That One Time I Felt Crafty/That One Time Jacob Was WAY Craftier

I'm not generally what one would call...crafty. Pinterest? Nah. Me and Hobby Lobby never see each other. It's generally not my thing. But every now and then, I feel like making something. And that something for this year (yep - the WHOLE YEAR) was a Christmas tree topper. We've had a variety of truly ghetto-riffic toppers over the years.

We've done a red ribbon tied in a bow (couldn't find a picture of).

We've done the tissue paper ghost angel (2007).

And then we've just done the old-fashioned topless tree (2012).

Also, if my pictures are to be believed, we didn't have a Christmas tree the first two years we were married. Wow, we're lame.

Every time I start thinking about getting a tree topper, it's the middle of November and the WORST time to be shopping for Christmas decorations (hello, mark-ups). So I decided to make a tree topper. I found some interesting ideas and narrowed it down to 2 - one that started life as a bunch of toilet paper rolls (and honestly looked beyond my skill level) and one that seemed about perfect for us. 

To be safe, I ran both ideas past Nicole. She's really good at letting me know if I'm going crazy or not. She approved, so off I went to Michael's with Hazel in tow to gather supplies. Which then sat on my desk for a couple of days while I decided if I was really up for it. Then I cut out the two sides of the star....and let it sit for a few more days to be really, really sure I was up for it. And then one night, I dug out my hot glue gun, told Jacob to mind his own business ("WHAT are you DOING?" etc.) and managed to put together this baby:

So now we have an official tree topper. And it's a Super Mario star. And I LOVE it. I also didn't get a picture of it actually on our tree (wow I failed with pictures the end of this year) but it looked nice and I think it's fun and nerdy without being too weird. 

So there you go - I was crafty.

You can kinda see it back there way behind Speed. 

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Jacob also decided that he wanted to do something cool for Christmas. We've had this tradition we've been building (pun intended) of doing something Lego related for Christmas-time - specifically the Lego trains. LOVE THEM. Anyway, for the last couple of years, we've been slowly building up and painting the "Lego board", as shown in this lovely montage and in the topless tree picture above:

2011

2011

2012

While we've loved the fun of this board, there have been some drawbacks and the awesome mountain with tunnel just keeps getting killed every year. Plus this thing is HEAVY (he put wall puddy over screen he shaped). So this year, the wheels in his head started turning and he came up with the idea to build a Lego table. I'll level with you - when I saw his design, I thought he was crazy. However, as I should really know by now, when Jacob has a vision, it'll pretty much turn out awesome. 

And it did:

It's an octagon in 4 sections held to the base by 5 bolts. He used some kind of crazy concrete-glue-something that smelled awful to adhere the plates to the top but they aren't going anywhere, so it worked great. We made it with the plan to dismantle it for most of the year and store the 4 top pieces in a stack in a corner so that it still provides some play area. The base is just 2x4s so that can either get saved in the garage or dismantled and built from new boards for next year. But honestly, it's been so much fun that we'll probably leave it up longer than we had planned. The kids do a decent job of keeping the area clean, especially when we stop caring what the top of the table looks like and just if the Lego is off the ground so we don't step on it. 

Also (as you can see in the pictures below), Jacob was sure to build it strong enough that you can walk on it. If an adult stands right on the edge, you might be able to tip it but so far, no kid under 10 has been able to make it wobble. And as you can see, it's already provided hours and hours and hours of fun. 

Jacob rocks. :)