Birthday prep...

Happy Birthday Garet!!!  Today Garet is 32!  WOW!  =)  I will be back to post about the day, but there was some work to make this a special day for Garet! Colin, Suzi and I made him a card... we had a lot of fun getting some pictures!  Here are some of the outtakes:

And here is what we ended up with:

And then we got real creative and made him a ping pong table!
But, wow, I didn't know what I was getting myself into!  Here's how it went down:
- the board I wanted was going to be 5x9, but the boards at the store only come in 4x8 - so unless I wanted to buy 2 and waste most of the wood... I was just going to have to have a slightly smaller board.
- after going to the store and coming home, I decided that I would just have a 4x8 foot board.
- I went back to the store to buy it, while Garet was home for lunch - and it took longer than I thought... they cut it in 2 pieces for me... so I made him late for one of his meetings!  oops!
- after a recommendation, I got a piano hinge to put the two boards together - this is going on our pool table, so I wanted to make it easy to get on and off.
- the screws that came with the hinge were going to be too long - they would have gone through the board.  So I decided to glue the hinge onto the boards (also a recommendation)
- the glue was a MESS!  it got everywhere!  but it worked =)
- I clamped down part of the hinge as it dried, but the rest of it I just put a heavy cardboard box on to keep weight on it while it dried.  Well, the cardboard box stuck to part of the glue as it was drying... so there is pieces of cardboard stuck to the edge of the hinge. -at least that part will be on the underside...
- I didn't think about how darn heavy this board was.  I mean, when it was in two pieces it was really hard for me to maneuver... now that it is one big board again, I would have probably hurt myself if I tried to carry it.  My plan was to have the board painted and perfect for G to see when he woke up on his birthday.  Well for me to paint it, I needed it outside.  There was no way I was going to be able to carry it outside, and get it on newspaper (or something) and paint it, and carry it back inside after it dried, by myself.  Without G seeing it. 
- So... I decided to give it to him unfinished, and paint it with his help =)
So, I was still super excited about it... just bummed that I couldn't finish it myself.  Oh, and I "hid" it in plain sight!  I can't believe G didn't see it!  It was propped up against the wall with a few empty, folded cardboard boxes (from the move) in front of it.  The color of the board is the same as the boxes, so it blended perfectly! 

I will post a picture of the table in my next post! 
Happy Birthday to my sweet, wonderful, perfect husband, and Colin's amazing daddy!  WE LOVE YOU!