My birthday present...10 months early

In addition to my husband's job as a piano teacher, he also does handyman projects. And even though he does have that type of work to keep him busy this month, he still found time to make me another present. By our count, he's now up to my birthday for 2008, and my birthday is in November.

Let's see...Since last fall, he's painted the spare bedroom (which is also my sewing room and our exercise room), installed two ceiling fans, built me a wonderful new wall-mounted bookshelf, and made me a beautiful new oak quilt rack. And most recently, he made me a spice rack for the kitchen.

I ordered 32 four-ounce glass jars with lids (and some with sifters) from a online business called the Spice Barn (which provided great service and value), and he used leftover wood from another building project to make two rows of shelving for my spices. I made labels on our computer, and he helped with the labeling and transferring of all of my most-used seasonings.
The result is a beautiful, well-organized storage system that makes cooking even easier and more fun in my kitchen. And it also cleared out quite a bit of space in the nearby cupboards.

I had been over to a coworker's house for lunch before Christmas, and I had seen her impressive display of Penzey's spices on a lovely wooden rack...I can't really justify that amount of cost on our budget, but I did love the look of those well-organized spices, all in neat uniform jars. I think our overall cost for this project was under $50, including wood, fasteners, finish, and the spice jars...I feel very blessed.