Our Custom Master Bedroom Bench

As one of the very last projects of the year, Mollie and I tackled the bedroom bench.  Since we moved in last year, we have had a list in the back of our minds of furniture that the home needed that we could build.  This was the last one on my mental list, at least the last one for now.  I'm sure we will do more soon.

The day after Christmas, Mollie looked at me and said, "So do you want to make the bench today?"  We had just barely finished the locker system for the laundry room, so I was not really expecting this.  Having slated most of my vacation for playing helping the kids build legos, I was a little surprised at the request.  She told me that she had been browsing plans for a few days and had a pretty good idea of what she wanted.  We looked over a few different types of benches and quickly settled on an ideal plan; we already had most of the materials.  I think that we only really had to buy one piece of plywood (which we now have a good size scrap from) and the skirt fabric. Which was a deal in itself. The foam had been purchased nearly a year earlier, but was slated for this project. Although, it was decidedly the most expensive part (even though it was purchased at 50% off), since it had been purchased so long ago, it felt like it was free. The fabric for the seat was what was left over from the amazing deal Mollie found and Joann's for silk at less than $5 a yard. The rest we were able to use from scraps out in the garage, which really cut the cost. I think we spent less than $30.  If we add in the cost for the foam (around $50) and the cost of the fabric (about $9), it comes in just under $90.  And as a bonus, we got rid of a lot of the scraps in my work area outside.

In our bedroom, there is a little bump out for a window, and we decided to make the bench fill that space. We debated the size quite a bit.  Should it be only as deep as the window?  We opted for a much deeper bench (Mollie wanted plenty of space for lots of pillows), and took the width of the foam as our guide.  Should it go from wall to wall, or be narrower?  We decided we wanted the curtains to be able to hang on either side of the bench, so we made it narrower than the space, just the same width as the window frame.  First off, I built the basic skeleton of the bench from left over 2x4 and 2x6. It could have easily been built from just 2X4's but we didn't have enough, so we used the 2X6's (left over from our table we built last year) that were too warped for any other project.   Since it was pretty wide, we actually built 2 benches to make sure it would have enough support in the middle. 

 As an aside, I really hate dealing with stud-wood.  It is just so warped and difficult to use.  But we still got it done. This was an ideal project for warped boards, since the skirt of the bench was going to hide everything from view. We used Kreg-Jig pocket-holing wherever we could, both building the frame and also for the eventual attachment of the seat to the frame.  We had to drill this ahead of time, since the bench was going to be upholstered, it needed to be attached from beneath. 

 Mollie glued the foam down onto the plywood and then covered that in some additional batting to smooth the corners and edges.

Then we used the silk (after pre-treating it with scotchgaurd) to cover that.

The next step was the skirt.  Mollie had purchased some home dec fabric to make the skirt, but it wasn't quite right.  Then she remembered reading about people using canvas drop cloths for upholstery and such, and so while I was at Lowes, she called and had me pick up a drop cloth.  Just $10 got us a 9ftX6ft drop cloth. Then she bleached it, and washed it (with lots of fabric softener and dryer sheets), and then ironed it with pleats.

The really great thing about a drop cloth is that it comes pre-hemmed. And a simple slit in the fabric allows you to rip it all the way down completely straight.  No need for meticulous cutting or sewing.  And it was just the look she was going for, and super cheap.  So then, after Mollie pinned in the pleats, I attached it to the base of the bench with staples.The kreg-jig and the air compressor are our 2 most valuable tools. Such time savers. 

For one last touch, Mollie made some piping to go around the base.  We stapled on a double row of that.

The final bit was to attach the seat to the bench skeleton.  We were pretty cautious here, because we didn't want to twist and distort the seat fabric.  Using Kreg-Jig screws, we first secured the middle of the bench, where there was no fabric, and then tested a few screws on the back where it would not be as visible if something went wrong.  As luck would have it, we were able to screw right through the fabric without it twisting.  So we went ahead and put in all our screws and we were done.

The finished bench:

The kids love all the space underneath.

  

I have plans to build some storage compartments to go underneath, and serve as a charging hub for all our various electronics, which used to find themselves in a heap right here.  And there's plenty of space to stash any other clutter that seems to find its way into our room.  Kids included :)

Christmas

Christmas eve, right before bed.

After Santa came, before the kids came down.

The boys woke up very early, and studied the parcels under the tree. 

I even caught them playing with Olivia's new doll house!

Stockings!

Bandaids are a real hit at our house

Presents!

The kids had saved up money and bought each other really thoughtful gifts this year.  Harrison got Olivia this doll (after much thought at the store).  I was worried about how much they wanted to spend on each other, but they had saved a lot of birthday money, and so really they were using that for buying gifts for each other.  I thought it was so sweet to see how excited they were to give the gifts they had picked out.

Noah and Harrison got each other Lego sets (of course!).  I had to help them to make sure they didn't buy each other the exact same Lego sets.

Noah got Olivia some fun princess dress up accessories.  She wore them much of Christmas morning. 

Santa brought Olivia some dolls to use with the doll house.

