Celebrating the Season

Robb and I went on a mission last night...  and Meri called.

"Hey... the sandpaper you got me was pretty cheap...  I got through all of it!"

Wha?????

That's when she said, "Look at my floor!"

AHHHHH!!!!  It's looking awesome!

Just some edges and under the fridge left!
She's doing great! And the floor looks it!  

So, back to our mission...  As you know I've been dieting.

"Yes!  I'd like two Nachos Navidads and two six pack and a pounds please!"
"and don't be stingy on the mild sauce packets."

And this is what was left after five people attacked it when we got home.

My diet starts again today.

Wednesday Wambles and Hobbies

After having this screen door to my office sitting in the garage for about 8+ years, I noticed it finally after pulling  a few bicycles off of it.  Hmm... It's bent a little.  

BUT I was determined to get it hung up last week.  My office has been warmer than usual because of the mini hot house out there and the garage has been nice and cool.  I might as well put up this door and let some of the cool air in without all the other things that lurk in the garage... (maybe mice, flies, etc)

That's when I noticed that it doesn't hang quite straight in the door frame.  Oh well.  Nothing else is quite right in my house either.  It matches.

I drilled the three holes required and got the door knob on a few days later.

HA!

done.

Eventually I'll add some padding around it to cover up any imperfections in the frame.

It's not a priority right now.

ALSO, JUST when Covid was hitting the states, I saw a bottle cutter as an ad on FB.  Cool!  "I" want to start a new hobby and make a bunch of glasses out of bottles!!!

So I ordered it.

Only THEN did it say it was coming from China.

uh oh.

Due to the "no-flights", it took the slow boat from China and finally arrived on Friday.

So I dug in and tried my hand at bottle cutting.

I failed miserably.  About as good as the instruction translation to English.

What the heck is a Botther?

I had to google how to do it and saw a video explaining bottle cutting.

But it still will take practice.

And lots of bottles to get a good one...

But just pouring boiling water, then ice cold water, then boiling again and POP!  It drops into the towel in the sink with no problem!  Except a few rough edges that even sanding won't help, but could cut a lip.  

I'll figure this out...

In the meanwhile, we're getting rid of Meri's old truck!!!  And it will be out of the garage today.  It might sit in our driveway for a while until my BIL gets it running, but eventually he'll drive it away.

YAY!  

I removed the personalized truck hood that Meri made and took it over to her house.  

It's gracing her patio.

We have to put the original hood back on but will wait until it's outside.

ALSO, Sonya's website is up and she's selling a book and blogging again!!!  Go check her out and give her some love.

sonyaannjames.com

Ok, that's it for today.  Have a glorious Wednesday!

Reopening Iowa

I think this is one of the first pics I have of the inside of Meri's house, back in August.

Don't you love those glamorous curtains?  I still do.

Well, today, she and I finished up all the little projects that she'd had her heart set on completing before the end of her "closed daycare" days.  Except the nap room. That was going to get a fresh coat of paint and new trim, but time got away from her and that will have to be a weekend project some day.

She calls her kitchen the banana room now, as the walls are yellow with brown trim and the carpet was replaced with black linoleum tiles.  The dining room has green walls and brown trim and the carpet was removed to reveal a hardwood floor, which she and I refinished a very dark, cherry black.  The living room walls are a white with a hint of red (not even pink) with brown trim.  The front 3 little rooms in the entry way are the same as the livingroom colors.

Today, we hung up the living room drapes again as we were putting it off because the curtain assembly needed reattachment to the ceiling after an unfortunate incident just before Covid hit.

Also today, Meri got Maddy on a DUO call and Maddy read us a book during a short break.

Wolfie the Bunny

GREAT story!!!  A bit on the edge of my seat and scared in a couple spots, but funny.

I wish I was still in kindergarten some days...

A few hours of general cleaning and paint tape removal later and Meri's vision is complete.

It's all lovely and everything looks like it belongs there now.

Sorry I don't have pics...  I am pooped.

