30th Wedding Anniversary, New Power Tools and a Blog Series idea

 Last week (July 25th) was my wife and I's 30th Wedding Anniversary.  Thats a pretty big milestone, so we decided to splurge a little bit and spend a week at our favorite place in the Florida Keys - Little Palm Island.  We had a very nice little cabana and enjoyed ourselves immensely.  If you like to fish or just see wildlife, the Keys are an amazing place and every day we were either kayaking, fishing, snorkeling or spearfishing.  It really is a fantastic place.

 We also had a firepit that we enjoyed each night.  The suites do not have TV's and internet is very limited so it really forces you to unplug which is another plus.

 Here's my lovely bride - looking forward to the next 30 years

 The place has a few key deer, like this fellow named Trace who swim between the islands.  He's not very shy is he.

Mary Beth took most of the good pictures - we bought a few disposable cameras for snorkeling. I'll post those a bit later.  It was a wonderful week.

 Of course we returned to an overgrown garden

 with just a handful of tomatoes. cakes and peppers

Some of the tomatoes where a bit overripe so it was time to haul out the food mill and bring them down

 "Blood for the blood god"

   

Tomatoes sauce, which will become....

Red Gold!

One of the many blessing I have is my wife who knows what I like and what I need and manages to combine the two into really cool gifts.  This anniversary is no exception and see got me some really nice Festool power tools, like the TS-55 track saw pictured above.  Festool is a german company and they make the Mercedes Benz of power tools - both in terms of quality and pricing.  I also got a certificate to get a few more Festool items like their Domino DF-700 Joiner system.  Oh my, I'm in tool heaven.

People either love Festool (because they have them) or hate them (cause their super expensive).  I'm at that stage in life where I just don't care what others think and I can put these tools to good use.  Bring on my shop's Festool conversion!

and this brings my to my last point for the 5 of you who have waded though my ramblings above.  I'm thinking of doing a series of posts centered around basic to advanced woodworking skills for wargamers.  Essentially a series of how to articles that may range from:

- basic woodworking skills and shop safety tips

- cutting and beveling MDF for terrain pieces

- building dice trays

- building dice towers

- organizers for specific game systems

- display trays

- storage units

- terrain panels

- basic and high-feature gaming tables

I'll do a more specific post about what I'm thinking of doing but would love to hear any ideas from others on what they would like to see.