Getting Crafty Again

The weather outside is getting cooler and the urge to nest is growing. We recently splurged on a new flatscreen TV, which necessitated moving all the living room furniture around and re-purposing a shelf unit to hold the TV. One of the attractive features of a flatscreen TV is the clean, streamlined look, which was completely spoiled by the tangled mess of cords we had to hook up to it.

I really like this shelf unit we got from IKEA a while ago, but the see-through shelves did nothing to disguise all those ugly cords, so it was time to get crafty!

We already have a red/black Poang chair (also from IKEA), which has bright red cushions, I wanted a little more red in the room, but didn't want to clash with the existing colors. This book by Alice Hoffman had the perfect combo of colors, so off we went to the fabric store with one of the chair cushions, the book and a little pumpkin for inspiration.

After much deliberation and consultation with an exceedingly patient Craig (who usually totally hates the fabric store), we found several suitable fabrics in the desired colors from JoAnns (I was a little skeptical, as JoAnns doesn't always have the best selection of "upholstery fabric" on hand). Onward we went to Home Depot, where a super friendly clerk helped us select and cut to size a 1/4" piece of plywood to the dimensions of the shelf unit.

Once again, Craig was a trooper and helped me layout the locations of all the shelves on the back plane. We also cut a couple of holes for the cords to poke through from the components to the back. The next step was using spray adhesive to adhere the fabric to the back plane in an alternating pattern of yellow, orange and red.

The spray adhesive seemed a little weak to hold everything together long term, so I used the glue gun to adhere strips of black ribbon to all the areas where the fabric joined. This also has the additional benefit of camouflaging minor misalignment of the fabric edges where they line up with the shelf edges.

Attaching the back plane to the shelf was easy as pie with a staple gun and VOILA, no more ugly cords to detract from the clean lines of the flatscreen.

I'm back from the Land of PMP

whew, well it's been awhile since I updated the blog. I took an extended break from pretty much everything while taking preparation courses and self study to prepare for taking the Project Management Professional (PMP) exam. This has been on my to do list since last November, so I finally got my rear end in gear:

• signed up for a couple on-line preparation courses from Solano Community College
• completed prep courses 1 & 2 simultaneously (nothing like a little procrastination to make you work extra hard at the last minute) on November 6th
• took the exam on the last possible day permissible, November 7th
• and passed, yay!

I learned some interesting project management techniques, including new ways to do financial analysis of alternative investments. The professional certification makes a nice addition to the resume and I actually asked to be assigned to a project at work, and got a big one! So, now I can put all my shiny new tools and techniques to good use.

Now, it relaxation & rejuvenation time. Craig took me out for a very nice, classic American, celebration meal of champagne, steak and lobster. On Sunday, we took a nice little walkabout at the Nimbus fish hatchery, it was pretty quiet as the salmon run hasn't started quite yet. We did see lots of big salmon in the river and quite a few were actually "knocking" at the gate to the fish ladder. We got some great photos and video of the scenery and fish. It's kind of hard to tell from the video, but the adult salmon are HUGE, about 3 feet long and 40 pounds of muscular fish. The trout in the raceways are 8-12 inches long.