As you may know, I've been off work for the last week, it's been fabulous thanks for asking and I think that 30 may be a prime age to retire. So anywho, I'm not sure if anyone else does this, but when I take a vacation, and I don't actually go anywhere, my sleeping habits go cooky. I stay up too late, sleep in, take a mid morning nap, what the hell, a mid afternoon nap.... So now I'm faced with actually having to go back to work and I'm going to have to get up at 6 am. Actually, hubby is making me sit out in front of his office with some chairs tomorrow, so it'll be a good practice run (then I can come home and take a nap, right?). But I have to actually get up early and shower and eat and leave the house tomorrow, something I haven't done in that order all week. I'm thinking lunesta and I may be sleeping together tonight, don't tell hubby!
Hubby and I just got done planing about 120' of cedar boards. Hard work, quite rewarding though. Board goes in ugly, comes out very pretty. Produces an awful lot of cedar shavings though. So as we're watching Mt. Cedar pile up at John's feet, we're both thinking: gosh, what a waste! What can we do with this? I would make pillows for my doggies, but Daisy would chew them to shreds and then I'd be cleaning cedar shavings from my house. You know who I bet would appreciate some cedar pillows though? My favorite cause ever, the Humane Society! So I'm thinking, I'll bust out the old sewing machine which has a new home in my dining room and the next time the Knit Geek and I go to the goodwill, I'll get a couple old sheets, or pillowcases if they have them and try to hook up some homeless doggies with a nice smelling bed to sleep on. Think it'll be appreciated?
I haven't forgotten that I've been tagged Karen, you know I'm bad at those things, I'll get right on it ;o)
I didn't realize there would be such excitement over the new chair my little cheeze-nips! Now I'm scared I'm going to disappoint because it's just so darn simple. Let me set the stage a little first. Imagine you go to the beach, and what do you want to do? Lay in the sand and get some sun... not real comfortable to read though, so you kinda want to sit up, but part of the beach experience is getting sand in your buttcrack, right? So, imagine this instead of being in my backyard (yes that is a pile of dog dookie behind it thanksfornoticing) planted in the sand under an umbrella and you with your reading material of choice... is different, no?
So last night, hubby and I watched The Benchwarmers, inspirational movie, I know. So afterwards we were outside with the doggies and we had a little conversation I'd like to share, it went like this:
Hubby: We need to come up with a fresh design for a piece of furniture that represents the Chesapeake bay, something nobody has ever seen before.
Me: *looks around at what we've built* Why don't you -------? (it'll be a surprise for later)
H: *looks around at the furniture, looks back at me slack-jawed*
M: I know, it's too simple.... forget it...
H: *still slack-jawed*
M: What?
H: It's fucking genius! I'm going to build that right now!
M: It's 11 pm, you're serious....
H: No, this is going to be the new thing, everyone is going to want one, I must make it tonight.
M: goodnight...
So this morning I get up, and there's my design... Pictures to come.
I am an advid freecycler. I have never actually gotten anything myself from there, but I do give a lot of stuff away. The idea is that one persons trash is anothers treasure so rather than throwing something away that may have use to someone else you list it on here and maybe someone will want it. A few of the things we've gotten rid of are: a boat, motors, trailer, old bottles, old windows (for art), bricks, oars... just stuff we weren't using anymore. Everything listed on there has to be free. I've had nothing but good experiences with the people I've dealt with so far. Most of them send a nice thank you email and a couple have offered to pay (we have declined of course).
So we had these old RC cars in our garage that we were going to toss. Since all the parts were there and I know that a couple years ago John did have them running, I decided to list them on freecycle. Almost immediately someone replied saying they lived like 5 miles away and would pick them up that night. Sweet. Came and got them, I had the dust swept off of them and they were in a box, there were 3 cars and the controllers, batteries and charger. Here's the listing as I wrote it: (I will post the correspondence in italics and my comments in regular type)
A couple radio control cars, worked last time I used them, no guarantees but headed to the trash if nobody wants them. Thanks, in Federalsburg.
