Squirrel

Maybe it's the changing of the leaves, or the fact that I can tell that each day has less daylight than the one before, but I've never been so aware that winter was coming.  Our work pretty much comes to a dead stop in winter.  This is the time of year I need to prepare for several lean months.  I stock the freezer. I try to put aside enough money in the bank to pay the bills for at least three months.  I don't spend money on anything that isn't a necessity. I feel a bit like a squirrel trying to hoard nuts.

Now it just figures that this would be the time I would be inspired to create things too.  While everything is dying around me, I want to make things.  I want to pretty up my foyer, I want to re-finish my dining room table, I want to build stuff.  Oh my goodness how I want to build stuff.  Yesterday Jen over at Let's Make It Ours wrote this about how she needs to learn how to use power tools so that she could build all these awesome creations byAna at Ana-White.com.  Now I want to learn how to use power tools too!

It seems like Ana and I have a lot of the same taste in furniture.  The expensive Pottery Barn type stuff that I have lusted after for years but would never buy, because I just can't justify spending $600 - $1000 on a cabinet to collect all the crap in my entry way.  But I want it, oh how I want it.  I've even spent hours looking online for something similarly awesome without the Pottery Barn price tag.  No luck.  Until yesterday.

See there's Ana with the cabinet I've been lusting after for years, that she MADE herself, and tells me and YOU how to make here.  So I'm all gung ho to go buy some wood and start making a cabinet, but crap, just like Jen, I need to learn to use power tools, oh and theres that little thing about not spending any money that isn't absolutely necessary.  I do, however, have a husband that is pretty handy and knows how to build stuff.  That's what he tells me anyway.  We've been married for fifteen years and I can't tell you how many times I've looked at a table or bookshelf that I've wanted and he's told me he could build it cheaper.  Except he never does and I end up buying some POS bookshelf made out of particle board at Walmart.  Well he did build me a new mantel once, and it was awesome, but that's it.

So today I called him out on it.  I said, "For fifteen years you've told me you can build stuff and I've been dreaming of a cabinet like this for almost that long.  You MUST build me this cabinet.  Oh, and teach me how to use the power tools because there's about  15 more things on Ana's site that I want to build too."

He smiled at me (because I'm so adorable when I'm being demanding), then he told me that he didn't think that saws and I were a good combination. Remember last week when I told you about the ladder rule.  Yeah, that totally extends to anything I could maim myself with.  He may have said something to the effect of "I've seen you walk".  So what if I trip over air, I insisted that if he taught me how to use the the power tools properly I could be safe and retain all my appendages.  Finally, he relented and told me he would help me build my cabinet..  Only, in order to do this, he'd need a new saw since his was stolen years ago.

So I can start building stuff as soon as I can find extra money to buy wood and a new saw.

head.desk