There will be a few touch ups here and there to take care of, but she did good.

She would SO get a blue ribbon at the 4H fair and a certain shot at going to the State Fair with it if she was young enough.

 The important thing is that she's ready to reopen tomorrow for her usual kids.

WHEW!

She can start earning money again!

Zooming thru the week

Leon had school this morning and got to see ALL his friends!!!

It was a ZOOM call with his teacher and classmates. 

YIKES!  What chaos!  But every kid got to tell what they've been up to and they were so happy to see each other, even from a distance.

And only at the END of the call while everyone was calling out goodbyes to everyone else, did Leon remember what he wanted to tell his teacher.  No one could hear him...

His baby sister and brother had been born yesterday!

Yep - Leon's mom had twins yesterday!

Aren't they cute?  

What relationship are they to me?  Absolutely nothing.

But they are Leon's half-brother and half-sister, so I'm not sure what his family tree will look like.  Probably pretty wide.

Anyway, everyone is working from home today so I'm cloistered out in my office now and trying to get some work done.

Over the last week, I've made a bunch of face masks and sent some off to a sister and now making some for a neighbor and us.  Whatever is left over, I'm sure will get used up somewhere.  I wonder if the food pantry would want them..?...  don't know.

The yard was cleaned up on the warm day this week and is ready for Easter eggs to be hidden.  The lilacs are starting to bud so too late to trim them down.  I guess I COULD but they'd look really ugly this year...  

Maddy and Matthew pulled out some bricks in some landscaping work they've done and relaid them more evenly.  They inspired me and this summer, I plan to do that too with some of the bricks from our front patio.  If you lay a bowling ball on it, the ball would roll around like a drunken sailor, every which way, until it hit the driveway, then roll into the gutter.

Long story short, there is no level spot in my patio anymore.  I blame the prolific sage.

Meri put the polyurethane on her dining room floor a couple days ago and hopefully it's ready to start moving furniture in again soon.  

Isn't it pretty? She said it went on like honey...  

The only thing I can think of with a description like that is, "lick those fingers baby!  It'll be delish!"

She can't wait to get her house back in order!  AND she misses everyone.  We'll have her over for lunch on Easter and everyone will wear masks and gloves and NOT touch their faces! or hug.

Robb and I went to "small" church last night and Robb recorded two sermons by our pastor.  One for Maundy Thursday and one for the Tennebrae service for Good Friday.

In the past, my girls were told by their dad that if they could play for an entire church service successfully, then they could quit taking piano lessons.  One heard that Good Friday was no liturgy and only one hymn with about 24 verses.  Usually 3 verses after each section of the sermon and a light going out somewhere in the church, but for an abbreviated service, it was just one verse per section, but still lights going out too.

So that was the service of choice to get out of piano lessons.  They both mastered the song and quit sometime during their sophomore or junior year of high school.

Last night, with no organist, I offered to play it.  I practiced for 5 minutes solid and got it down with two hands, but only with the notes on the top staff, soprano(right hand) and alto(left hand).  No cords with one hand at all...  It would have sounded too choppy.  

and I would have screwed up more.

I'm sure a piano teacher would frown on my style, but it did the trick.  I had tiny lights stuck on the piano so I could still see the notes as the lights went down and as the tiny congregation sang, not daring to sing along myself or I'd lose my place and make horrible mistakes.  

As it stands I made a few mistakes anyway but Robb didn't notice and said it sounded good.

Whew!

I can quit piano lessons now!  Actually I haven't taken lessons since college.  and even then, it wasn't really lessons, but accompaniment for some singing lessons.  

But my mom would have been proud.

Ok, it's Thursday.  Off to do some creative programming and creative sewing during my breaks from the computer.  Have a good one and don't breathe on anyone!

My Tribe of ten or less

It's April 3rd already!  I didn't even pull a funny on you guys on April Fools day!

sigh...

It's been crazy around here.  When HASN'T it?!  But especially  now.  

Robb has an essential job and so do I.  But no one else in our household does nor Meri.