Pretty straightforward post I think. Here's the email I got later that evening:
the race cars we got from you were junk and dont even run and you said they worked so that was a wasted trip. please dont put junk on hetre that should go to the dump
Well that's nice. Didn't I say that's where I was taking them? When did I guarantee that they worked? So here's what I said:
If you go back to my original message at the bottom it says that I was making no guarantees, they ran the last time I tried to use them.
Reasonably polite on my part. I wasn't going to apologize because I was immediately put on guard because I felt they were being aggressive about this. Here's the reply I got:
LIKE I SAID WHEN U PUT SOMETHING ON HERE MAKE SURE IT WORKS PEOPLE DONT WANT TO DRIVE TO PICK UP JUNK!!!!
Yup, all in caps, now they're yelling at me. I don't appreciate being yelled at when I just *gave* you something. Why is it my job to make sure it works? Didn't I say I didn't know if they worked by putting 'no guarantees' in my email? So I wrote:
You get what you pay for.
Again, everyone knows this and some of the junk I've seen go through freecycle, people will take stuff that doesn't work. Hell, if someone else was giving away rc cars that didn't work, John would've tinkered with them until they did. Not that hard. Here's what they said today:
yeah for real just leave junk and your trash off here
I'm not concerned with getting the last word in here. I haven't written back yet. I'm not sure if I should. I do want to let them know what a wonderful experience freecycle has been and that I hope they aren't making it a point to ruin it for everyone and that they wouldn't have to worry about my junk anymore because I would not give them anything ever again. My junk is good junk, if it deserves to go in the trash it does. However, if they were $100 rc cars, I would've sold them. Thanks for letting me rant, thoughts?
It seems like I don't have time to even turn around in the summertime, I just pack so much into my schedule because I want summer to be like it was when I was a kid, it lasted for.ever. I totally seem to devour books this time of year though. I do usually tend to pick lighter reads in the summer. Ones I can put down and pick up, not ones I MUST finish. So here goes:
The Highest Tide: Possibly my favorite book of the summer. Cute, light read. Makes you totally cheer the underdog, which in this case is a 14 yr old boy who spends his summer wading in the river near his house and makes some unusual discoveries. You want to cringe with him as he becomes an instant celebrity.
Between the Tides: again with the water plot. This was a light, pleasant read. I did cry through a few pages of it (even though I rarely cry over books). If you know me, and you read this, you'll know where I cried. Basically about a 30 yr old woman who's father asks her to spread his ashes (after he dies of course!) in their hometown. She goes back and finds out all kinds of goodies about her past. Fairly predictable.
I'm drawing a blank on what to blog about. I really wanted to talk about the poor whale off of Australia that they're probably going to kill, but I've been trying not to read about it because it's just too depressing. I see where they're comming from, but it's just so sad. We don't know enough about these creatures to help them. So anywho, I decided to make a little list of things that I am loving right now and I invite you to join me.
- Argyle (particularly the vest I have on today, blue and green with a white oxford, too cute)
- The first smell when I open my door in the morning, that dewey, spicy outdoor smell when it's like 65 degrees in the morning
- Sleeping like a freakin rock with the windows open
- The goodwill because I'm broke
- Gas prices dropping
- Hubby being happy building stuff, says it melts his stress away
- Being on vaca next week!
- Having a Subway right next door to me
- Simplifying my life, getting rid of clutter
I just love cardi season!!! Look at some of the special treats that aero has on sale! I'm not too old for aero am I?
Love the multi colored argyle! With a white oxford, or a purple cami... too precious
Look at this swing! Also comes in ivory... love the chunky cable
OMG! it has an *A* on it... who do I know who's name starts with an A
There's just something about this owl. I would totally try to pull it off for some reason though. It has like an elementary school alure of having an animal on your clothes.
