad guys...

Done. Done. Done. The white quilt is done! I washed it and it didn't fall apart or shrink in a funny way! Now I would like to sell it, any buyers? If I charge 50 cents per hour, it should cost approximately $3,474,575,688.44

Here is the book.

I hereby declare this year, the Year of the Wall Hangings! And to kick it off I have created its very own logo.



Ever since Dan and I got married we have pretty much just had one picture hanging on our wall. The picture of George Washington praying beside his horse. Dan bought this from the bookstore up by the Oakland Temple back in the day when he had freedom and money to spend on things like that, that was before we got married. I really like the picture, but I hate the frame it is in. Dan swears that it is the best frame in the whole wide world, so I am stuck with it. It could be worse.



Since we remodeled this house, we have not pounded one single nail into any of the walls, I think I will cry when we finally do. That means I should cry at least 12 times this year. Once per month. This year my second New Years Resolution is to hang one thing on a wall every month...or just 12 things total. (My first resolution, as it is every year, is to be nice to Dan.)

Sounds easy right? Not for me. It isn't just the little tiny hole in the newly patched and painted drywall that holds me back. I have to have just the right thing to hang. It has to meet certain criteria. It has to be the right colors, it has to have a good frame, its subject matter must be of some importance to me, and most importantly I have to like it. This last is very arbitrary, I like some things one minute and hate them the next, so it will have to catch me at just the right moment and keep me liking it until I actually get it on the wall. Not easy at all.

And to make it even harder, I have a list of all the other projects I would like to finish this year to compete with all these wall hangings. Starting the year off I have two major projects that I have to finish from last year ASAP. One is my sons Christmas present and the other is the white quilt I first blogged about (I am so close to being done with it.)

I will accept submissions for wall hangings, but then I will most likely reject them all, or hang them in an inconspicuous corner or the house or in the garage like the mystery painting found in my parents garage...(This painting might have been found in my grandparents house, somehow I got it and just don't know. If anyone in the family knows...?)

This is the wall I want to cover the most, due to the large gray electrical box on it. I've got a few ideas running around my head as to what to put there. Unfortunately all the ideas will take me millions of hours to complete.

At long last. It is done. That secret project that Kim and I have been working on is finally done. I wrote a story for my little niece that was born way back in March. I had started it even before that, hoping to get it done as a present to congratulate her for being born. I didn't get it done on time, and since I had my baby shortly after, the project has drawn on and on until now 9 months later it is finished.

This is how it all went down. I wrote the story, Kim amended it a bunch and other people made a few suggestions. (Dan, my husband, wouldn't even read the whole thing, because he is too manly, so he doesn't get any credit for it's content, but he does get a big Thank You for keeping our baby happy while I was working on it.) Then I illustrated it and scanned all the pictures into the computer and arranged them with the proper words from the story. Then I had Kim and the great and notorious Sha'Niqua make some final changes to the text. After that I was ready to print and bind the book. I would have just stapled it all together and called it good, but luckily Kim's expertise stepped in and we were able to do it right with real book binding materials. So now it looks like a real book, (one of these days when the battery in our camera is charged I'll get a shot of the finished product).

Here are some of my favorite pages. The story doesn't even mention a dragon, but I tend to like to include dragons in just about everything I do, so the fairy is riding on a water dragon across a pond chasing a Wish.





And in this picture the fairy is pulling an earthworm out of the ground, this isn't especially my favorite picture, but I like the fact that the dirt around the worm, isn't neccesarily dirt, it's worm poo. Hooray! I also think it's funny that when people see this picture they ask whether she is putting the worm in the ground or taking it out. What do you think?
On Christmas day I was very happy to finally be able to hand the present over to my little niece who I think would rather eat it than read it. She has the only signed copy of it in the whole world. That should make it worth millions! Unfortunately since we accidently bound a few pages out of order it's worth was diminished and it's value is really only a good read and a bit of attention for me!