So Meri is using this time off from work to redo her house.  She (and I and Shub) (and one other person at first but has since been banished because... COVID...)

Over the last 2 weeks, we have worked our BUTTs off getting rooms painted, trim painted, paint pulled up from the dining room floor, same floor sanded, kitchen refloored with tile and some furniture moved out to Meri's rec room in the garage.

Under the dining room carpeting, Meri found a beautiful but badly damaged linoleum rug.  She did some research on it and apparently they went out of style in the 1950s.  It had paint splotched on it, staples from the carpet padding and normal wear and tear on it.  BUT still one piece, mostly.  

We rolled it up and moved it out to her rec room.  It'll be the floor covering under her couches out there.  perfect.  She had been talking about looking for carpeting for out there anyway.

Underneath was a hard wood floor that Meri was thrilled to find.  

I had remembered the paint stripper that my mom had found for the pews in the 80s.  That stuff was awesome!!!  You paint it on, wait less than 5 minutes and it's bubbling up and able to be wiped away down the bare wood.  I couldn't find anything that potent and asked a few of my sisters to see if they remembered it.  They only remembered that Mom probably got it from Diamond Vogel paint store.  We have one close by!  So I called them.  As soon as the young gal heard that it was a historical question from 1980, she handed it over to an old guy.  He wasn't there in the 80s either but knew of a paint stripper that had to be discontinued as of January 1st of this year due to health problems it was causing.  dang...  I was willing to risk my health that way...  

In the end, this paint stripper didn't work as fast and wasn't as strong, so my hands ached at the end of the two days it took to tackle the whole floor.

I'd like to find some of the old stripper on the black market somewhere to have just in case I want to refinish anything in the future. It was amazing!

Meri stained it two days ago and yesterday morning was concerned about some major streaks and the fact that it wasn't dark enough.  So I helped her stain again.

Since she's anxious about Covid, I've been wearing a face mask and latex gloves for the last two days when I've been over.  She is wanting to protect her little kiddies when she's able to get them back for her daycare, so we're being careful.  

Well, my latex gloves couldn't handle the floor and tore on a couple fingers.

So now two of my fingers look like both my mom's hands did when we refinished those pews.  I'll wear those two fingers with pride...

With any luck, Meri will be able to do the Polyurethane coats today and let it sit for 3 days untouched.  She's living in her req room, kitchen, bath and nap room, that also contains all the beautiful curtains of her house.   

She still has more painting to do to fill her time, so I'm hoping she uses her remaining week productively.  I'm going to stay away just in case.  But I hope she doesn't go nuts all alone.  I've got another pair of latex gloves if she does need me for anything.

Other than that, Leon found out recently that he won't be back to school in April.  Dang.  He's getting stir crazy in the house.  I had been taking him over to Meri's and he was having a great time under one of her trees and playing with sticks. But that's over with for the time being.

The weather had been wonderful the last couple days and if I hadn't been so busy with everything else, I SHOULD have been raking up the yard and getting it ready for an Easter egg hunt.  Maybe this weekend...  It's in the 30s today... Hopefully it'll be above 45 by the time we're able to.

Church has been weird.  Robb has been recording our pastor giving the lessons and sermons, then posting them on Youtube for the congregation to watch.  I've been attending with him and doing my bit of being a good Lutheran with social distancing and sitting in the back row.  It's usually just the two of us and our pastor's wife attending so it's easy to distance ourselves.

Palm Sunday and Holy week will be odd too...  

I can't wait until things are back to a normal of some sort.

I'm currently social distancing myself in my home office as working from the house makes me anxious.  I haven't sewn anything since the three facemasks and since they probably weren't suitable for hospital use, I'm using them myself when I go out.  If I have it, I don't want to be the spreader...

What a crazy world we're living in!

Blue Ribbon Hopeful

I spent some time at Meri's house yesterday.  With the daycare closed for 3 weeks, she was anxious to get her updating done.  She started in the kitchen.

She, Shub, Lindsay and myself took as much of the wallpaper off the lower walls as possible.  

