Paint Sprayer

Remember the patio set that Doc and I made yesterday? Well, it's a done deal! Today I got out my old paint sprayer - I haven't used it in over a year - and decided to put it to use on a few big pieces. It was a great day for it and I made lots of progress!

I drug everything out into my parents' yard and flipped it over. I always like to start painting at the bottom.

Remember the headboard bench that Doc made a few weeks ago? It made the lineup to be painted today too.  I finally have some good plans for the bench.

After everything was set up, I got busy spraying!

While the paint sprayer is a bit of a hassle to drag out and definitely a pain to clean, once it's loaded and ready to go, it is so fun to use! You can paint big pieces of furniture in minutes instead of hours. But - if you're like me, you get excited and start to get spray-happy and before you know it, you've got too much paint on your piece and it starts to drip.

Sigh.

That's when you have to break out the paint brush to do a little clean up.

But soon, after letting everything air-dry for a little while, it was all done! I have more to do on the bench, but the patio set is officially finished.

Of course, it quickly made its way to my mom's patio.

Here's the deal for those of you who have expressed interest: I think my starting price will be $200. I have at least $100 worth of materials in it, although that's hard to figure accurately since some things I already had on hand. (Recognize that green paint? It's leftover from our house.) If anyone is serious about buying a set, let me know and we'll crank another one out for you.  I think the second go-round will be much easier and faster than the first.

Phew! What a weekend. I think that's the first time I've built furniture and completely finished it in such a short span of time.

Minnie is so proud of her momma, can't you tell?

It's getting dark so I have to go now...I'm turning into an ogre.

4-Hour Patio Furniture

The beach house that we rented in Florida was three stories tall, and each level had its own balcony.  We spent lots of time out on the main level balcony, reading or eating or just hanging out. I think that balcony was my favorite because of the furniture. It had two big adirondack chairs with a small table and a taller bistro-height table and adirondack-like chairs. They were painted red and were very worn and rustic looking. Of course I loved everything about them. I spent the whole week looking them over to see if it was something we could do ourselves. I decided it was most definitely something we could build.

I knew it would be super easy to build if we had a pattern, but obviously that was not the case. I did measure a few key pieces - I should have measured more - and then I took lots of pictures from every angle.

Here are a few pics of the set from the FL beach house.

I did have a model for a few pictures.  You know, just so I could see everything to scale.

Cute patio set, right?

So I made a few sketches and scribbled down some measurements and then spent the 8 hour car ride home figuring out how to build it in my head.

I was able to talk Doc into going to the local Orange and Blue stores with me late yesterday evening. We purchased all the wood I thought I would need and drove it over to my dad's shop.

Today, we hit the shop to work it out. Ok, actually, to keep things real around here, Doc got up and played golf and I worked in the yard. Then, after lunch, we headed out to the shop to try our hand at the table and chairs.

Four hours later, we had a very own patio set! Is it perfect? No. Does it have a few wonky curves? Yes. But at least it's done! It hasn't been painted yet - hopefully that will happen tomorrow - and we didn't even bother trying to hide any screws or anything like that.  We were working fast and going for the "outdoors rustic" look.

We are so proud of our four-hour project! (And no, we don't need it. I just wanted to prove that we could make it.)

Shenanigans

Our beach trip is coming to an end, as Doc and I are headed home tomorrow. I won't bore you with all 9,422 pictures that I took, but I will share some of them with you. We've had a really good week and I'm dreading returning to reality next week. Where to start? I apologize in advance if this post is scattered and all over the place. I'm posting pictures as I go through them.

So, there was a little bit of male modeling on the beach.

We had to walk up and down these stairs all week. Ugh. That definitely counted as our workout everyday.

We got a good bit of sun and we have tan lines to prove it. These show how we're bound together forever.

As I mentioned earlier, we headed to Rosemary one night and wandered around. It's such a cute little town. Outside one restaurant I found this awesome riddling rack. I'm thinking I could probably make one of these...

Also in Rosemary we found a children's toy store to play in. Do you remember Cuba Gooding Jr. in Men of Honor?  A few minutes after being in the store, that's who Antonio turned into.

And Cliff turned into a parrot.

Here's the the only shot of the whole gang.

In my opinion, you have to love a town that has brick streets and hanging strings of lights.

My husband is, and probably always will be, a kid at heart.

Rosemary is so awesome, it swept the guys off their feet! Har.

We stopped for drinks at a mexican restaurant and we were entertained by some balancing acts.

I won't lie. I really wanted to steal that cute little pot of paper flowers.

Last night, the boys decided to grill out hamburgers for us. I walked outside to check on them and the first thing I saw was this:

Um, hello? Guys? Is anybody watching the grill? Cause things are looking a little smokey...

I rounded the corner and found the boys camped out in the parking lot.

Luckily, they knew what they were doing because the burgers turned out to be pretty darn tasty, if I do say so myself.

This picture is very dark and hard to see, but it's of Matt walking up behind Mary Elizabeth on the beach and slipping a necklace around her neck for their anniversary. So sweet!

And the necklace is beautiful! It has the birthstone of their daughter, Wesley.

The guys quickly turned into little boys for some beach wrestling.

They were pretty hot and sweaty by the time we left the beach, so they may or may not have taken a quick dip in the pool in their underwear. I'll leave you in suspense on that one.

Time check: 12:18.  That's pretty late for this very sleepy girl so I'm signing off. Goodnight!

Protective Eyewear

It's pretty common knowledge that when you're outside on a bright, sunny day, you should wear sunglasses. They're good for keeping you from squinting when the sun's too bright, but they also protect your eyes from the ultraviolet rays and blue light. So, it's safe to say that when you're getting ready to spend a week at the beach, you should probably pack at least one pair of shades.

These are a good example of the kind of sunglasses you would not want to pack, unless you only have one eye.

That's my friend Matt up there, and I gave him a hard time about those one-eyed shades.

The other day we ventured out to Rosemary and did a little window shopping. Since NB doesn't like my favorite sunglasses, I decided to look for some new ones.

These were my favorites right off the bat.

I also thought these could be cool to have anytime it was someone's birthday.

One downside of wearing sunglasses for long periods of time, for me at least, is that my ears start to hurt. But I have a feeling that wouldn't be a problem if I had some that velcroed on like these!

Trying on sunglasses was fun but in the end, I walked away empty-handed. I am kinda sad that I didn't buy the batman ones. But since I already have 3 or 4 pairs in regular rotation, I couldn't justify buying another pair.

Fast-forward to earlier today when I dropped my sunglasses on the pavement before hopping in the car. This is what I get for making fun of Matt's one-eyed sunglasses.

Karma is a you-know-what.

Redo: Action Packed

My friend Matt taught me some cool tricks last night. I learned how to take my "continuous shot" pictures and turn them into a .gif - a continuous loop of the photos. Check these out - now you can really see us in action! Let's start with me and my cannon ball.

Here's Doc's front flip:

Mary Elizabeth's dive:

Antonio's cannon ball:

Matt's "Michael Jordan":

Aren't these fun?! I'm kinda obsessed with it now. I have a feeling I'll be using the continuous-shot setting on my camera a lot more, even if it does drain the battery of my computer.

Now, here are the ones I need you to vote on. Boys vs Girls in the toe-touch competition.

Boys:

Girls:

Who's better? Let me know.