Giant Jenga

Hi! Hope you had a wonderful Christmas! I'm in the process of sorting through millions hundreds of pictures to find the ones I want to post and remember most. But I wanted to stop in now to show you this little hand-made gift of ours that turned out awesome.

We made my father-in-law a Giant Jenga set. And by "we" made it, I really mean I had the great idea and Marsh did most of the work. Sorry, honey. But, seriously, it was pretty easy and works great! It is the perfect gift for that man in your family that doesn't need anything, doesn't want anything, and doesn't need another tie (or is a Cowboy like mine and doesn't wear ties at all).

Here's how we did it:

1. CUT YOUR BLOCKS. First, I bought three of the longest 2 X 4's available at our Home Depot. Then, I had a guy there cut them into 10.5 inch segments. They were long enough to get 18 blocks out of each of the three original pieces, which made for 54 blocks in all. He was SO NICE and didn't even charge for the cutting. I think the lumber only ended up costing $27 in all! Here's what they looked like when I brought them home from the store and stacked them up in the garage:

2. SAND YOUR BLOCKS. Here's where Marshall was really hating me at first. He sat there with our orbital sander between his knees for hours sanding each of the 54 blocks. Janson, Laney and I kept him company, though, and took some pictures, of course. He finally got in a rhythm and got it done quicker than we originally thought it would take. He lightly sanded each of the 6 faces of the block and then heavily sanded the edges and corners. You want to be able to run your hand over the block without getting splinters. I had read online that we would need to sand them first with 80 grit paper AND THEN with 220 grit to make them even smoother. But we only had time to do them once with the 80 grit paper and it was fine. Plus, they will get smoother as the game is played over and over.

And that's it! After that, we just put them in a large Rubbermaid bin and stuck a tacky little sticky bow on top of it. I think Papa D (my father-in-law) was kind of confused when we first gave it to him, but when all the kids went to sleep and we were able to go outside and play it, he LOVED it. Check out how there's only one block left on the bottom row in this game we played. Hold your breath!