I Spy a Great Marriage
This collage was my parents’ 50th wedding anniversary card from us. It was fun gathering items that I thought represented them as individuals and as a couple. My dad was a photographer (camera), my mom loves to garden (gardening tools in the foreground), and they enjoy their after dinner coffee and conversation together (percolator). They enjoyed identifying the objects and their meanings. My favorite is the Fisher Price couple!
I am in my second week of celebrating the March National _____Days and using my March Popular Science Calendar and it is, as they say, keeping me off the streets! I have been posting on Instagram but thought it would be fun to share some behind the scenes pictures here too!
I’ll start with my attempt at Hydroponics. Let’s just say I am still purchasing basil at the grocery store.
The instructions in the Popular Mechanics magazine were very detailed and required a large (20 gallon) plastic tub with lid for the set up. I was thinking this may be pretty big for me so did a little research and found this terrific tutorial to attempt hydroponics on a smaller scale!
Here are my supplies: coffee can, air pump and tubing
I decided to make my own aerated cups (with my husband’s help and fancy dial caliper)
It is always fun to bring out the tools!
This seemed like it was going to work like a charm!
Placing the aerated container filled with rocks and basil plant
So much hope for success!!
The markings show better days….
Maybe I should try container gardening?!
A couple of years ago there was a Facebook challenge to post your favorite masterpiece- or maybe we were given a name of an artist and had to choose a painting of theirs for everyone to enjoy. Whatever it was, I liked the idea. I liked seeing artists and their famous works that I never knew of. I also liked seeing what my friends chose.
That was when I decided that one of my favorite paintings was the portrait of Juan de Pareja by Velazquez. The more I looked at it, the more I liked it. He looks proud and beautiful (and I also really like his collar.)
So I posted it!
Recently, I found a blank canvas that I had bought to do something with and decided to use it to make a mini masterpiece for my desk. This is how I did it:
The canvas was 4X4 so I had to crop the image as a square.
Then I printed it out with borders on 4×6 photo paper.
I cut the extra white space using my rotary trimmer so that the edges were crisp.
I used dots to adhere it. (I have used Mod Podge in the past, but I am thinking I may be able to use the canvas for another picture since the dots are removable.)
I bought a small easel from Michaels and there it is!
Can you get too much of a good thing?
Maybe.
I was thinking it may be time to give the mailbox hunt a rest.
That is, until I went to Florida and walked around a neighborhood in Key Largo.
A little back story: we were waiting for The African Queen tour boat to return to the dock when we decided to go for a short walk.
The boat used in the movie The African Queen.
Here are the mailboxes we saw all in one neighborhood!
If they throw a block party I want to be invited!
I always wanted to grow an avocado from the pit.
I remember my sister starting one when we were kids and thought it would be fun to start one myself someday.
I never thought of what I would do with it if, in fact, it actually grew. I never really thought about what an avocado actually grew on– a bush, a tree, a vine like a pumpkin? I didn’t grow up around them.
I guess I never thought I would actually successfully start an avocado and would figure it out once it happened.
So one day after eating a delicious avocado I thought- why not give it a go?
I remember my sister suspended the pit over some water with toothpicks so that it was partially submerged in water. I found some toothpicks and checked online which end should be submerged.
The water became cloudy, so I replenished it.
I waited. No roots or leaves after several weeks. (It may have been months since I stopped looking.)
I noticed it doing nothing one day and wondered if I should just give up. I was planting some herbs so thought I might as well just stick the pit in some dirt and see what happened.
It grew.
I put it outside its first summer, and that almost did it in until I read that it should be shaded. I put it under a tree.
It grew some more.
I brought it in for the winter and soon I needed to provide it some support with something long and steady. I used my large umbrella. It stood a little straighter. I never thought it would grow so large.
I am running out of room for it. But I love it.
I’ve read that it won’t bear fruit unless I have another one.
And that’s how my house became overrun with avocado bushes. I may need to build a shed!
I like to think of postcards as old fashioned texts. They are a fun way to use photos that otherwise get lost among the hundreds of digital photos on my computer.
The first time I sent a picture in the mail repurposed as a postcard, I wasn’t sure if that was something the postal service would be okay with. So I looked online and found instructions and decided to go for it.
USPS Postcard Template
I bought 10 postcard stamps so that I always have some on hand when a picture might be a good fit.
And they are cute too!
