I'm inside the apartment now, thawing a bit as my bedframe hangs from the ceiling of my deck in the 30 degree evening. It's chilly out there, and I have tried to do most of my work indoors. Good thing too. This project has taken several hours over several days.

It started as an idea when decorating my bedroom with a southwestern theme. I didn't have anything fancy going on for the bed, and knew that I didn't want to shell out $400 for a realy nice, fancy frame. The headboard alone was going to be expensive. So when I decided I was going to do it myself, the next job was to find some lumber.

When I got back from my trip in Florida (that would be Nov. 12th), I put some stuff on the deck and noticed that the high winds that week had blown down a tree under my deck. Didn't think much of it.

... until this past week. I was looking to make my own arrows out of a fallen branch and some arrowheads. (you know... for the theme.) Anyhow, it occurred to me that we had this dead tree out in the back, so I snuck down there with some flashlight assistance and snagged about 5 of the smaller branches. I worked feverishly that night to skin about 3 branches and see which would work best as an arrow. When I found my best two, I lashed them together and am ready now for the next step - assembling the arrowheads.

Anyhow, since I took off those branches, I'd been staring at my room. The bed looked so...empty. I decided I was going to go with an unconventional headboard, one that didn't look like one you could get in a store. I wanted something unique, something Southwestern, something wild, but something subtle at the same time.

So with some help from Chris Hollomon, who came down with Karen to visit on Friday, I cut up the rest of that tree and heaved it up to the second floor where it sat on the deck.

We hung out Friday night, and when everyone left at 3am, I hit the sack and attacked the branches in the morning, first thing. I spent the entire day skinning. Around 6 or so, I went to hang out with J&O and Chris at J&O's place. We went to Cracker Barrel for some eats and came back to play some games. It was a good night. I came home around 2 and (you guessed it) got back to skinning the branches.

I was up early Sunday and after church, got changed for a run. It was scheduled to snow in the afternoon, and I had some running to do. It was awesome. I busted out 5 miles (the experience can be read in my workout blog if you are so inclined) and came back home to dry off. It was a slippery, cold mess out there. I spent the rest of the night watching the Godfather trilogy and (you guessed it) skinning/carving up more branches.

On Monday, almost everyone had a snowday. *For me, every day's a snow day, so I was free as well* We met up for lunch in the West End and then came back to my place to hang around and be lazy. It was relaxing. No plans, just chilling out. I am really glad that I've made my place comfortable for people to just chill and not feel rushed to leave. It's a good feelin'. I like hosting stuff.

When they left, I tossed a chicken breast and a potato into the oven at 350 for an hour and, with one pan, had completely made dinner. I finished off the Godfather trilogy while carving up more branches.

By around midnight, I was done with the Godfather. I kicked-off the Sopranos marathon, a gung-ho tradition that involves playing every season's episodes back-to-back until I'm done. I had enough branches to make the headboard (and then some) so I laid it all out on the floor. I taped it with masking tape to hold things in place while I stared at it, squinting and changing angles as I tend to do when deciding if something looks right Yep, this would be perfect. I set some countersink holes and started drilling, then screwed in the posts.

I had some trimming to do, but saved it for this morning, because no one likes the asshole who uses a reciprocating saw at 3am.

This morning, I trimmed up the parts and set the headboard up by my bed. I can tell right away that it'll look great. I'm going to bring the mattresses up another 4-5 inches to give some height to the bed (and to give me more storage beneath the bed). Then, it'll still be a bit tall, so I'll lop some inches off the bottom to drop the whole thing down a bit.

I came back, had lunch, and got started right away with the remainder of the wood that was laying around. I had enough to make a footboard, so I did everything that worked for me last night, and sure enough, BAM! I had a completed set.

The only thing left is to sand/prime/paint it all, so after dinner, I went shopping for some paint. I came home and started with the footer. It's outside now, hanging with telephone cords. I didn't want to give up my twine, since I'm going to use that to "lash" the frame (to make it look more authentic), and since I have a ton of phone cords laying around, I knew it' be perfect to hang from the hooks on the ceiling of the deck. They're sturdy, flexible, and can be trusted not to fall with the wind. The last thing I sprayed (my shelf) was light enough to hang with dental floss. I needed something a bit sturdier this time though. Phone cords are perfect!

So that about brings us up to speed. Speaking of that, I'm now up to speed with my workout blog, so if you've been reading it thinking I've been lazy, think again. I just haven't been writing in too much. I'm at 5 miles now when I run, so I think I'm on pretty good pace for the half-marathon in May.