Isn't It Bee-Yew-Ti-Ful?

This is the finished cedar chest now residing in my sewing room. (If you want to see what it looked like before James & I applied the polyurethane, click here.) The original plan was for James to add some cedar trim around the top edge so that there would be a place to grip the lid and open the chest. Without smashing your fingers, that is. The front edge was so curved that he couldn't make that work, so we went to plan B and added the handles. I love the smell of cedar! As a child/teenager, my vacation souvenir of choice was often a small cedar chest (hand-held sized) imprinted with the name of the locale. In case you were wondering, the chest is already full! I used it to house the stuff I had under my sewing table, and my extra machine that was sitting on the six-foot table. The room appears a lot less cluttered now. I'm sure I can fix that, given enough time.

Catch Up Time

I've been AWOL from blogging (somewhat) over the last few days, with good reasons:

• Our Internet service has been coming and going of late. After numerous frustrating calls to tech support (Yes, we know what the modem is, and yes, we've reset it a zillion times), they're sending a technician to the house tomorrow. Not only is it difficult to blog with the service interruptions, it's difficult to work at home as well.
  
• I'm on the mend, but I've still been dragging a bit from a sinus infection; and,
  
• We spent the day in the metropolis of Barnesville yesterday. (More on that later.)

If you'll reference my post from a week ago, it was about overlooking the faults of others. I wrote that entry mid-week, but set it to post on Sunday morning. That same morning, our Assistant Pastor's sermon was about the very same topic. He was preaching from Matthew 7:1-6 about trying to remove a speck from someone's eye when you have a log in your own eye. I guess that even after I preached to myself, I needed to have it preached to me again! (And I told him so.)

Here's one of the reasons why we went to Barnesville.

My step-father likes to go to junk auctions. I don't know what else to call them. You buy a whole truckload of someone else's junk. Most of the time, he doesn't even really know what he's got. One such lot had a boxed kit for building a cedar chest. The receipt in the box showed that the original purchaser bought it in 1986 and there it sat until a few months ago. My step-father assembled it, and offered it to me. Although it is missing the interior tray, it is still gorgeous, and solid cedar. I'm sorry that I was unable to figure out how to do an online scratch-and-sniff, because the smell of cedar is my favorite part. It's in the basement for now so that I can get a coat or two of polyurethane on it. Then I'll show you its beauty again.

We saw lots of plowed fields out in the country. It's amazing what Tonka trucks can do these days.

Finally, today is the day that I peruse sale papers, sort through all my coupons, and make my lists for Monday's shopping. I had to laugh when I saw this ad.

I have a sister who might have paid far more for this product 25+ years ago!

Two-Person Job Done Solo

Previously, I had my "design wall" sitting on top of the cedar chest... Which made it really inconvenient to get into the chest. Yesterday, I hung it from the ceiling all by myself, and got it remarkably straight in one try. Ideally, it would be a bit lower, and would be hung with fishing line instead of string. Good thing I'm not an idealist.