Building a Man Cave

A few weeks ago, I made a huge change in our home.  I turned my photo studio into my husband's man-cave! After a year of having my own home-studio, I realized I was wasting a lot of space in our home.  Having only 2 or so sessions per month inside my home (most clients seem to prefer on-location), and considering my entire studio is portable, the space wasn't as necessary as I had originally anticipated.  We were also expecting to put our house up for sale over the next few months...a portrait studio would have been a confusing space for potential buyers, though now I'm not so sure we'll be moving...welcome to the army life!  Anyways, with the hubs headed home soon, I wanted to do something really special for him.  So I took out the studio equipment and flipped the room to a man-cave/home theater.  I began by removing all my equipment and props, painting the walls a more neutral color, hung some photos of my Reds baseball team and other "manly" decor.  I purchased a leather couch and carried it into my home BY MYSELF!-Again, welcome to the Army (wife) life.  Next I purchased a projector, ceiling bracket, and screen.  I went to work for 2 days hanging and hooking everything up.  If you don't believe I did the work, my son so kindly snapped a photo of me hooking up the surround sound (shown below).  Because the basement floor is not level, I had to hang curtains around the screen and place a shelf below.  Basically, the screen was level, but the space surrounding it was uneven...it's a 30 year old basement floor, what do you expect? Anyhow, the hardest part has been hiding all the cords.  I drilled a hole in the wall and fed the cords into a closet where all the equipment (playstation, cable box, surround sound, etc) is being stored.  However, it still leaves about a foot and a half of visible cord going into the wall.  Currently, I have few ideas on camouflaging these cables, but surely I'll come up with something permanent soon.  Anyhow, the hubs was completely surprised and LOVED his new room.  We've spent about 75% of his in-home time in that room, playing video games and watching movies together.  The good news is, our living room upstairs is gathering dust.  So when I book a photo shoot, I'll just bring my equipment upstairs, it's about the same size room.  Thankfully, I still have my office, and NO I'm not turning it into his weight room anytime soon. ;)

Star Wars Movie Night I Guess...

So with the cut off date for overseas mail arriving within the next few weeks, I'm pressed for time to get these last 6 boxes out.  The way it's looking, I've got 6 boxes to send in a little over 2 weeks...yeah, that's crazy.  I'm probably going to press my luck and send them past the cut off date...it's no biggie, I'm not sending anything valuable anyhow.  With that in mind I was in a panic Monday night. Basically, if I wanted to get 2 out this week, I needed to get at least the first one out by Tuesday. Unfortunately, I was a bit unprepared this week...I didn't seem to have enough items for 1 box. I had half a Movie Night box filled and half of a Star Wars box filled.  So I figured, what the hey, I'll combine them...It's a Star Wars Movie night now I guess.  It cuts out one box and saved me from running to the store at 2 AM.  I didn't make cute cookies because I was up til 4 AM working on this box as it was.  However, I did make some yummy homemade snickerdoodles.  I'm fairly certain the guys prefer taste over cuteness anyhow.

 

This box contained 6 gift bags each filled with snicker-doodle cookies, a star wars pez dispenser,  a bag of popcorn, and star wars gummies.  I also tossed in some light sticks and a few other candies.  I sealed the popcorn goodie bags with star wars stickers.  Sadly, I didn't have a star wars movie to throw in so they could have a star wars movie night, but I'm sure they'll come up with something.

The Simpson's Box

My husband and I have this funny thing we do. Instead of carelessly tossing around "I love you", we actually have to put a little thought in creativity in our words of love to one another by saying "I love you more than..." For example, he might say "I love you more than you love to win arguments" or perhaps I might reply "I love you more than Opera loves to put photos of herself on her "O" magazine".  That's just our thing.  It avoids us saying "I love you" out of habit or impulse. Every time we say it, we have to think about it, therefore we know we mean it.  One night I told my husband, "I love you more than you love telling my dad about that time you out-fished him." Believe me when I tell you, that's a LOT of love and there was no way he could top that one.  Well my husband was in humor shock which resulted in his creativity coma.  Therefore his weakened reply was, "I love you more than Homer loves Donuts".  I giggled at how lame his comeback was.  So a few days later when I saw The Simpson's gummy snacks, there was no doubt that this was to be the next theme of his box.  I'm still mad that I forgot to write "I love you more than Homer loves donuts" in the bottom of his box :(  All well, hopefully he'll get the pun on his own.  Read on to the post that follows for further details.

Along Came a Spider...

As mentioned in my previous post...this week's care package theme is Spider-Man.  Obviously, this choice was made by our 3-year-old.  He loves Spider-Man, but he's not biased, he pretty much loves all superheroes equally.  But back to the point.  Spider-Man was a fairly easy choice for the box considering there's a lot of Spider-Man items out there to be found.  As noted in the previous post, I began with Spider-Man Cookies, then I added some Spider-Man candy, Spider-Man gummy snacks, a Spider-Man toy and tossed in a Spider-Man movie to finish it off.  I think the hubs will really enjoy this box.  In the future I think I'll do a Hulk box and a Wolverine box as well.

Operation Camo Care Package

Based upon yesterday's posting about the camo cookies, you should already know that today's box theme is all about the Army.  HOOAH! I packed this box with camo cookies, some camo cake jars (later posting), a military movie (Born on the 4th of July-also appropriate for the month), The Art of War (a common military book he's been requesting for a while now), and a couple other odds and ends. I recently found some camo paper that I had apparently bought 5 years ago this week.  I had bought it for our wedding for some reason but never used it.  Anyways, I finally put it to use.  I wrapped his jars of cookies and cakes in the paper (and also in bubble wrap for extra measures) and then covered the box in the paper. I topped the box off with the team of soldiers I hired to protect his cookies in transit.