Bucket List... sort of.

Okay, so a friend just posted about bucket lists and it got me thinking. I've never really thought much of bucket lists because it often seems so overdone and Hollywood. Scream from the top of Mt. Everest, jump out of a plane, tandem paddle board with your loved one in the Caribbean surrounded by dolphins as the sun sets and natives swim by serving you drinks in coconut shells with tiny umbrellas, etc. It all has to be THE most amazing thing ever and way over-dramatized.

Sometimes the goals I have aren't epic.

Sometimes they're just normal. Or at least normal to me. Okay, sometimes they're weird.

So, I decided to make a goal list. It's not a bucket list. It's just a list of goals and projects that I would like to complete in the not too distant future. Hopefully it will help me actually get them done. I'm not putting them in any specific order because I don't feel I can rate them all like that, and then I would feel like I had to get them done in that order or something. But here they are.

1. Buy a house. I don't want a perfect house. I want one that needs a little love that my wife and I can make into the perfect house for our family.
2. Create a line of simple handmade costumes and accessory toys to sell. Hopefully I can go into more detail about this in the near future.
3. Open a cafe/hang out spot.
4. Build Stormptrooper armor and join the 501st.
5. Finish my Jedi uniform and join the Rebel Legion. I've made a non-"working" lightsaber and started on the tunic.
6. Refinish furniture. Ambiguous I know. I do have a selection of furniture that needs it, including a kids table and chair set, a rocking chair, and a vanity.
7. Scratch build a piece of furniture. Right now I'm thinking about a table.
8. Build a recurve bow.
9. Using that recurve bow, successfully hunt a deer and go through the entire process of taking it from forest to table myself.
10. Write a DIY book chronicling all of my DIY efforts.
11. Get a motorcycle. Not just any motorcycle. A vintage UJM. Or a Honda Scrambler. Or maybe a cafe racer.
12. Travel overseas. Not very specific I know, but there isn't one place that I want to go above all other places. As long as I could have fun traveling with my wife I'd be happy with any destination. Some places that would be fun: Italy, Scotland, Wales, Germany, a couple other "lesser" European countries, New Zealand, Australia, and Japan.
13. Go to a major Con. Comic Con is obviously the mecca, but I'd also do Celebration (do they still have that?), Dragon Con or something similar.
14. Forge a knife. I've done a simple railroad spike knife and put a bone handle on a knife blank, but I want to actually forge a knife out of steel from start to finish. I want to make the handle myself and make a leather sheath for it and everything.
15. Get a tattoo.
16. There's a list of other random projects that I want to finish that I don't feel are big enough to count as "goals" so I'll count them as one goal. This list consists of things like, sew our curtains, make some wall art, finish my whiskey stones, finish my sgian dubh, make more plush toys like my penguin and a Chewie doll, finish my prop flintlock and raygun, make wooden swords, etc.

I'm about 100% sure I've left things off, but that should do it for now.

Do you have a "bucket list"? Is there anything that you really want to do but you feel silly putting it on a bucket list?

I'm Back!

Alright, so I'm back after taking an impromptu week off from blogging. When last I posted I had decided to go ahead and make our house hunting endeavor public. This past week has been incredibly busy running around meeting with our realtor, making calls to lenders, etc. So now I'm updating everyone on that process.

The long and the short of it is that we didn't get it.

It needed a lot of work. Possibly $20k worth of work. It would have required a renovation loan. We offered low enough that we would be able to afford the house with the renovation costs on top of that, but they weren't willing to go as low as we wanted. It's not a terribly big surprise considering the house hasn't been on the market very long. Our realtor equated it to a honeymoon phase. Basically the bank just put it on the market a short while ago and isn't going to take the first low ball offer that comes along because they still think they can probably get something better. We don't think they will. Our realtor agreed.

Our plan of action right now is to watch it and wait. If someone else snags it than that's okay and it wasn't meant to be. If thirty days go by and it's still there we'll try again, assuming it holds up well while being vacant for another month.

