Long time, no post.

 I wish I could tell you all that I've been busy doing all kinds of awesome things for the past several days, and that's what I haven't posted anything.  The truth is that I feel like I've been busy, but I really don't have much to show for it.  I did have one project in the works for the past week that I finally completed today, but it's for a special birthday girl (happy belated birthday, Mom!), so I don't want to post pictures of the final product until she gets it in the mail.  Here's a sneak peek of it though.  If anyone can figure out what it is, it will be Mom, so hopefully it doesn't ruin the surprise for her.

The other project that had going this week was building a digital 3D model of our living room in Google Sketchup.  For those of you who don't know, Google Sketchup is free software from Google that lets you design/construct just about anything you can think of.  It's a pretty neat program, but I had a tough time getting things the way I wanted them and in the end, I basically gave up.  My goal was to build the room, and place furniture in there to get an idea of what kind of furniture and the layout that we might want.  I was hoping that it would help me find something I liked when we went to look at couches today.  Unfortunately, I couldn't find any furniture that I liked or could work with in the library of existing digital furniture that Google has, and I was much too lazy and frustrated with Sketchup to build my own.  Oh well.  Here's a screen shot of what I did build just so you can get an idea of what I'm talking about.

I worked on a couple projects and did some baking this weekend, but I'm going to save those posts for later this week.  We've got a pretty busy month ahead of us, so I figure that posting weekend projects throughout the week will be my best bet for keeping this blog going.  I'll be heading to Tulsa, OK for a class on pipeline construction from March 12th to 14th.  I know, you're all jealous.  Then on the 16th, I'm flying to New Orleans for a bachelorette weekend for one of my best friends, Amanda Schram.  I can't wait to see her and all the other girls from Lake Charles as well!  I'll also get a chance to visit my Great-Uncle Harold and his son Michael while I'm down there.  Then on the weekend of the 24th we have a wedding to attend in St. Louis, and Joe is part of the wedding party.  So we'll be up there on Friday for the rehearsal dinner.  Before we know it March will be over.  Hopefully I'll be able to fit in a few projects and maybe some more recipes.  Well, I guess that's all for tonight.  I hope you all made it through the storms last week alright, and that you're doing well!