“I built my son a full size bed loft with a desk underneath”
How I did it: I built the whole thing out of lumber from a local store using a circular saw, a drill and a socket wrench. I made my own plans and measurements based on a picture I found online that I liked and the exact size of my son’s mattress.
Lessons & tips: Buy a few extra pieces of wood and more screws. You’ll need them.
Resources: Sorry about the blurry camera phone picture(s). It’s what I have available at the moment.
It took me 2 days.
It made me like an amateur 
Other pictures:
Henry sanding his loft bed for me:
We have a closet where we are keeping some of our canned goods. There was a lot of wasted space on the left and right sides, so I am building shelves to completely utilize this area. I finished one today. Ten shelves, ten inches deep, can now hold about 120 jars of food. The height spacing of the shelves was designed with quart and pint jars in mind. The other side will get a twin cabinet tomorrow.
EDIT: I decided to photoshop together two of the pictures I took to create a composite that shows the whole thing.
Shown at left are sweet pickle slices, dill slices, dill spears, beets, pizza sauce, pasta sauce, tomatoes, salsa, sauerkraut, ketchup, venison and peaches.
The other side will have asparagus, corn, applesauce, stock, soups and more tomato products.
TRIVIA: Did you know that “1 inch” boards are exactly three-quarters of that after they are finished?
Whatever happened to the pole bean teepee, you ask?
The pole bean teepee did not “fill out” the way I had hoped it would. In hindsight, I would say that I was too rushed to put it up and I didn’t prepare the seed bed well enough. I did nothing more than strip off a 4 inch wide swath of sod, place seeds in the trench and then cover them with bagged compost. The grass and weeds were the victors of this fight for life. Some beans grew, but they definitely did not thrive.
I think I’ll try it again next year. Help me remember. 
Well, I’ve been too busy to post!
I have canned salsa for 3 nights, pickles for 3 nights, fruit jam for 3 nights, ketchup for 1 night, sauerkraut for 1 night (plus 1 night to put it in the crock and nightly checks for 10 days), tomatoes for 1 night (so far), pizza sauce for 1 night, and . . .
We have been camping with good friends (completely sans rectangles, so no pictures), tending the garden and practicing for this weekend’s upcoming Amateur Chef competition!
I do have a few pictures of this and that, taken over the course of the last month. They’ll be posted eventually, but for now . . .
There is a bushel of peaches in my kitchen and I still haven’t saved seeds from any of my tomatoes. 
(I do realize that this is probably the crappiest picture online that purports to show Japanese Beetles. Again, it was taken with my cell phone.)
My community garden’s sweet corn is completely infested with these largish beetles. The beetles are covering the corn’s tassels and feeding on the pollen. When that’s gone, they’ll apparently begin eating the silk and quite possibly interfere with proper pollination.
Plus, it’s disgusting to have dozens and dozens of big beetles on my corn. I guess I’m going to get a container of soapy water and knock as many as I can off into their deathtrap tomorrow at lunch. Wish me luck!
…is so easy a caveman could do it.
Actually it usually just DOES itself. If left unattended, strawberry plants will send off runners which will root near the parent plant and become self sufficient, removable, separate strawberry plants.
However, we are planning on moving our strawberries this fall to a different place in the yard, so I’m going to try to keep things orderly in the strawberry bed until then.
I don’t see any reason to waste perfectly good potential plants, so instead of cutting off the runners, I’m rooting them in containers.
Rooting strawberry runners in a pot
The sticks are just helping to hold the vine in place until the roots grow.
Strawberry propagation. Ugg.
Trellises, two or three weeks ago
I built these interesting, semi-obelisk tomato trellises this year to try to give the tomato plants more head room at the top versus last year’s teepee design. I’ll probably change them next year to give them a slightly wider footprint.
Tomato Trellis, this week
My lovely wife mashing strawberries
We got the last 5 quarts of strawberries at a local farm and canned up some lovely sweet treats for the next year (or two, just don’t tell the authorities).
Strawberry Jam. 6 half-pints and 4 mini-jars.
Strawberry Syrup. 8 four-ounce jars plus leftover.
Yum, yum, yum!
It should go without saying, but in case you’re new here… These canned goods were made from fine, sweet, local (less than 5 miles away), organic strawberries. The jam was made with berries, sugar and store-bought pectin.
I would have liked to keep corn out of the strawberry syrup, but the recipe called for both white sugar and corn syrup. We were in a midnight rush (literally) to use the berries before they spoiled, so we didn’t have time to find a different recipe or suitable substitution. I did have to watch out which BRAND of corn syrup I bought, as the cheaper store brands contained HFCS and a well known name brand did not.
Oh yeah, I almost forgot to mention… I also canned Rhubarb-Strawberry Jam a few weeks ago. That tastes awesome too!
Brassica Beds (and a couple other cold crops)
The spring broccoli is played out and it’s time to reuse much of this space in my garden. All of the Broccoli is going to be uprooted and composted this week if the ground dries out a bit. After the broccoli makes me a main flower head and a few side shoots I reuse the space for Kentucky Wonder bush beans.
The cabbage gets to stay for a while
The cabbages are growing very well with minimal bug damage so far. I guess it has been too wet for white butterflies to come around. They are going to stay until I have enough to start a crock of sauerkraut.
Up next... Green Beans!
So I’ll get another bed of green beans started as soon as the ground will allow. I love green beans and they are so easy in my climate / backyard.
I need to figure out when to start my fall broccoli seedlings. First frost comes October 14th, on average.