Regardless of what happens this has been an incredible learning experience. I'm the kind of person who looks at the idea of buying a house and thinks "I should research that process" but until I have pressure on me to get it done I probably won't. Finding this house forced us to actually go through the whole process, to also take a hard look at our finances and see how much we can actually afford and what kind of sacrifices we can make in order to afford more. Maybe this isn't the house for us, but when our house does come along we'll be ready. We'll know exactly how much house we can afford. We'll have saved more. We'll know who to go to for a loan. We'll know which grants to apply for.

Part of me is disappointed, sure, but I think I'm mostly thankful for the experience. I know God's going to bring the right house along. And I know that when he does, he'll provide a way for us to be able to buy it. In the meantime we're going to focus on being ready for when that time comes.

Have you experienced the frustration of house hunting? Or did everything work out really well? Ever have a door you really wanted open slammed in your face?

The Biggest Project Yet!

Alright, so here's another Friday passing without a finished project to post. I promise I have a good excuse.

First of all I will say that while I'm not posting a finished project it doesn't mean I didn't work on anything this week. If I had worked on the whiskey stones or pallet art that I had already started I might have finished, but I got excited about something else and switched projects. Sorry. Even that one is coming along slowly because of something much bigger.

The biggest reason I don't have a project to post is because I'm working on something much larger. My wife and I have been casually watching the realty market for a while now, but we recently saw a house that looks promising enough to try to make a move on it. It's a cute little yellow cape cod.

It definitely needs work, but it's adorable! It's a decent size, and it's pretty cheap. It has this white fence around the front yard and an apple tree and dogwood tree! There are rose bushes. We like the floor plan. It's got a big den with a fireplace. There's a pool in the backyard, but we would probably just fill that in. A yard is more important than a money pit.

So, who knows, this might not be the house we end up in, but right now we're hoping it is and it's got us running around right now learning about mortgage loans, APR, settlement worksheets, etc.

Pray for us, wish us luck, partly that we get it, partly that we don't go crazy trying.

Small Update

I read fairly slowly. Partly because I don't read as much as I used to and thus I'm slightly out of practice. Partly because I don't have copious amounts of time for just reading. Partly because when I get a book that I enjoy I like to soak it up and really get the most enjoyment out of it instead of skimming through it as fast as possible.

With Ender's Game it's definitely more of the latter. I am enjoying this book so much. The further I get the more I am in love with Ender's character. The further I get the more nervous I am for the movie's handling of him. I'm always nervous about child actors. They're often so flat. Ender is so rich. So deep. I love the way he thinks. Part of me wants to draw similarities between him and myself. Most of that is probably quite a stretch; one of those "I like the idea of this character so much that I'm going to imagine I'm kind of like him". Almost a reverse Mary Sue if you will. Regardless, I'm a little less than halfway through and I would definitely recommend this book as a good read.

I haven't had a whole lot of time to put into blogging or crafting lately. Work has been kind of crazy, and I've had some big things that have required a lot of attention. I have quite a few things in the works and hopefully I'll be able to get back to them soon. I want to start not only posting a lot more things but possibly even offer some of them for sale. *crosses fingers in hope that this takes off* We'll see how that one goes though...

Yard Sale!

We had a yard sale this past week! Alas, I didn't take any pictures. It was a fun time though. We decided to have it at my parent's house since they're in an area that sees much more traffic and is more central for yard sale goers. We started hauling things over on Wednesday and finished Saturday morning. We've acquired a lot of stuff over the years, especially the last few. We had so much stuff that we kept forgetting to bring things out. After the yard sale we opened my wife's trunk and realized we hadn't even unloaded it from the last trip. Not only did we have a lot of our stuff but we had a lot of stuff from my wife's family's basement. Since we're cleaning it out in preparation of finishing it we've been going through a lot of stuff down there and getting rid of stuff they don't want anymore.

We almost got rained out early on, but thankfully it held off until about 11:30... at which point it poured. We had to run around in the rain grabbing everything and putting it on the porch. After the downpour stopped we got together everything we didn't still feel like trying to sell and took it to the Goodwill. It filled the back of my dad's Cherokee and completely filled my wife's car.

I'm pretty sure weird encounter stories are a prerequisite for yard sales and ours was no different. We had one lady who showed up completely stoned. She was touching and feeling things and talking about how great they felt. She was having trouble forming sentences. In the end I tossed something in for free because she seemed to enjoy how it felt sooooo much.