There were 3 layers deep and the bottom layer must have been put on with Elmer's glue or painted on in the unique pattern that it was...  from the early 1900s...

We ended up sanding it down a bit, 

then put two coats of the yellow paint on it.

The first coat looked pretty ghastly, but the second one looked brilliant!

Meri has learned a lot out of this process AND the importance of why you should really be careful about the nail holes you put in a wall!  Plastering, sanding, taping, painting, criticisms, etc.

If she wrote this up for a 4H project right now, she'd go to State for sure!

Oh - don't worry about the kitchen carpeting!  This carpet will be torn out and replaced with the linoleum tiles.  It was pretty roached to begin with.  WHY carpet in a kitchen or bathroom???

This was my little corner of the kitchen.  SO many nooks and crannies!!!!  Yuck.

While we were waiting for the paint to dry, we stripped down the living room and took away the gorgeous drapes.  The public can look right in now!  But she's getting it ready for the next wave of painting.  It'll be a different color.  Ashen or something like that.

She'll be more cautious with the carpet in the living room.  We've got plastic tarps to use in there.

And back at home... 

Is it school yet?

A Chippin' Away

I cut out a top last night.  Can't show you right now, but it's the same fabric as these leggings.  I'm not even sure where the leggings are, but I can tell you right now, they won't be worn at the same time!  

Wouldn't THAT outfit make your eyes bleed??

Actually I think I gave the leggings to Jen... 

We can be kind of twins!

Get a load of the creativity of my daughter!!!

She redid the floor in her back entry way and the steps.  Isn't it beautiful!?

I'm inspired now to add a new project to my repertoire for the spring!  The dogs ripped up our linoleum in the laundry room and I've been dying for a way to get it looking nicer...  hmmm...  

Will I have time fitting that in with a wardrobe remix?

hmmm...

A chip off the ol' block, that one...

And for your entertainment, enjoy my grandson as he does the martial arts and dance of spring in our drive way...

Not sure who's block he chipped off from, but wow!  He certainly is.

Perculatin' over here

I worked from Panera Bread yesterday morning for a while until I picked up Ryan and attended one of the last of Meri's choir performances of her senior year.  Here are the songs they sang.

Meri's high notes in this one... WOW.

I loved it.  Afterwards she wanted to leave with us because she had plans for the afternoon.  So we signed her out and Ryan treated us to lunch at a fast food place that always reminds me of a Mexican Subway.  That kind of torilla, that kind of beans, rice, meat, salsas...  Pretty awesome!!

Got home and got swamped with work.  BUT I did get some stuff done around the house in the last few days.  Minor things, but they needed to be done.

Mulching and spray painting that silly deck bench.  Meri will be gracing that during her grad party.

Fixing a few spindles on the deck.  Had I but known how easy it is!  Well, granted... it took 20 minutes per spindle, but I'm getting it figured out.  Not sure if I'll use the Flex Tape on some of the broken spindles or just replace them...  I guess it depends on if I can find my stash of the stuff.

I'm sure a professional handyman would scoff at my attempts.  Just don't look too closely...  And it will get painted.

 One of these spindles is not like the others...  Yeah, Lowes didn't have an exact match.  SO WHAT!?

Leon picked out the purply plant and I, of course, picked the ivy.

I love the stuff!  It reminds me of other ivys I've known and loved.  

I know the ivy will bush out a lot, but it's ME planting it.  It'll die by the end of the summer...

If it doesn't, I'll move the pot inside and let it die there.

So loads more to do in getting ready to partay, but I've got 16 days.  What could go wrong?

Obsessing over Steps

One of these things are not like the other, one of these things is NOT the same...

Are your Sesame street days coming back to haunt you?

Yeah... I screwed up on the top step and accidentally painted the top lip.  

Do I just run with it?

The Munsters Live Here

Curb appeal is all the rage.  

All our neighbors have apparently been watching the show pretty intently...  

I must not get that channel.

