pictures, as promised.

Well, here they are; the pictures from Christmas. I have a few more in an actual camera instead of off my phone. Maybe I'll get those up later. The captions are BELOW the pictures, you know, in case you get confused.

Here's the 'forest' of trees. It is kind of hard to see the trees for the forest, but there are five trees there. One large one - about six feet, one medium one - five feet, two small ones - three feet, and one tiny one - about a foot. Mom insisted that we have an odd number of trees. She said it was more "organic" that way. Personally, I think her HGTV privileges should be revoked.

And now for Matt's present. And, yes. I am still quite nervous that he doesn't like it.

This is what Matt's present looked like before I started work on it. Again, it is kind of hard to tell, but it is a bench. This is only the top, the legs are really heavy and too short to let me work on it without getting a serious backache. Daddy did all my heavy-lifting and I wasn't about to look that gift horse in the mouth by insisting that he go ahead and put the legs on too. Sadly, I never took a picture of the finished product. But here was the beginning.





This is once I got the 'H' (you know, for 'Hoffmann' - his last name) cemented on - step 5 in a series of about one million. Before this, I had to go pick out and buy the tile and get the tile cement, grout, and nippers (those are just fancy tile-cutting scissors) - Kat helped me there via my mobile telecommunications device. Thank goodness for cell phones. Then I broke up the tile with a hammer, while wearing safety glasses of course. I'm a safety girl. But not exactly in a Julia Roberts, Pretty Woman kind of way. More like a Norm Abrams, This Old House kind of way. Next, I drew the outline of the 'H' and the fleur de lis (not pictured). Then I placed the tile and nipped the pieces until I got them they way I wanted. Wait. That is a lie. I nipped them until I settled for less than perfect. I'm a realist too. Then I cemented the 'H' and let it dry for 24 hours to make sure everything worked correctly.

Okay, 'H' down and FDLs cemented. As were those seemingly random background tiles, Trust me, there was nothing random about them. Marla helped me some with cementing in the background tiles. Then she said that she was going in to get some lunch and would be back. She never returned. Can't imagine why. I may have been cursing myself and my stupid ideas at this point. Well, my scratched and slightly bloody fingers were for sure. Did I mention that I did all of this outside? In the cold. Yeah, there may have been some silent cursing.

Okay, all the tiles were cemented and had to dry for 24 hours. I let them go a bit longer because it got below freezing that night. But I was happy, hard part over.

So there is undoubtedly a better way to do it, but I figured that covering the entire surface with grout was the best way to fill in all those little cracks and crevices. At one point, Daddy came out to look and started laughing. There was so much grout on it, he couldn't even see the design underneath. I may have had a bit of a heavy hand with the grout. The more the merrier right? Wrong. It took me forever to get the excess off.

This is, for the most part, the finished present. Mom and I went in and caulked and grouted the sides so that if some poor soul decided to sit on it, they wouldn't get cut. So just imagine concrete legs and a linen colored, leg protecting border and voila! Finito. Merry Christmas Matt.

That's all for now. I also have some pretty amazing pictures from New Orleans to post. Later though.