I also had a guy look around and ask us if we had a wolf. Apparently he had gone to a yard sale last year where the owner had a wolf as a pet, and the house and yard were so similar to my parent's that it made him question his memory of where that house had been.

Aaaand then there were the hagglers. There were these two African women who were not only haggling for everything they bought, but also trying to get us to throw stuff in for free.

Despite the rain and the vast quantity of things we had left over, we still turned a decent profit, and best of all, got rid of tons of stuff. Seriously, I feel like our lives have been more enriched from the offloading of things we didn't need than from the slight increase of money. Not only that but the basement looks so much better now. It actually looks like there's hope of getting it cleaned up and finished now. YAY!

What did you guys do with your weekend? Do you have any fun yard sale stories?

Things to Come

So I'm a little disappointed because I don't have a finished project for you today. I've been working on a project for a couple weeks but it's taking a lot longer than I originally thought it would. Since I don't have a finished project today I thought I would post pictures of some works in progress.

The first thing is the project I'm currently working on. Have you ever heard of whiskey stones? They're rock cubes that you chill and use as ice. Since they don't melt they don't water down your, uh, beverage. I heard of them a while back and thought they were really cool, but didn't think much else of it. Not too long ago I acquired a bunch of stone samples, so I decided to try and make whiskey stones!

The ones in the background are the cubes that I've cut the larger pieces into. The ones in the foreground are smoothed out and mostly done. I still want to work to get them more even and then I have some polishing to do. I've been doing everything with my dremel so it's slow going.

Another thing I'm working on is something my wife saw and thought was cool. She saw a piece of artwork that someone had made by painting a pallet and then hanging it on a wall. So we were inspired to make a similar piece. Most of the pallets I've seen look terrible so I thought I would build something but then I found this:

I don't think I've ever seen such a perfect pallet before.

When I finish the stones I'll put the whole process on here. I'm not sure what we're painting on the pallet yet, but whenever we do I'll put that on here as well. If you want to see some other projects that I have finished but that haven't made it on to my blog check out my Instructables.

Do you have any of those projects that you just don't seem to ever be able to finish?

Ender's Game

Yesterday was crazy busy and I ended up not being able to finish my post. Sorry. :( Here it is though!

The week before last I talked about a book I was starting called Barnaby Grimes: Return of the Emerald Skull. As it turns out the target audience was a little younger than I had first realized, but it was still enjoyable. It was interesting because it was kind of a "thriller/horror" for young people, so it was somewhat creepy. Had I been the age it was intended for it would have been pretty intense. As it is, I've already seen Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, which is kind of the adult version of this book.

So, now that I've finished I can move onto the next book. I had a book waiting but I've decided to bump it back and read Ender's Game. That's right. I have never read Ender's Game. I don't know how a huge Sci-Fi fan like myself has gotten this far in life without reading it, but I've decided it's past time and needs to be done.

Ooooo it's the Author's Definitive Edition

Part of my decision to finally read it is based on it basically being required reading in the sci-fi world, while the other part is preparation for next year's scheduled movie version of the classic. I guess I won't ever have the fondness for the book that long time fans have, but I want to have an opinion already in place when the movie comes out. With some movies I don't feel it's always necessary to read the book. I've seen lots of movies that were originally books and never read the book, but in this instance I feel like it's more important. I want to like this story. I want to see what people see in it. I don't want my first impression of the story to be a poorly done movie. Or a story that's not as deep. Or a movie where the depth of emotion that might be present in the book is left unreached.

Don't get me wrong. I want the movie to be good. I like things I've heard about it. I'm excited about the people involved in it. Check out the Internet Movie Database page. It's got Han Solo, er, Harrison Ford. Oddly enough it also has Han Soto. That's right. Harrison Ford is acting in a movie with Han Soto. Anyway, my point being I don't want to get attached to something I think is cool and then when I read the original work that is actually much better I can't appreciate it because I'm too attached to a poor reflection.

I don't know if I'll read any of the other ones or just leave it at the first one. I guess it depends on whether it leaves me with a need for more.

Is anyone else excited for the movie? Is anyone a big fan of the book? Does anyone know why blog questions at the end of posts are always in italics?