Meri is going to an amusement park with her friends today and they'll be picking her up in a little while.  She described her house as the creepy house with a broken fence...

Thanks dear.

It's not always been creepy looking.  There have been years when it was downright pretty! Even when it was supposed to be creepy...

So my mission this summer is to make our home have better curb appeal and fix things up.

Pulling weeds just isn't enough anymore.  I plan to cut down the lilac trees and let them start over.  I've done that before but I'll need more mulch...

Paint trim and I've started on that as of last night, but there are miles of it, so it could take a while...

Fix siding and roofing here or there, but that will take a professional or at least someone better at ladders than us.

Trim trees, edge sidewalks and a plethora of other tasks.

This is going to be full time job...

Roaring over here

So the parts for my dryer came on Tuesday!!  I spent most of the evening on it to replace both pieces of the thermostat, because I believed that's what was wrong. After several minutes of swearing in German, thank goodness for Hogan's Heros!!, I managed to finally figure out how to take the little clasps off the little slidy doo hickeys.  So SIMPLE!!!  now....  

Got the pieces replaced  and I plugged it back in.  Threw someone's swim trunks in and turned that puppy on!  Still... no heat!

Ok, SOMETHING is wrong with this thing!  I just spent $60 on two parts that weren't the problem and here I was determined NOT to spend $150 for a $2 part!!  

I still was determined even though they cost more than $2.

Started looking around on the internet for my brand of dryer and it's symptoms.  Found a video that showed how to make your dryer hot again, simply by cleaning it out!  Okey doke!

That turned into a comedy of errors.

In pulling off the cover of the fan and lint trap tunnel, I managed to drop a screw and the end of my ratchet tool behind the fan inside the dryer.  I'm going to need those!!!  So I tilted the dryer one way, careful not to twist the gas line too much.  They both rattled to the side.  Something fell of the top onto the floor.  No big.

I tilted it backwards a little.  Something fell into the lint trap hole around the barrel.  g.reat...  It was my screwdriver.  I might need that too!  I definitely need it NOT in the area around the barrel!!!  Not sure what else fell in...   Don't care.  I fished out the screwdriver and cleaned off the entire top of the dryer.  I will be wiser this time!

I managed to fish out the screw and the ratchet piece with some needle nosed pliers and in the process, bent the lower flap thing that the back cover connects to, so now the back won't go on... whatever...

The video that I found showed how to check the outside air vent for any clogs.  So I went out in the dark with only Leon's dinosaur flash light that he got for his birthday.  Because WHO knows where their flash lights are?  and why don't any of them work when you need them?!  

It roars. constantly...

I reached into the vent and started pulling out layers of junk.  Oh yuck...  If THIS isn't the cause of the problems, then I don't KNOW what!  After I cleaned that out with a long wire brush, I plugged the sucker back in and turned it on with the swim trunks again.  

No heat.

and I found that I'd cut my hand somehow because there was blood encrusted on my hand and pants leg...  wonderful.

After cleaning up, I went back to the internet.  SOMEONE must know what is wrong with this thing and with a dryer, there aren't a whole lot of pieces that can go bad!!!  Found it.  Use www.partselect.com next time you want to fix something!!!  You put in the model # and it will give you a list of the symptoms that could go wrong with this model and next to each piece, you get a number.  That number will tell you how this piece fixed this issue 54% of the time, for example.  How cool is that!!  

So for another $10 + cheap shipping, the part came Thursday.  YEAH!!!  I put it in last night and instantly those swim trunks heated up!!  So all the clothes hanging in my living room got a warm tumble last night to loosen them up and today I'm getting caught up on all the clothes that no one wants to see hanging for the world to see.  

I have a lot...

I am WO-MAN!!!  Hear me ROAR! 

A little spring in my step!

So after the undead lunch on Saturday, we headed to the Home & Garden show.  Several people had been giving away free tickets to it on Facebook that week and we decided too late to go, so all the freebies were gone... That is until we paid the $9 per ticket price, unrefundable, and then there were more free tickets available.  sigh.  The story of my life...