So John got himself a couple new toys this weekend courtesy of our friend craig. He got a planer, which we haven't had too much time to play with, there's some surface rust on it that's keeping us from moving it up and down a whole lot. Nothing a little (lot!) PBblaster can't solve though. So we're soaking it and cranking on it and making progress little by little. John's new bff though is a Grizzly shaper. I think it's basically a juiced up router made into a table. Hubby is just tore the hell up with this thing. Last night he made a dado joint with it and you would have thought he had given birth. Just think of all we can do with *this*. So now he has a plan for our mutual dislike of the bistro table. We shall see.
Here she is in all her glory! I think it's my favorite thing that John has made so far. He says it's definately his favorite! Lets hope some other people want to make it their favorite piece of furniture. Next time you see it, it might have a Laura touch added.
They want me to be their new leader! No way am I giving up my cardigans though, and the season is sneaking up on us fast!!! I had the bi-weekly pleasure of visiting the most wonderful place on earth with Karen last Thursday. She found some beautiful 100% wool sweaters that we promptly took back to her house and frogged. Because, where else are you going to get enough beautiful yarn to make a sweater for $3.50. I found her daughter the most precious pink Ralph v-neck sweater, too bad it wasn't my size, but I turned it over, mostly because I'm determined to turn her prep. Check out these awesome finds though for me!
Finally, the find I had to carry with me so Karen didn't steal it. How cute are the buttons on this little number? What's that? Why did she want it so bad? Let's see what the tag says....
Yes, your's truly, the bargain hunter, she did find a cashmere abercrombie sweater in the goodwill for $3.50.
Know what this is?
How about now?
I'm bouncing through my house this morning and I don't make a habit of looking down. It is *my* house. So, here I am, just walking through, not looking and suddenly a sharp pain. I can't even describe this. A freakin thumb tack on my floor. It didn't just prick my foot. I had to sit down and take my nails and pry it from my heal as blood is dripping off the side of my foot. What are the symptoms of tetnus? I don't even know where this came from, I don't use thumb tacks. It's like 12 hours later and I can now walk normally, but my foot is still throbbing. John says that's a good thing because at least I can still feel it.
So we've had a few things going on with our little furniture sidehustle.
- We've been invited to set up at the first open air market in Preston. I think this will be a really cool setting for us, I'm thinking it will be really slow at first but I'd love to be there from the very beginning, and I'd love to think that it would be as busy as the Easton farmers market someday.
-There were lots of tools on craigslist that we wanted. John mainly wants a planer and jointer at this point. Well, we found one guy with a planer, and one with a jointer and a bunch of other woodworking tools. So, I'm lined up to get the planer tomorrow. The guy with all the other tools, I've been emailing him all week trying to get a deal worked out on the whole package. Well damn if he didn't sell the jointer out from underneath me. Bastard. I emailed him this morning and told him to kiss off.
-So now we're trying to decide what we want to have done for the open air market. It will probably be either the last weekend in August or the first in September so we've got a couple weeks to get stuff together. So I'm thinking I'd like to build another cypress chair and foot rests so we have a full set of those. One set of adirondack chairs out of cedar. Maybe 2 sets out of pressure treated pine. If John gets those cut out this weekend, we can definately get them together by next weekend. We've gotten the chairs down to a pretty short process.
We've taken apart and rebuilt the bistro set about 5 times. I think we've finally got a chair that we're both happy with, but John still isn't happy with the table. I'm thinking I'm going to let him look at that for a few more weeks to decide what needs to be done with it. I'll take some pics this weekend of the new improved chair and the table so you can make suggestions.
He's happy with the dock box, so if everything goes well with the chairs, I'll probably get him to build one of those to take to the market. I hate to do any more than that because the hardware alone in one of those is close to $100. We might be stealing the hardware off the one we have for a new one.
John's anxious to get started on a lounger. I drew some rough plans earlier this week so he could get an idea of how much lumber and what hardware he would need to make my drawing a reality. He's going to make this one from clear pine since that's the cheapest wood you can get and then we can always put preservative on it if we decide to keep it for our personal collection. We have seemed to wind up with the mongrels of everything, but that's okay!
