The Adventures of a German Girl

Remember when I found a spool at Home Depot and got all excited? I had another one in the basement, a lot smaller that I got from one of our tradeshows earlier this year. I was almost as excited about it! :) Surprisingly I don't have a picture of it and didn't take one until I was way into my project. I took out the metal stakes that were holding the spool together and ended up with only the top and bottom wooden circle. In the middle was cheap cardboard and was thrown out. I cut a 2x4 into 6 pieces, about 8" long and with a nail gun, nailed them to both sides of the wooden circle. One of the table runners that I made out of burlap for our wedding, needed to be cut in pieces and got stapled all around to the top and bottom of the wooden circles to give it a better shape for later. I cut 3" foam with our electrical turkey knife into a round shape, the same size as the wooden circle and spray glued it onto on...

I don't think I have shown you our bench project yet, I could be wrong though. I'm all over the place right now, never at home, never in the same city for more than 3 days. These last 6 weeks were just crazy. Toronto, Chicago, San Jose, Los Angeles, Atlanta, New York, Germany... I was driving to the airport the other day and couldn't even remember where I'm going that day. It is pretty bad. Only good thing about this is, I'm very close to being platinum with my skymiles account. I do have fun doing it, but right now it is a little too much. Anyways... Maybe a month ago, while we were at the cabin, we decided to do something with the two 10' wood pieces that we bought at the Blue Ridge auction. They were really cool, but in pretty bad shape. Dried out with lots of sharp edges and splinters. We bought some wood and long screws and cut legs to size, attached them to the bottom of the seat. I sanded for hours and hours until every...

When we bought our cabin, the crawl space was jam packed with junk from the previous owners. We left it untouched for 6 months not sure what to do with all of this. When it got colder, the heat didn't stay in the house and the downstairs smelled musty. We decided to spend the money and have our crawl space insulated.   The company came out and hauled all of the things outside. We decided what to keep, everything else they took and recycled. I loved it. There were tons of cool tiles, paint, and a huge shutter/door panel.   It stank like crazy and took almost 6 hours, but after it was done, the heat now stays in the house and the musty smell is completely gone. It was worth every penny.   It really is huge. I decided to cut it in half, not knowing what to do with an almost 10' door.   Paint stripper came in handy, I covered the complete thing with it and waited for 30 minutes.      Most of the...

If I would look for a new place to live, Home Depot would be on the top 5 list. Can you imagine? I would have my garden in the outside area, the bathrooms and laundry as well as the kitchen in the appropriate aisles, the living room in the paint section and the bedroom in the lumber area. Oh how cool would that be.   So since we are not (yet) looking for a new place to live and I'm not sure if Brian would agree to my plan, I just go there to visit.     I love strolling around thinking of all the projects I could do. When we were up in Blue Ridge the other weekend, I needed something from the home improvement store and went into town. Walking around I saw this amazing empty spool just standing in the aisle by itself. I looked at Brian, got so excited, and he had no idea what I was showing him. I tracked down a staff member while Brian had to patrol the spool. Asking if I could have the spool, h e looked at me like I was insane. Boys...

I can't believe its been a year since we got married. What an amazing time we had, family and friends from all over the world in town and one party after the other. We loved our wedding, the amazing venue and the beautiful weather. We will never forget this day.  For our first anniversary, I will be in Germany for work, such a bummer.  We decided to celebrate a little early and went to Aruba for Labor day and spent four amazing days at the beach.  We left Atlanta on Thursday morning after we both went to Chicago for three days for work. Different hotels, different areas and different airports. Very weird. A 4 hour flight in business class, how better to start a vacation. The Holiday Inn that we stayed in (with points) was amazing. Three different pools, nice beachfront restaurants, amazing beach, turquoise water and right in the middle of all the buzz. We laid at the pool, swam in the ocean and enjoyed the sunset every day. ...