A long over-due Liam update

Hey gang, I know this is what everyone is really interested in: an update on Liam!  I've been really bad about getting out the nice camera to take good photos of Liam, but I have a ton of random ones from my phone, as well as a ton of video.  I have my nice Canon and we have a nice handheld vidcam, but it's just so much easier and convenient to whip out the phone and snap a few pictures or a minute of video!

So as of writing this post, Liam is only 2 weeks away from being 2.5 years old, which blows my mind.  In fact, the last time I posted anything on here about him, he was only a couple months over a year, so we've got a lot to catch up on.  First, some very recent pictures from Easter (about 3 weeks ago).  These are just a few of my favorites:

For more like these go check out the Picasa album here.  It's just amazing when I look at him these days - he's definitely a little boy now, just kills me how grown up he is.  And he's quite the comedian - he's always coming up with hilarious stuff from out of nowhere.  I've managed to capture a few things here and there on video, which of course I will now share.

This is a very recent, random moment before dinner one night.

Liam got a trampoline for Christmas (thanks Mimi and Papa!) which has turned out to be one of the best gifts ever.  Here's a typical session (admittedly he's showing off a little for Aunt Hannah), from about a month and a half ago:

This one always makes me smile.  Liam loves to put on our shoes - this time, he was putting on my tennis shoes and clomping around.  Wait for when he says "hi" - melts my heart.

Last but not least, another short bit of him on the trampoline.  He's developed a trademark smile when he knows he's on camera, this one shows that off at the end.

He's really grown up on us, it just amazes me.  And if you're wondering - no, we still haven't cut his hair.  It's just too darn cute!  I'll finish up with one of my favorite all time snapshots of him from just a few nights ago - he was modeling his mama's new sunglasses and looking ridiculously cute.

Well good grief...

I've been thinking for a while that I needed to make some sort of blog post, but this is just embarrassing.  The last post I made was in January 2012!  Ok, so clearly I need to get back on the ball with this - my only excuse is that life just seems to be getting faster and faster, and it's been infinitely more fun with Liam over the last year.

Lately I've been having a ball working on some various construction / home improvement projects, so I thought I'd share for those who haven't seen.  Those of you with the handyman bent should especially appreciate these I think.  First, the flowerbox.

I'd had the itch to do some kind of fun woodworking project for a while, and this is the one that won out.  As you walk up to our front door, there's this ledge that screamed out to me to use.  It's about 4 feet high and 6 feet long, I thought "perfect for a nice cedar flowerbox".

I did some research on the web and found some good inspirations for how I wanted it to look, and then set to designing.  Of course you know I had to do it the hard way and include a few non-right angles.  Here's a shot of my end sketches and calculations.  I decided to make it 6 feet long to span pretty much the whole ledge.


So off to our friendly neighborhood McCoy's I went and got all the material.  I decided to use rough cut cedar - I love the way good cedar looks, it holds up ridiculously well in outside weather conditions, and it's not crazy expensive.  Plus if you seal it (which I did, you'll see later) it has a beautiful natural color I love.  As you can see it wasn't a huge amount of material - mostly 1x4's with a few 2x2's for internal support and 1x2's for finishing.



Now the fun really begins!  I had a blast staying up late in the garage working on this one.  A few shots of the work in progress.

After a few days' work I had the box construction complete, and started on the sealing.  I went with a clear seal to show off the natural color and tone of the cedar - you can see how dramatic the difference is on the sealed vs. the non-sealed section even with a clear sealant.







Then I just had to let it dry overnight, put it up on the ledge and secure it to a few studs, and voila!!  I'm really happy the way it turned out.



Here's a quick before and after to show the difference:

And of course, what would a flower box be without any plants?  Kristen is the expert there, she picked out all these awesome herbs and got them planted well.  Now we just go cut some fresh herbs whenever we're cooking!

Stay tuned for more posts, we've been tackling a raised bed garden lately...