Here are some examples of picture postcards I have sent:
I thought I should include my “rules” for sending postcards, but I think I only have one- the postcard should not embarrass the receiver so I don’t send pictures of people (except superheroes.)
This one was sent to my entire family! Who doesn’t need a Captain America postcard?!!
Once again, it came time to switch out the poster in our front hallway.
I realize my next choice might be controversial, since people are intense about their sports allegiances, but here goes.
As I mentioned before, my husband and I are from the Detroit area. Being a Michigan fan hasn’t always been easy over the last decade, that is until Coach Harbaugh came on board. I didn’t follow football too closely until he was hired, but now I have gone all in! My next choice may seem extreme but it is a fun way to celebrate the football season.
Jim Harbaugh and Coach Schembechler circa 1986
I wasn’t sure I was ever going to take my Go Blue Poster down– but I did. It took a very special picture to replace Coach Harbaugh, and I don’t think I have ever seen a picture that made me laugh as consistently as my next choice does.
It was taken at the Jurassic Park Ride at Universal Studio Theme Park in Orlando. I have blurred out the faces as best as I could to protect the innocent but I hope you can tell how much fun it was!
The entryway in our home has been an important space for me. I like the idea of a welcoming entrance to our home. Our entrance isn’t grand – like most of our home its dimensions have inherent problems when trying to do something with it! Mostly I try to keep it picked up and the closet doors shut.
But one year I was decorating for Thanksgiving and came upon a turkey and pilgrim my children had made in elementary school. They were packed away with Thanksgiving decorations, but I never knew what to do with them!
I decided to put them in a poster frame and hang them in the foyer. They looked surprisingly good there.
In fact, it looked so good that the space looked bare to me when I took them down.
That’s when I decided to hang a poster-sized picture, which I would change out periodically to fit the season.
My first choice was a picture I took on our daily walk. It was a peaceful winter scene.
As much as I enjoyed the poster, when the snow was gone, it was time to move on and store it away until next winter with the hats and gloves!
I finally had all the materials I needed: my old door and two amazing sawhorses.
Unfortunately, the sawhorses were just a bit too tall to be the right height for a desk. Since sawhorses are on an angle, cutting them wasn’t as easy as I originally thought it would be. I mentioned earlier that I married an engineer. My husband was enlisted.
You know it’s serious when you break out the calculator!
Next—time to use some elbow grease! We washed and sanded and removed the paint from the door.
It was surprisingly stubborn, but finally the wood grain could be seen. We decided to stain the legs ebony and the desk top natural.
Three coats of polyurethane later, and we were ready to construct the desk.
We used angle irons to fix the door to the sawhorses. We were lucky that the door we found fit perfectly and was easy to attach—I was right to be so particular!
We moved the desk into our office, where I use it every day. It is a fun and functional addition to our home!
(I cleaned it off for this photo.)
As I have discussed in my previous posts, I was on a mission to find the owner of a pair of sawhorses, and I had put my daughter on the case. Since I still don’t know how she actually found out the guy’s name, I asked her to explain it herself. Here is what she said:
Daughter here.
I’m sad to say that tracking down the owner of the erstwhile Weed Shop was not my first foray into internet sleuthing. First I tried to do a reverse address search, but I didn’t have any luck.
Then I remembered that property tax information is open to the public, so I searched the records online to find out who the owners of the property were. From there, it was a quick Google search to track down the phone number.
All told, it took me about a half hour to track down that name, and in the process I discovered that I was maybe a little too good at internet stalking.
Me again.
I had a name and a phone number, now the ball was in my court. I wondered how to start the conversation with him.
“I was trespassing on your property…”
“You don’t know me…”
“I really love your sawhorses that I saw while I was on your property– deep into your property.”
What I imagined his reaction to these introductions would be.
Well, I’m not sure how I started, but it ended with the owner suggesting that I call her husband about it, and he wasn’t home. She suggested that I call back when he was home. The ball was moved forward.
I called him when she suggested, and he was agreeable! We set up a meeting time for the upcoming Saturday since he was planning on being there working on restoring the house on the property. My husband agreed to join me.
My last hurdle to jump was the price. “How much would you like for 2 of them?” I asked.
He said, “How much were you thinking to pay?”
I threw out a number. “How about $10.00.”
“How about $5.OO?” he said.
I had never been negotiated down before. I really liked this guy and his sawhorses! I hoped they would be as nice as I remembered them! (They were.)
It just goes to show that you never know what the day may bring, and sometimes people can really surprise you in a good way!
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