And one person decided not to go, so we were out $9 for their ticket!  What a wasteful life I live...  ANYWAY!  This is the last picture I took with my camera before we entered the building.  Leon was wrapped like a burrito and I did say, "You're as snug as a bug in a rug!" to him.  I guess I always do when I wrap him up.  

Meri has more photos but I haven't had a chance to get them off her phone yet.

Inside the HyVee Hall event center, it was SPRING!!!!  That was the whole reason I wanted to go.  Someplace where it's warm, flowers are in bloom, butterflies are fluttering about (there was a butterfly tent), and you can let your grandchildren play on playground equipment that costs more than the first years rent on your first apartment.  Ryan, Meri and Leon got tired of Robb and I telling them to walk to the side and let people past!  So they went off on their own.  Robb and I meandered.  At first, I think Robb thought we were just going to walk all the aisles to appease me, but he started getting into it too and actually TALKED to some vendors!!!  *gasp!*  He even told someone about our bathroom window!  He doesn't usually do that sort of thing.  

We both signed up for lots of things and with any luck, I'll win all new windows, a new garage door and a new water softener!  OH and new siding!  Meri made him sign up for a new truck for her.

It's been 3 days since it ended and the only calls I got so far were from the water softener guy wanting to know how long we wanted to be between water softeners.  So I guess we didn't win anything...

When I was kid, my family would go every single year to the BIG Home show in my home city.  My siblings would compete in the building of small model homes contest and my brother would win either first place or a great prize every time.  He's a contractor now...  after working in contruction for many years.  And tomorrow he's going to Istanbul... So you know...  Winning prizes takes you places!  

Those Home shows were awesome!  I may have only been 10 years old, but I signed up for everything!!!  I was determined to win a jacuzzi or swimming pool, or a new car!  Never did.  But I did come home with tons of freebies back then!  At least 3 or 4 yardsticks, several pens, globes, brochures.  

The freebies are few and far between these days.  Folks have gotten cheap!  I did get a couple pens and a 12 inch wooden ruler, but had to confess how badly we needed our living room painted to get it.  sigh.  The lies I tell...

But the $9 ticket was worth it to see how happy Leon was to play on that playground, waving his sucker in the air and squealing with joy when sitting on rocking chairs with his daddy in a gazebo.  Seeing Ryan and Meri trying out all the mattresses and checking out the settings.  Dipping your hand in a swimming pool. 

Since we didn't win any of the giveaways, I guess we'll just have to win the lottery...

We are so going again next year! 

Tell me if this is creepy...

The UPS guy just stopped by and dropped off a package for my husband. That's not the creepy part....

He mentioned that someone just took a picture of my house. A pickup had just stopped outside our house and took a picture. I came outside to see if I recognized the driver, as we live on a dead end street and they'd have to turn around. He drove back down the street slowly, but didn't wave or anything and I didn't get a good look at his face. Weird huh?
The UPS guy said that maybe it's an insurance man, so did Robb when I IMed him about it. Or maybe the county assessor.

When we moved into this house 11+ years ago, the previous owner was obsessed with it long after the sale. Every once in a while, we'd be having dinner at the dining room table and he would drive by slowly and look at the house. We thought it was a little strange... it would just be him after work. He never stopped, never came in to say hello, nothing... He was just having trouble letting go... We'd wave.

If it was him again this time, I'm sure he must think the Beverly Hillbillies live in his old beloved house...

Last weekend, I had scraped the loose paint off the picket fence out front and around the garage doors. The house looked like it had been through a hurricane full of sandpaper. Since then I've painted the garage door areas and only a bit of the front fence before the rain hit on Sunday night. It still looks somewhat terrible. Then all the junk on the porch from my brother-in-law's work replacing deck rails in the back. It will look better by party time in 1.7 weeks and counting.The picture above is our house a few years ago when we made a giant spider on top of the front porch thingy at Halloween.

But this is a little unnerving. What reasons could he have for taking pictures of my house? Perhaps to stick it in his blog???