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Cupcake Tower, part 1
Building a cupcake tower has been a job that’s easy and relatively quick if you have the right tools, and almost impossible if you don’t. Detailed below is the woodworking part of the project; we haven't yet covered it with cloth to make it pretty, but I will write part 2 once it's finished. Lauren and I shared the work pretty evenly--we fought over who got to do what on the first layer, and then we split up the remaining boxes and each did the whole process.
Lowe’s, where we bought our lumber, helped an awful lot: we bought two 4’x8’ sheets of ½-inch OSB. OSB, if you’re not familiar with it, is essentially the modern version of plywood, and it's fairly inexpensive (I'll go through the entire cost of the project in part 2). They will do rough cuts of the wood right there for you (I believe Home Despot Depot will do the same)—the sign there claims that the first two cuts are free, with additional ones costing a quarter, but nothing was said by either the guy who cut it or the woman at the checkout counter, even though our 4’x8’ sheets have very obviously been cut into 18 pieces.
I did a fair bit of planning to figure out how to most easily and efficiently make the boards we needed. Our plan was to make four square levels, each with a 5" ledge for the cupcakes. We decided that 38" on the bottom would fit well on our 60" round table, and 7" per level seemed good. I almost bumped it up to 8 to make more efficient use of the wood, but I figured 7" would give us a better margin for error with the cuts.
For the sides of the first level, we had 4 boards that were 38" x 7". Because of the way we did our joints, the top of each "box" needed an extra half inch (38 ½-inch square). The next layer used 28" side boards and a 28 ½-inch square. You can shave 10" off each box and figure out the other two.
The guy at Lowe’s did a large percentage of the work, cutting the three largest box-tops and all the sides for the largest box. For the other three, we got long 7-inch-wide boards that we could finish cutting (the saw he had made great long, straight cuts that were fairly accurate, but it just couldn’t handle the boards as they got smaller).
We cut 2x4s lengthwise and then cut them into lengths just under 7", which we used to join and reinforce the corners of the boxes. We were led ever-so-slightly astray by the woman working in the nail aisle; we were looking for thin nails, expecting that we might need to put nails into the half-inch sides of the OSB, and she thought paneling nails would fit the bill. We made them work, but they weren’t really the nails for the job—even OSB was hard enough that the nails bent very easily. Fortunately, the longer side of the split 2x4s could accommodate some of the larger nails we had, and I used those as often as I can. Even with the frustrating nails, the job of assembling these boxes was relatively quick and easy.
If you’re reading this because you want to make a cupcake stand yourself, let me offer a few tips. Make sure that you attach the side boards to the corner reinforcing pieces through at least two points—otherwise the corner pieces will move on you. Two points was adequate and three would have made it even more stable. We assembled the boxes by first attaching one of the 2x4 pieces to one end of each of the side boards, careful to do the same end on each board. Also, you’ll want the 2x4 piece to be flush with the edge of the board on one side, which should be consistent with each board. Then you can "hang" one board by its corner piece off the edge of a work bench while nailing another board to the first board’s corner piece.
Here's a picture of Lauren with the cupcake tower to give you an idea of the scale of the tower when finished. 
Here's a detailed shot of the corners--the side with the blue edge was the one I nailed it to initially, then the other side overlapped when attaching it.
I said at the beginning of this entry that this was a job that was easy with the right tools and almost impossible without them. It started off being the latter for us. My father used to have an impressive workshop, with just about every tool you could want. Since his death, however, Mom sold or gave away most of his tools and rust claimed the rest. Our choice of tools amounted to a handsaw that was not only rusty but had blades too fine for this work or a circular saw that, lacking a bench and guides of some sort, was almost impossible to cut straight with. We went begging to several neighbors, all of whom either had the same old rusty tool problem we did or weren’t home to hear our entreaties. Finally, mom called the parents of one of my best friends from high school, and they had tools we could borrow. Lauren and I drove the mile or so to their house and saw there in the yard my old friend, his wife, and their children. I’d forgotten that they’re living temporarily in the little house on the property where his grandfather had lived. We ended up talking and talking and talking before the conversation got properly oriented toward tools. While they could offer me the handsaw I’d asked for, they could also do me one better: bring the boards over and use their woodshop. The project had suddenly become easy, as a radial saw zipped right through with perfect accuracy the cuts we needed.
Ultimately, I was glad we didn’t still have all my father’s tools—not only were these tools a little better than what my father had had, but we wouldn’t have gotten to spend time with this old friend in such a pleasant, sociable manner, and now we’ve exchanged e-mail addresses, so perhaps we’ll stay in touch.