Picture Ledges (from scrap wood--so basically free!)

David and I are nearly finished with a huge project in the basement family room, which I will show you very soonish. I'm very excited about it and I will give you a clue--it's made out of wood. Soon, my friends, soon.

Anyway, we had some scrap pieces, so I commissioned David to build me some picture ledges out of the scraps. Which apparently annoyed him, as I wanted him to do it while he was building the other thing he was building. I was helping with the other thing he was building here and there, but I was also sitting around sometimes, so I thought it would give me something to paint.

He built them out of MDF and cut the groove in them with the table saw. Then it was a matter of nailgunning the pieces together.

Then I painted quite a few coats.

Then I bugged him again to help me hang them. Apparently, David is a methodical builder who likes to do one project at a time, finish it, and then move onto the next project. I didn't realize that. Technically, I was asking him to help when he wasn't working on the other thing he was building, but oh well. He was nice about it, but he usually doesn't betray that much annoyance with me.

Which reminds me of this morning, actually. I got up when he did (I usually get up right as he leaves for work) and he was in the shower) and I knocked to get into the bathroom. I drank too much water last night right before bed, so I had a bladder about the size and approximate weight of a bowling ball; I hate getting up at night and I probably should have anyway. He was definitely annoyed when he asked what I wanted (we don't technically have a master bathroom--it's across the hall). I said I wanted to use the bathroom and he told me to go downstairs. No way was I using that pit. I make the kids clean it unless we are expecting company (then I double clean it and use highly concentrated cleaners before I will touch it), and I'm not sure when the last time I made them clean it was anyway. We have three boys. Enough said. The bowling ball was staying until he got out the shower.

Apparently he thought I was Maxton.

Anyway, here's some of the stuff I put on it. You can see how I made the dragonfly frame here. The tree and the monogram letters (they are hard to make out in the bottom left corner; I need to set them on something) are from Hobby Lobby. The bird is from Dollar Tree. The frame near the monograms is getting an ampersand and the other two frames will get photos of David and me as soon as I figure out a way to scan our wedding negatives. I never could get my negative scanner to work and I got rid of it.

I don't particularly want to take it to a developer, as it's a medium format negative and I'd like to get them all done and I've only seen 35mm offered. I'm sure I could have it done for a fortune. I'd rather do it myself, but I'd like a negative scanner that would work with my existing scanner and would work with my medium format negatives and I have no idea where to find one. Our photographer let us have the negatives after 5 years--how awesome is that! Just need to have them digitized to make them really useful.