Noah had asked for an ipod to play angry birds on.  He got an angry birds board game instead, and I think was just as thrilled.

The big surprise for the day was an interactive globe.  All the kids have really enjoyed this one.

Santa brought Harrison some new books. 

Noah got a plush angry bird as well. 

We let Harrison unwrap Harry Potter 6 and 7, to let him know he now had permission to read them.  He's already finished book 6, and has started 7!

Grandma Margie and Grandpa Brent got the family the Diagon Alley Lego Harry Potter set.  Sam built this with the boys, as it was pretty advanced.  It is a very cool set.

Getting to work.  PLAY!

The kids got a mini Hogwarts express, and set to building it right away. 

Olivia's doll house is so tall, she has to get a stool or chair to reach the highest level. 

She loved her new doll so much, she wanted to play with her in the doll house also.

Noah LOVES the Angry Birds game.

Harrison got a Lego Building book ("The unofficial Lego builders guide") which he has studied from extensively.  He's used it to make mosaics and macro bricks. 

Olivia pretending to read her doll's book to her doll.

Off to church

Sam and I got a new DSLR camera, which we used to take all these pictures.  We're still learning a lot about how to use it, but it's so fun to have such a great camera.  We look forward to taking pictures with it for many years to come!

Christmas Eve

This year for Christmas Eve, we were home in Kennewick. It was our first Christmas in our new home, and we were all excited to relax, and not worry about traveling far distances.

For a while now, I have been wanting to do caroling on Christmas Eve like my family did when I was a kid. Our neighbors, the Jakemans, invited us over for dinner. We mentioned caroling to them as a potential activity after dinner and they were very excited to join us.

At our house before the party, the kids got to open their traditional Christmas Eve present, new jammies.

They actually got Jammies, robes and slippers.  They wanted to change right away, but Mollie thought it best if we didn't arrive for dinner in PJ's.  They put on their robes and slippers for a picture, and ended up taking the robes for the traditional enactment of the nativity.

The dinner was three families, Paynes, Jakemans and Sorensons.  We all live on the same street and so it was really close and easy. The theme was middle eastern, to be reminiscent of what the people in the Holy Land would have eaten around the time of the first Christmas night.  Well that was the theme, and we did a reasonably good job of staying close to it. David and Rebekah cooked lamb and a braided bread, which were both amazing. We brought a cheese tray with several variates, and some crackers.  If I was thinking, I would have brought goat cheese. Instead we ended up pretending that smoked Gouda was a traditional Israeli variety. The Sorensons brought some fruit and veggies.

The kids all ate at a make-shift indoor tent, which was fun.  David set up a canopy in their family room and pillows on the floor. After dinner they practiced their nativity re-enactment as the adults just chatted and relaxed.  About 7, we decided to go caroling. In my childhood years, my family would go around to neighbors, sports pals, work colleagues and others in and near our town. Since all three of the families are new to the neighborhood, and the neighborhood itself is rather new, I thought it would be great to just get to know some of our neighbors on 9th.  We managed to find a few families at home and sang a few songs at each door.  I was totally impressed by the singing ability of the kids.  They loved doing it, and they knew a lot of songs.  Of course, David and Rebecca are the Primary choristers, so they had been practicing a few Christmas hymns with the kids all month.  I was glad that it was warm enough to be outside singing for a half an hour or so.

After returning to the Jakeman's house, the kids put on their nativity, which was cute.  Harrison and Jameson were shepherds. Aliya was Mary. Calan was Joseph (and a tax collector in verse 1). Noah was baby Jesus. Bethany was the angel.

Next the Jakemans did their tradition of a scavenger hunt for baby Jesus.  The kids were suppose to be wise men, and each was to write what their gift to Jesus was.  Noah didn't quite get the idea (it was suppose to be something he could do for Jesus during the year, like be nice to his sister, or read his scriptures).  He wrote down gold.  Then they followed clues around the house for finding Jesus.  What a fun tradition it was.  Thanks Jakemans for inviting us and having a wonderful party.  When we got home, we put the kids straight to bed, so as to give Santa enough time to get to our house to deliver some gifts.  It was a very memorable and fun Christmas Eve.

Awesome Advent

I love the anticipation of Christmas.  December is a great month.  This year, the boys got an awesome pre-Christmas present, a Lego advent calendar. Each day they got to open a few more bricks, steps towards building a lego scene.

There were some pretty awesome Legos in the calendar.  The boys especially liked the skateboard, snow mobiles and the police cabin.  I thought that the ice fisherman, with axe and pole and fish, was a nice touch.  The crowning piece of the set was Santa with a big bag ready for gifts, a chimney and a Christmas tree.

Every morning when the boys woke up, they would yell down from upstairs to ask whether it was okay to open the new day's Legos (as opposed to asking if it was breakfast time).  They always new what day of December it was, because they knew which door they had opened that morning, and which door they had to wait for.  I think this will become a new holiday tradition.

Joy School Christmas Program

Olivia's Joy School held a Christmas program a few weeks before Christmas this year.  There are six kids in the school, all nice kids from our neighborhood.  It was so fun to go watch them perform!  Olivia was still recovering from a cold she had the week before, so unfortunately she was coughing through much of it, but she was so excited to be involved.

