Extreme Makeover: Crate Edition

The last extreme makeover I did was when I reupholstered the infamous $2.00 chair while I was back at school in Illinois. Today, since I didn't have work, I decided to be constructive and try my hand at another extreme makeover project. Lately I have been wanting a crate. I know that's a random thing to want, but I love crates because they are useful--you can store things in them--and they make great decorations. This morning Mom and I went over to Treasures Antique Mall in Springville, and Mom spotted just the size of crate I was looking for. It was outside by all of the wrought iron things they have for sale. The only problem was that it had basically been cast off and was full of dirt and other such things. We dumped out the dirt, found a piece of wood to scrape off the unpleasant residue, and hit the crate a few times to knock out some of the cobwebs and other junk inside. We took it in and asked the people how much they wanted for the crate, but they didn't even know who it belonged to. They finally tracked down the person who claimed to own it, and he sold it to us for $10. Sweet deal. Then the fun began! We took it home and I cleaned it up with a wire brush and a vacuum. Then I sanded it and applied some special wood finish which brought out the natural wood grain and also added a slight gloss to the surface. I've had orange crates on the mind ever since I saw an episode of "Antiques Roadshow" a couple of weeks ago where a guy had some orange crate labels that were worth $30,000.00. So, I decided to turn my crate into an orange crate. I found some orange crate labels online and, of course, chose the "Lincoln Brand" label--featuring my favorite historical figure. I found some cool adhesive stuff to attach the labels which also seals them onto the wood. And, voila! We have a cool new orange crate!! I will use it to haul books and things back to Illinois, and then Greg and I can use it as a house decoration. It looks pretty awesome, if I do say so myself--especially considering the condition in which Mom and I found the crate this morning!

Tonight Mom and I started addressing wedding invitation envelopes. My favorite envelope was to "Mr. and Mrs. Brigham Young" :-) Yes, Brigham Young will indeed be coming to our wedding! (His wife Julie is one of my mom's best friends.)

Yesterday at work James taught me how to use the Utah State Parks artifact cataloging system that is used at all of the state historic sites and museums. Unfortunately, no one had worked on artifact cataloging at Camp Floyd for about six years, so all of the artifact records were quite haphazard (not to mention the artifacts themselves--they're all piled away in a storage shed). But, when it comes to collections, you have to start somewhere, so yesterday I started cataloging the books that we have at the old schoolhouse. After I had been entering information into the computer for a while, I started coming across a bunch of Bobbsey Twins books. I have no idea why this would be the case, but I swear that Camp Floyd owns every Bobbsey Twins book ever written. We had the Bobbsey Twins in Mexico, on the Pony Trail, at School, at the Snow Lodge, Treasure Hunting, in Tulip Land, at Spruce Lake, at the Ice Carnival, and everywhere else they ever went. So if you ever need a Bobbsey Twins book, you know who to call.

Yesterday a tornado went right through Clemson University! Needless to say, we were all very worried about Sarah, Joel, and Eliza. Sarah and Joel were there on campus and Eliza was at daycare when the first bout of bad storms went through. Then luckily Sarah and Joel went to pick up Eliza when they did because shortly after they left was when a confirmed tornado touched down and went across campus. It went past the football stadium, across the intramural fields, knocked down a bunch of trees, and knocked out the power. Yikes! We were very glad that they left when they did and that they made it home safely. Tornadoes are scary! There are a lot of things I love about Utah, and one of them is that tornadoes are extremely rare here in the mountains.