Weekend Productivity

Oh my goodness, we got so much done this weekend. Well, when I say "we," I mean my husband and his dad. My in-laws came down for a weekend visit, and in true Case form, the men went to work while the women played with kids and cooked. I am always amazed at how hard my dad-in-law is willing to work on a visit and how great his work is.

What I am most excited about? The wall-spanning bookshelf he expertly crafted, stained, and installed for me. It's my belated birthday gift from them, and I am GIDDY, y'all, just giddy. It quite literally spans an entire wall of our living room, the big one behind the couch, which is what you see when you first walk through our front door. I took pictures of it from the doorway, and I can't even fit it in in just one shot.

Here's the first of three:

Second:

And the third, with the man himself, my personal Handy-Dandy Helpful Hal, my father-in-law:

Let's all give him a hearty round of applause, shall we?

The shelves are oak, stained in a deep, dark stain that is the same as some other shelves he made me back in the day, which very nearly matches our home's woodwork. My mother-in-law and I found the wrought iron brackets at Hobby Lobby; the five middle ones are the same, and the two end ones are slightly different, slightly longer and more elaborate, and serve to set off the rest of the brackets. We are already starting to rearrange our book collection and will have this sucker filled in no time. (It seriously couldn't have come at a better time. The books. Are overtaking our home.)

The Professor and his dad also worked on installing new doors on our home: a steel door at the back entrance, and a new storm door for the front. Here's a shady, dark picture of the storm door from the inside of our home:

I wish I had thought to take a "before" picture of our 1950s-era aluminum storm door. It was pretty horrific, and it was only a matter of time before its glass window, which slammed down at the slightest provocation, took off fingers. This new one is white with aged bronze hardware, and it lets in the most light possible while housing a built-in screen. WE LOVE IT.

So they worked themselves to the bone this weekend while my mother-in-law and I shopped, played, and cooked. It was perfect!

One final thing I'd like to show you is my most recent creation. A friend had asked me to make a hand-embroidered shirt for her grandson's second birthday, and she specifically asked that I make the felted design into a monkey, since he's apparently really into monkeys. (That's totally okay when you're two, btw.) I had trouble deciding how to depict a monkey, and in the end decided on just a face, since doing an entire body would be waaaay time-consuming and worth more than I wanted to charge her. In the end, he turned out just fine:

Yay for productive weekends!