Welcome to my stuff part deux

To those who have tuned in for another exciting episode of Welcome to My Stuff™ I'm glad you thought enough of the first installation to return. To those who checked out the first one, thought it sucked and inadvertently came back not realizing this is the day where I write about my stuff, I'm sorry. I'm not promising this will be any better than last week. To those who check my blog on a regular basis and would have double clicked me regardless of what I was raving about, I'm glad you're here too. If this is your first time on cocktailswithkevin.com, this is the day when I write about my stuff, such that it is. Enjoy.

Today's stuff sample comes from the bookshelves in our bedroom. These are bookshelves I built myself I might add and fitted them into an existing inlay in our bedroom wall. Hold off on singing my praises though because I'm certainly no Bob Vill. Standing eight feet tall and five feet wide these bookshelves are basically a crude attempt at carpentry by yours truly, the first and only attempt at woodworking I've really ever made. The center beam is made up of three 2X4's and fasteners secure seven rows of equally spaced shelves. Well, for the most part they're evenly spaced. One of the fasteners securing the upper-right shelf broke so the top shelf now just rests on the books of the shelf beneath it.

I know. It's bootleg.

While the bookshelves were my crude attempt at carpentry, the stuffed animal on the right is my crude attempt at stitchery. His name in case you were wondering is Little Piggy, and he was modeled after a character of the same name in a book entitled Benny's Had Enough by Barbro Lindgren, Olof Landstrom, and Elisabeth Kallick Dyssegaard. Well, actually the tri-named Elisabeth was simply the translator who transcribed the book into English from it's original Swedish. The first two people are the real authors.

My wife and I loved the story and so as a Christmas gift I decided to try my hand at fastening a homemade Little Piggy out of some cloth and cotton batting. I'm clueless as to how to work a sewing machine, but Wal-Mart sold a handheld job for under $20, so I figured out how to use that and I managed to cut out my pieces and stitch the thing together in an afternoon. Normally I don't think people are really big on receiving homemade gifts, but my wife was teary-eyed when she pulled it out of her stocking. Gotta love those Swedes for coming up with such a great story and helping me come up with a unique gift idea.

The little demon spawn in the picture next to Little Piggy is me some 30 years ago. Ten years after that picture was taken I would begin trying numerous times to duplicate that toddler blonde hair color but each time would be to no avail. I've also never since looked so good in a Winnie the Pooh turtleneck.

Other photos on the shelf include my wife and I on one of our European sojourns and my cat Ambrose. The cat by the way was also named after a character in a children's book, Solomon the Rusty Nail, by William Steig. If you've got kids and you've never read them a William Steig book, you owe it to your kids to do so. The photo that's blocked out by the camera flash's reflection is of my family blowing bubbles at my sister and her then-new husband shortly after their wedding ceremony. Were you better able to see the photo, you'd see one of my last attempts at trying to capture that aforementioned toddler blonde hair color. A bad attempt, I might add.

I gotta warn you that I'm already having difficulty trying to figure out what stuff merits mention in future editions of Welcome to My Stuff™. I wouldn't have thought this would be so challenging. Next week don't be surprised if you see images of my sock drawer. Also note that I had planned to make this a regular Monday thing.

Told you I wasn't good at long-term commitment with this sort of thing.

It's not you. It's me.

No, really.