Olivia played the part of a shepard.  It wasn't until the day of the program that she exclaimed, "But I wanted to be the angel!"  So funny, because I thought all little girls wanted to be Mary.

Mary and Joseph at the Inn.  So cute!

The angel coming to Mary.  Our adorable angel, Paisley, who is normally super out-going, got a little stage fright. It was pretty cute.

 The shepherds coming to adore the baby. 

After the nativity, the kids performed some songs they had been working on. Olivia had been singing them in the car all week long, but got pretty quiet when it was time to perform.

This was their favorite number, Jingle Bells. They all really got into it. 

There were some other songs that they performed as well, and there's actually a pretty funny back story. One of the songs is about the "very best part of Christmas" and the song claims that it is "the present you give away." On the way to the party, we had the songs playing in the car, and both boys were quite upset by the song. "The very best part is NOT the present you give a way, it's JESUS!" They exclaimed. I thought it was pretty funny.Harrison has since changed the words from "the present you give away" to "Jesus' birthday" every time it gets sung. 

Leavenworth Day Trip

Given the success of our Dayton trip, we decided to visit the tourist haven of Leavenworth. We went on Mollie's birthday, and figured it would be a fun way to celebrate. This town is smack in the middle of the Cascade range close to both Seattle and the Tri-Cities.  It is a very small town, and sometime back decided to remake itself as a bavarian mountain village.  Most of the buildings in the town center have been remodeled to fit the theme.

There were several differences between our Dayton trip and this one. For starters it is much further away (3 hours) so we had to rush to get out the house in time. I had wanted to stop at a little candy apple factory on the way there, but given how late we got out of the house, I felt that we had to press on to reach Leavenworth sometime close to lunch. We got to town around 1, and we were all pretty hungry. Looking at the town via Google maps, I had thought it would be easy to find a decent restaurant and sit down. But when we got into town, it was immediately apparent that Leavenworth's Christmas Festival was a pretty big deal.  There was no parking anywhere that I could see.  The town is only a few blocks long, so it's not too hard to drive the streets and see cars parked everywhere.  There must have been 10,000 tourists walking around.  It was packed! People streaming in from all around, and big tour buses bringing even more.

The streets were constantly flooded with people.  And all the shops were stuffed too!

We doubled back and parked at a Bavarian Bakery at the edge of town.  We stopped in there hoping that this was the kind of bakery that makes sandwiches or something.  Alas they did not.  But they did make some good pretzels and cinnamon bread.  That kind of became our lunch.

We got the kids bundled up and walked into town.  It was a very cold day.  Almost unpleasantly cold, so we decided to get indoors and visit the Nutcracker museum.  Although it's pretty small, just two or three rooms, you can fit an awful lot of nutcrackers into a small space. The kids were really excited to see all the different characters (star wars, disney, fairy tales, astronauts, mormon missionaries).  All in all a fun place.  They had a scavenger hunt for Harrison to do, and he really enjoyed that.

We went out onto the main square to figure out what to do.  It was so crowded that it was moderately disorienting.  We wandered around and looked at all the stores, but there was not really any room to get inside any of them.  The hat shop had a line of ~30 people standing outside queued at the door.  We got some kettle corn as a snack, but hunger was setting in, and none of the restaurants had indoor seating. So we walked back to the edge of town and hit up the old reliable McDonalds.  Even here we had to wait for a booth.

After that we went back to the car to get snow pants and the sled.  Near the center of the town there was a hill that had been set aside as a sled hill.  It was short but sufficiently steep to be fun.



I took the boys up to the top and Mollie went to find a place to try and get some pictures. It was getting very crowded, as the hill was adjacent to the tree lighting podium and only about 30 minutes before the ceremony started.  On the first trip down the hill, they boys got turned around backwards and tried to stop by putting their hands down into the snow.  They had forgotten to put their gloves on and without gloves, that got pretty cold.  Crying insued.

 As they looked around with kids coming down the hill fast and furious they tried to figure out how to get back up to be with me.  The confusion and freezing hands started a melt down.  After gloves got on, and hands got warm, it took a good 10 minutes of cajoling to get them to try the sledding again.  After a few happy rides with Dad steering, the lighting ceremony started.  

My favorite sledding picture.  That's me with Noah on my lap.

I really wanted to have a good brat while I was there, so I left Mollie with the kids by the sledding hill, and ventured out into the crowd.  The lines at the restaurant were gone, which maybe should have been a clue to me.  The ceremony started while I was gone, and was pretty much over before I made my way back to Mollie. 

Mollie got some pictures:

We were standing right next to the large Christmas tree, so you couldn't really see the whole thing.

The lights were pretty amazing, but we were all cold, tired and cranky. So we headed to the car, and headed for home.  I think Dayton was more enjoyable, but Leavenworth was more dramatic.  We'll have to go back to Leavenworth sometime when it's not the lighting festival, and save the Christmas kickoff type of festivities for Dayton.  Live and learn.