{"id":2824,"date":"2011-12-21T04:41:21","date_gmt":"2011-12-21T10:41:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thelogbook.com\/earl\/?p=2824"},"modified":"2011-12-21T04:41:21","modified_gmt":"2011-12-21T10:41:21","slug":"building-a-mystery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thelogbook.com\/earl\/2011\/12\/21\/building-a-mystery\/","title":{"rendered":"Building a mystery"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A few more photos of the object described in the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thelogbook.com\/earl\/2011\/12\/20\/the-mystery-box\/\">previous post<\/a>&#8230; <!--more--><\/p>\n<p>&#8230;namely, Little E&#8217;s Christmas mystery box.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.thelogbook.com\/earl\/hizzouse\/q4-11\/questionable.jpg\" alt=\"Little E's mystery box\" \/><\/p>\n<p>The designs were created out of construction paper, rather than just cranking it all out of the printer &#8211; not least of which is because my color ink cartridge has had it and a replacement just isn&#8217;t in the budget at the moment, whereas a new stack of construction paper was a buck and change.  I cut out rectangles of various sizes that seemed to add up to the question mark, the border angles and the &#8220;bolts&#8221; in the corners, and then set about aligning these pieces without taping anything down:<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.thelogbook.com\/earl\/hizzouse\/q4-11\/mystified1.jpg\" alt=\"Little E's mystery box\" \/><\/p>\n<p>This allowed me to identify problem areas and cut out more bits of construction paper.  The whole thing was really &#8220;play it by ear&#8221; &#8211; there was no grid or guide to go by, just a gut thing.  I had some game stills on my monitor for reference.  After rearranging the bits a few times until I had all the pieces needed in the places needed, I started taping stuff down, starting with the drop shadow behind the question mark:<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.thelogbook.com\/earl\/hizzouse\/q4-11\/mystified2.jpg\" alt=\"Little E's mystery box\" \/><\/p>\n<p>I really should&#8217;ve caught the misalignment of the upper right hand &#8220;bolt&#8221; before sealing it all in, but there ya go.  Very, very hand-made.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.thelogbook.com\/earl\/hizzouse\/q4-11\/mystified3.jpg\" alt=\"Little E's mystery box\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Finally, I used strips of plastic packing tape to &#8220;seal&#8221; it down to the box lid (which was open, as I still wanted the box to, well, you know, <em>open<\/em>).<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.thelogbook.com\/earl\/hizzouse\/q4-11\/mystified4.jpg\" alt=\"Little E's mystery box\" \/><\/p>\n<p>If I wanted to get really, really technical about it, I could pick the finished project apart on so many levels.  The black corner shadow should&#8217;ve been flipped over so it was on the bottom and right sides instead of the bottom and left sides.  I should&#8217;ve caught that one bolt being &#8220;off&#8221; (I&#8217;m not sure why I didn&#8217;t &#8211; the phone seemed like it was ringing every ten minutes while I was doing this and I probably got distracted).  The biggie is that the &#8220;POW&#8221; side is upside-down from the question mark side!  Duh.<\/p>\n<p>The reality of it is that I had limited time to get this done, with other stuff vying for my attention (laundry, dishes, getting dinner started).  The end result probably isn&#8217;t much more sophisticated than something the little guy himself would put together&#8230; but you know, maybe that&#8217;s the way it should be.  It&#8217;s gonna be his box, after all.<\/p>\n<p>Copious pictures of him with his goodies will be taken on the big day.  If I&#8217;m to be honest, I&#8217;ve gotta say that I&#8217;m looking forward to this Christmas more than I&#8217;ve looked forward to any Christmas since my mother was alive.  Mainly because I can&#8217;t wait to see the look on his face.  I think that&#8217;s why my folks used to make my Christmases growing up the get-everything-you-ever-wanted blowouts that they did.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A few more photos of the object described in the previous post&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[61,30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2824","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-and-baby-makes-three","category-toybox"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelogbook.com\/earl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2824","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelogbook.com\/earl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelogbook.com\/earl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelogbook.com\/earl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelogbook.com\/earl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2824"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelogbook.com\/earl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2824\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelogbook.com\/earl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2824"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelogbook.com\/earl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2824"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelogbook.com\/earl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2824"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}