While I’m taking my time with the bedroom refresh, I thought I’d share some family news.

I’d like to introduce you to a little competition my brother suggested around the holidays.

Mike’s ridiculously good at building things.  I'm more crafty, but can fudge my way through building something.  But, we’re not the only ones.  My family is also really handy! 

My brother has been woodworking recently, and thought with the crappy weather, it would be fun for all of us to have an excuse to build things.  And, of course that turned into a friendly competition between the family members.  His idea was everyone must make something out of pallet wood.  It’s free, easy to use, and readily available.

Meet the Players:

My older brother, Dan, is the mastermind behind the competition.  He lives with his fiancé, my soon-to-be sister-in-law, Kelly.  (They’re so cute in their engagement photos!)

My oldest brother, Matt, travels a lot for work, but has still decided to play along!

My parents, Brian and Jana, are retired so they might be the biggest threats since not only do they have a woodworking shop in their community, they also have a lot more free time than anyone else.  They’re also down in Florida so they don’t have to deal with the sub-zero temperatures we have up here either!  (Check out their shenanigans on my mom’s blog: A Real Retired Housewife of Florida)  

My sister, Michelle, and her fiancé Keith have decided to sit this round out, but hopefully they’ll pick up during the next round.  (Lots of weddings this year, mean lots of engagement photos!)

And, of course Mike and I.  We all have different last names, therefore - KDH Family.

The Rules:

1. Projects will be turned in bi-monthly, on the last day of the month.  First project to be submitted Feb 28th.
2. Each project must be structurally made of pallet wood.
3. Projects can have other materials added to them (metal, ceramic, glass, electronics, cloth, plastic, etc.) as long as it remains primarily made of pallet wood.
4. Projects can be finished in any way you want (stain, paint, veneer, upholstery, etc.)
5. Projects don't have to be complex to win. Simply gluing the wood together if you want is fine, they don't have to last forever. Obviously, everyone is not going to be at the same ability level, but while craftsmanship is important, we should focus more on creativity.
6. No teams! This is a competition for individual creativity. Although help with power tools is allowed.

Each person was tasked with coming up with 5 categories.  These would then be used to pick the rounds topic.  For example, I suggested:

• Tool (Useful item)
• Outdoors
• Textile
• Decorative
• Furniture

Dan is taking some programming classes so he used his new skills to create a program that randomly selects a topic from our combined lists.

The Topic:

This round’s topic is ‘The Office’.

As you can tell, that leaves it pretty open.  It can be something decorative or useful.  And, as many people use an office differently, it’s open to a lot of interpretation!

The plan is to submit our projects on February 28th and I’ll post them here for voting!  Each project will be anonymous, so that creativity is picked rather than the individual person.  There’s no prize, just bragging rights, but sometimes those are even better!  Maybe if we keep this going throughout the year, we’ll tally up the wins and losers have to buy the winner dinner.

Mike is about halfway done with his project and I just changed my idea completely, so I better get moving!