Walnut and Maple Art Easel After watching a handful of Instagram and TikTok videos on custom made art easels I was asked if I might be able to make a similar one The ones that I saw while functional were ultimately pretty basic Since I generally like to try and build my projects as nuanced as I can I decided it would be best to come up with my own plans Granted I did use the basic structural idea of the ones I d seen but the design elements were entirely my own iframe width 391 height 521 src https youtube com embed sVgrY3rex7o frameborder 0 allowfullscreen iframe The easel was crafted from Peruvian Walnut Ambrosia Maple and a single piece of Curly Maple for the easel tray itself It also has a number of hardware adaptations all of which use black oxide finishing I think the design decisions ultimately turned out a pretty nice looking easel and it made a great gift Dimensionally speaking the easel stands at 72 tall It has 1 5 8 40mm square legs a 31 wide easel tray and as noted above all of the hardware is finished with black oxide The main structural pivot bolt is 3 8 at 6 1 2 long The easel tray bolts are 1 4 at 5 1 2 inches long and compress against the front two legs to lock the tray into place All of the bolts are lined with black oxide steel washers of varying thicknesses and each outer washer has an outermost neoprene washer included to protect the wood

Babysitting Baby Jonah Tisa and I often spent time babysitting her nephew, little Jonah, and when he was about 4 months or so old, we decided that we would try and do a little photo shoot with him. We never actually did much with the pictures, but I think they turned out pretty good.

Flat Stanley Pictures Tisa's brother, Timmy, asked us if we would take some pictures of Flat Stanley for one of his youth groups (or something to that effect). I don't really recall Tisa doing much with this one, but I went around town and took as many pictures of Mr. Stanley as I could with Dave's Olympus.

Crickett SA vs. NZ Since I had been getting to play a bit of cricket with some of Crockett's Motorola buddies, I was very excited to see my first full cricket match. As it happens, there was a bit of rain in the earlier part of the day and so the game was delayed and then ultimately shortened. I can't recall specifically how many overs it was shortened, but it turned out to be a very exciting game with New Zealand clinching the win by just a few balls in the very last over.

Dreux's Bachelor Party Although I might be slightly biased in having planned this event, this is probably one of the better bachelor parties I've been to. Everyone met over at my Village Oaks apartment sometime around 6pm. I knew someone who was able to rent me a special party bus with a fighter jet canopy welded to the top of it. We immediately started drinking on the bus and went to pick up Dreux at his house where he was bombarded with silly string and then forced to wear a prison suit and drag around an actual ball and chain (a 16 lb bowling ball). We went to dinner at The Tilted Kilt (scantily clad women serving food), and then up north to Perfect 10 for some good stripper action. When we finally headed back towards town, we stopped in at Sherlock's on north Burnet for the remaining hour we had the bus before heading back to my apartment. Once we got there, drunk as all could be, we decided it would be a good idea to go swimming. For the most part, everything worked out pretty well although Emerson did manage to get the police to show up after pounding on the wrong apartment door (instead of mine).

Putt's Crawfish Boil 2007 This is a collection of photos from Daniel Putt's 2007 Annual Crawfish Boil. The party this year, as with last year, took place in the backyard of his east 10th street house. As always, it was a blast and I got to see plenty of friendly faces that I hadn't seen in years, one of them being Putt's sister, Meredith. Dave G. came in town for the party and invited Gary to go with us to. We left a little earlier than I had intended to, but made up for it by having some drinks at Trudy's north instead.

Headed To Queenstown One of the first things that we did with Sean was travel to Queenstown. This was the first time we had ever had troubles with our new car, Sparkle Motion, and by the end of the trip, our car was entirely dead. All the same, we did have a great time on the trip.

Nelson Taken from Tisa's original journal of our trip: Nelson- (population: 52, 300) Nelson is an artsy town with cute cafes, galleries and art vendors. The streets remind us of a typical town life scene in Colorado (eg; Boulder and Denver). Small independent stores line the streets one after another, a very peaceful and quite atmosphere, cute architecture, no loud signs or advertisements everywhere, no traffic congestion, many trees and nicely paved streets. However, with this beauty comes a price tag. The food was rather expensive as was all the merchandise. It didn’t take us long to realize that this wasn’t a place where we would be residing but I would love to retire here. My favorite part was having trees fill and surround the area. Makes for a great, relaxing morning to stroll down the street, buy a cup of coffee from the corner vendor and sit under a tree and read a book!

National Cathedral of Nelson Taken from Tisa's original journal of our trip: Nelson- (population: 52, 300) Nelson is an artsy town with cute cafes, galleries and art vendors. The streets remind us of a typical town life scene in Colorado (eg; Boulder and Denver). Small independent stores line the streets one after another, a very peaceful and quite atmosphere, cute architecture, no loud signs or advertisements everywhere, no traffic congestion, many trees and nicely paved streets. However, with this beauty comes a price tag. The food was rather expensive as was all the merchandise. It didn’t take us long to realize that this wasn’t a place where we would be residing but I would love to retire here. My favorite part was having trees fill and surround the area. Makes for a great, relaxing morning to stroll down the street, buy a cup of coffee from the corner vendor and sit under a tree and read a book!

Lake Rotoiti Taken from Tisa's original journal of our trip: Lake Rotoiti is part of the Nelson Lakes National Park and is located near another bigger lake by the name of Lake Rotorua. In part of the park area, an aggressive conservation project is currently going on in which they are attempting to eradicate introduced pests such as possums and stoats in order to recover native flora and fauna. Stoats look exactly like ferrets but are a little smaller and a tad bigger than a weasel. It was interesting to notice the marked trees where they planted cyanide covered in peanut butter for these little pests. There are some great walking paths and hiking trails that you can explore here. The lake was breathtaking and with our luck, we were able to get a campsite right next to it. It was very peaceful and soothing with the towering mountains that surrounded the lake on all sides. This was by far, the most remote we have been in all of NZ and it was the best spot I could imagine being at the time. We did visit the town's main center, which was about three stores including the Alpine Lodge Café. We had a late night dinner here while re-mapping our journey for the following days. Food wasn't that great but they have a monopoly on eating out in this small town called St. Arnaud.