Super hung-over day

If the Bears ever made the Super Bowl again I think I would lose my mind. As it stands now, my interest gets a little smaller every year w/o a rooting interest, but I still like to take the Monday after off. Especially after a crazy ending like last night. So as I spend the day lounging around an empty house, I figured why not see if I could make some progress on the crib desk.

Sanded and about to get tacked.

I have an idea on paint to try to get a match for the rest of the boy's furniture, but that means sanding and priming before it's ready to try. Sanding actually took significantly less time than I was planning on, so the primer came out too.

Remind me to get some foam rollers before painting.

Yeah, it doesn't look great right now. But with the right furniture paint, a couple poly coats, and a few sanded and stained boards glued together for a table-top, I'm starting to see some potential here. It might be a few weeks before that gets done, but it felt good to be surprisingly productive on a day off. Now we can start the countdown to a Friday off for John Wick 2...

Quiet time turns into baking time

The wife's birthday is this weekend, so while she's out with the kids I tried to get a surprise cake baked and frosted before everyone gets home. It was moderately successful.

I don't know if this will stay a surprise, since I asked the boy what kind of cake he thought Mommy might want for her birthday so I would have some cover on the flavor combination. He could be blabbing about it to her right now for all I know. Hopefully not though, b/c I don't feel like I nailed her gifts so a surprise is going to go a long way.

Anyway, instead of making a simple cake I thought it would be nice if I tried to fancy it up a little bit as a layer cake. Despite being someone who dives into drywall or tile with little to no experience, the decision to make a layer cake had me wondering if I was in over my head at points. I'm not the biggest fan of baking, even as someone who's spent a lot of downtime learning his way around a kitchen. It's a weird combination of rigidly adhering to directions while also physically messy; two things that have their place but together I find them incredibly annoying.

With some googled tips on baking a layer cake things ended up okay though. I remembered to line the pan and evened things out. Plus, baking gave me some time to get laundry done so there's a clean karate gi for tomorrow, plus a little dinner for myself.

The liners worked really well, actually, and things stacked up okay once it was time to bust out the frosting. This part I liked, since more was better.

The sides had me a little dubious, but things came together decently and now I'm just waiting for everyone to come home. And what's that in the background?

Yeah, that was my dinner. For whatever reason making a pizza sounded like the perfect way to add a little more chaos to the evening, but it gave me something to do while the cake cooled, so everything worked out. Now I just have to wait for everyone to come home.   

Getting rid of (the same) paper blinds

When the paper blinds came down in the kitchen, they went right back up in the basement. They came in handy over the holidays giving our downstairs guests a little more privacy, but now that everyone is gone they've gotten really obnoxious to look at. With the hassle of having them up outweighing any benefits, it's time for them to go.

Painters tape and all.

Thankfully the basement door was a little easier to plan around, and a simple curtain rod with blackout curtains looks a lot better, while also helping insulate the door a little bit. I should have picked out wider panels though. Probably should have washed them too...

Not a great photo. Still looks better.

The original post-drywall white blinds got left up since they can be clipped up but brought down if needed without interfering with anything. Plus, they felt like they were really stuck on the frame to the point of not coming off w/o taking some paint with them, and I'd like to go a few weeks without having to touch anything up down here.

Things are slowly rounding into shape around here. Slowly.