I love beer.  It has to be one of my favorite things on earth.  I’m not talking about grabbing a can of Coors or Labatts, that would be gross.  I’m talking about real beer.  After lots of thought, I’ve decided to try my hand at home brewing.  I didn’t want to jump right into buying one of those kits you see everywhere, if I’m going to do this, I’m going to do this shit out of it.  First off, I wanted to do some reading.  After visiting numerous forums, the best book to get is:

“How to Brew: Everything You Need To Know To Brew Beer Right The First Time” by John J. Palmer.

With almost 200 Amazon reviews, this book has an average rating of 5 stars (out of 5).  The book is loaded with information, pictures, recipes, and great tips.  It gave me a list of things I need and/or might want to consider getting depending on what my brewing plans were, making my decision to hold off on the generic “Home brew Kit” a good one. 
    I decided to start off slow, so this week I ordered my lab, and next paycheck I will start ordering the hops and other wonderful ingredients.  I am truly excited over this new venture.  Like Walter White, soon it will be time to cook.

    Last night was Royal Rumble night.  I have been a wrestling fan for as far back as I can remember, literally.  I have memories of being very young, and watching Hulk Hogan with my great grandmother who had a picture of him in her house.  She loved him, and although I have grown to hate Hulk Hogan, that event of watching it over where she lived set the stage for an obsession that has not gone away and most likely will never.  I don’t particularly like the WWE as much these days, but I still watch and pay attention.  TNA is my favorite promotion.  Enough of that, lets get into last night.

    Usually the wrestling PPV events at my house consist of my soon-to-be brother in-law Bill and our friend Doug.  Last night we had 14 people, it was pretty ridiculous but extremely awesome.  The fact that you can get 14 people in one room to watch wrestling brings a smile to my face.  Nicole read online, from one of the many blogs she reads, about setting up a baked potato bar.  That idea was genius.  We grabbed a big bag of baked potatoes, some chili, cheese, sour cream, butter, and bacon.

I whipped up a carrot cake last minute for a little desert!

    The potato bar ended up being a hit and our living room ended up being perfect for this large crowd. Unfortunately the Royal Rumble was straight up awful.  You don’t realize how incredibly bad the roster is in the WWE until they are all featured in one match.  This may have been one of the worst pay per views all year.
    Tomorrow I will be posting Nicole’s curtain project upstairs which ended up being a success.  A nice set of curtains can get expensive fast.  Nicole ordered some cool fabric online and made a great set of curtains in a few hours.

    Last week we I had taken a few days off to help Al in the kitchen.  We were going to get the floor finished.  This was my first experience putting in a hardwood floor (actually bamboo) and this was Al’s first time dealing with bamboo instead of hardwood.  Bamboo can be deceiving because you can get it pretty cheap by the case but the adhesive that is used to put it down is super expensive.  With me helping Al, I could lay down the glue and he could cut and lay down the boards.  Once we got passed some of the more complicated cuts, we had a system down that was proving to be quick and efficient.

    After about a week, I have completed the Charles Bronson shirt.  This is the newest addition of my action hero line of clothing.  The screen came out awesome and the shirt printed out just the way that I wanted it to.  This will be online soon in all of my shops in both Indigo blue and Natural.