My adventure with a circular saw

When we moved into our house 15 months ago, this is what our mailbox looked like...

Not really my style but cute. The reason the previous owner painted it was because it used to have an ISU wrapper around it. So this is MUCH better than an ISU themed mailbox. They actually gave the wrapper to the neighbors and I think it pulled off some of the paint when they took it off so she created this to fix it. So for the last 15 months here's the full view of mailboxes in front of our house...

A couple months after we moved in, Matt went to a home improvement store and bought this new mailbox. It's just a plain black replacement.

This box sat unopened in our garage for a year. I know, ridiculous. We bought it towards the end of the summer, then Matt got busy with work in the fall and then the snow came along. By the spring, I think Matt had completely forgotten this was still in the garage. Last month, after a long walk with Gable, I decided to take matters into my own hands. Gable was in his kennel napping and I thought it wouldn't take long to replace the mailbox. 

I didn't have any problems taking off the flower garden mailbox but the board I found underneath was a mess. 

 Yikes! Luckily Matt had some extra wood in the garage from a little building project of his own in his work truck. The only thing standing between me and my new mailbox was a circular saw. I needed to cut down the plywood so it would fit inside the mailbox. Then I could screw the plywood onto the stand and then screw the 

mailbox onto plywood. I was super nervous using the circular saw by myself but I'd used one before, it had just been awhile. I don't have any pictures of me using the saw because Matt was at work and there was no way I could stage that picture and feel safe about it. My first attempt was a little off... huge bummer. My wood was a half inch too long. My next cut was super tricky but I got it trimmed down with all my extremities in tact. yay! 

I added the tigerhawk decal after I got mailbox mounted. Doesn't it look fantastic! Way better than the ISU one next to it. Plus it's pretty fun to know that I replaced it myself... and got to use a circular saw. 

With Hawkeye football kicking off yesterday, I added a few other Hawkeye details earlier last week too. 

 I bought this at the craft fair at Huxley's PrairieFest last weekend. I carried this heavy cement piece home 7 blocks, with Gable also on a leash. I was pretty sure, he'd see something intriguing and take off, jerking the leash outta my hand and causing me to drop this. But luckily he didn't and we made it home in one piece.  Here's a close up..

And I also put out our GIANT flag that I bought last fall.  

Let the IOWA / ISU rivalry week begin!