I've been helping hubby so much with this carpentry projects, I think I need this as a reward. He always comments that he wonder's where Paige (Extreme Home Makeover) gets her pink stuff because he thought I would like it, well today I found it. http://www.tomboytools.info/ 
for some reason that I have yet to figure out, I spend a large portion of my day on the phone... with idiots. Well, someone (my boss?) has heard my cries for help and this fancy pantsy little girl was delivered to me today. Cute, no? And, my boss says now I can flip my customers off with both hands AND without getting a cramp in my neck! Awesome!
You are the root of all things evil. I fell in love with a cardigan on your site several days ago. Since you no longer offer your 'cardigans annonymous' classes, I was unable to resist. I have been thinking about this cardigan for quite some time and when I go to check it out today, I notice you're having a stuff and save sale. Several years ago, due to my cardigan problem, I gave up my old navy card, however I am quite disappointed to see that your stuff and save sale is for card holders only. Not 'former card holders with no self control when it comes to cardigan sales'. 20% off is a big deal to me in this economic crisis. I felt like it was worth it to get the card again, my 'instant' credit limit is $200, how much trouble can that cause? When I look to the top of my browser, I remember that I can now single check out with gap and br. Thanks for ruining my non-clothes buying trend over an argyle cardigan.
Lots of pictures tonight kids. First let me present to you hubby's newest build. This is just like the adirondack chairs he's been building, but much more expensive. This is made out of cypress and I think John loves it more than he loves me. It is gawgeous! Such a pretty pale wood. I'm not sure that anyone is going to be willing to put into these chairs what they cost us to make them, but I guess we'll find out.
We got sidlined last weekend into building a few chairs for a (paying!!) buyer. So exciting! We delivered them to a be-uuuu-tiful home right on the bay and the chairs have a lovely view of the gas docks in Annapolis. They also have a large St. Bernard to hang out with them so I'm sure they are quite happy with their new home.
It has been months, probably since we went on vacation in February since I bought anything purely for myself. But I am in love with this. How much more pink can my wardrobe handle? This is a deep pink though, with that green... I'm salivating, let me wipe my keyboard. Notice the ruffles around the neck and the pretty white buttons. Old Navy $30 if you are thinking about my birthday next month ;o)
So, those who know me, know I am not well. Well, probably in more ways than one, but physically I have issues. So, anywho, I had my bi-monthly doctors appt last week and got my bloodwork done and I even got to pee in a cup (special surprise my doctor said!). So as I'm waiting at the lab to get my stuff done the new phlebotomist* asks me if I want a copy of the results. Well, I've never had a copy of the results, so sure, why not??? Yeah... so now I'm sitting here googling everything that was highlighted on the test results as being 'abnormal'. Nice. I wish I had some past results to compare to. Doc said last times were really bad, well, I want to know how bad they were now. Ugh... if I hadn't gotten the results, I just wouldn't care until the next appt.
*My old phlebotomist (Jeannie) just left and it's been devastating for me. We were buddies, I felt like I worked there part time. When you have blood work done constantly, you build a relationship with the person puncturing you. I have finally found my replacement in this new girl though, one stick, no poking, she had plenty of personality.
but sometimes I cook. I want to share with you my favorite sandwich. This is super easy to make and this is the perfect time of year to whip one up. This is the major budget version.
So hubby just ran into my car. Like 5 minutes ago. He was backing the trailer into the driveway from our weekly Lowes lumber run, and crunch! Just hit the front corner. Yeah, right where someone hit Holly in it a couple years ago. Oh well... I know it's not right but I just laughed, what can you do, right? Maybe I should call his insurance company and complain! It's totally driveable except for the blinker hanging on the side, back the the gas guzzler for a couple weeks.
It's on now!!!
found it's way to my desk, I assumed it was back from her. Nope, entirely different zuchinni from an entirely different branch. Look at the sweet love letter attached:
I hope I don't really look like that. I need to raid gardens this weekend though looking for some odditiys. If you have a 2 foot string bean hiding somewhere, or perhaps a penis shaped pepper, please let me know and I will pay top dollar (not!) for it. Revenge will be had!
