Framing Art

My dad made this print a gazillion years ago and I want to be able to hang it on our walls but it wasnt' framed.

I framed another piece of art that was just on canvas not that long ago, and discovered that I could get frame kits from my favorite online art supply store Utrecht that allows you to frame art that might not be traditionally sized.

This print is 20 inches by 30 inches and the frame kit was exactly what was needed.

It only took me about 10 mins with a bit of Gorilla Glue and a small hammer to get it all done.

I think it looks great and now will be easier to hang as well as preserve.
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Eight Years Ago on In My Words...New Art

First Fire

Tonight is the first night in a while where I have not had too much of an agenda, so I thought this would be a good night to put a log on the fire.

I wasn't able to burn any fires last fall/winter because of all the unpacking that needed to be done and the fact that the fireplace was hidden behind a pile of boxes.

Our fireplace doesn't put out a lot of heat, but the ambiance is definitely there. With a few fall smelly candles burning and a big cup of hot tea, it was perfect and definitely worth the wait.

Fall is here, in fact you might even say that winter is here, so I hope to get more logs burnt over the next few months, but none of them will feel as good as the first one does.
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Two Years Ago on In My Words...POTD Day 20 I'm Listening To

Smile 73/100 Flag

The weather has been awesome, the windows have been open and having the flag out there fluttering in the wind just makes it that much better.

It really feels like summer when I see the flag out there blowing in the breeze.

We have flown a flag at every house we have owned. It has become a bit of a tradition. The house we had on the east coast had an actual pole in the front yard that we would raise a flag on each day first thing. It was kind of a cool start to each day.

I took this picture with my Fuji Finepix f50 from our front balcony with no flash. I then edited it in GIMP 2.6 to add the fuzzy border and balance the color and light.

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Eight Years Ago on In My Words...Flat B

Smile 59/100 Vanity

These are the new vanity lights for the two bathrooms. Still trying to get rid of the brass all over this house, and this is one of the steps.

The old vanity lights all work, so if we don't install the old ones in a family member's house, I'll make sure they go to ReStore so someone else can use them and they don't end up in a landfill.

I had a giftcard from Lowe's and our discount we get normally so they really didn't cost us too much, which is nice since the budget is super tight these days.

Now there is the issue of installing them. I want to do it right away but since both bathrooms are on the list to be painted and the mirrors all have to be moved around, it might be a while before they get installed. We'll see.

I took this picture in our entry way with my Fuji Finepix f50 with no flash. I edited in GIMP 2.6 for color, light and to add a fuzzy border.
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Seven Years Ago on In My Words...Mum Lights

Smile 12/100 Texture

So this beauty is from the Japanese Maple that I posted about a few days ago...I just couldn't pass up the soft delicate leaves or the many shades of color inside of it. So I grabbed the camera so I could get a few macros taken of it before the leaves take on their summer look.

I need to trim a few of the branches so they aren't touching the rock wall or the little Japanese lantern we have near it, but other than that, I just love the glory of it...so pretty.

I took this picture in the afternoon in our front yard with my Fuji Finepix f50 with no flash but macro enabled. I edited it in GIMP 2.6 for color, light and then to add the fuzzy border.
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Two Years Ago on In My Words...Two Favorite Things

POTD Day 12 Partial

Here is a one of the hostas we have around the house, and it is already coming back up, but only partially at this point.

I love hostas, got hooked on them when we lived in WA and owned our first house...now we have two in big pots on our backyard, and we have 5 more in gallon containers that need to go in the ground on the shady side of the house. (And they all survived the winter!!).

This one hosta in particular gets some good spring sun right now so I think that is why it is higher than the others at this point.

I am excited to see some stuff sprouting already, gives me hope that the winter didn't kill everything, but it also makes me a little bit stressed because we have so much to do before it all gets out of hand...lots of weeding to do!!

I took this picture in the afternoon light on our back porch with my Fuji Finepix f50. I edited it in GIMP 2.6 for color, light and to add the fuzzy border.
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Six Years Ago on In My Words...Repotting

POTD Day 14 Heart

These hearts are from a display I walked past on a errand/exercise trip downtown a few days ago. All the little store fronts had Valentine's Day displays of some sort and this one was pretty cute.

Valentine's Day this year involved a evening play (that I will post about later). It was great to see the season start out. I am excited for the new group of plays being done this year. Always something new to discover!

I took this picture through a plate glass window with my Fuji Finepix f50 with no flash. I edited it in GIMP 2.6 for color, light and added the fuzzy border.
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Last Year on In My Words...Mister Scary

POTD Day 9 Details

This is the finished drawing from the Chinese New Year 2014 Festival demo that Yeh Fei Pai did for us. I wrote a bit about it in this other post.

He was working with his son during the demo and they both signed it. As he was drawing each of the eight horses, he explained their representation to us. It was really interesting. Both of them had great senses of humor too which made the demo all that more interesting and entertaining.

He is a pretty well known artist and his work is showing in a few different places. He is known for the celestial horses so his visit during the Chinese New Year celebration was ideal for this Year of the Horse!

I took this picture with my Fuji Finepix f50, with no flash. I edited it in GIMP 2.6 for color, light and added the fuzzy border.
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Six Years Ago on In My Words...New Art

POTD Day 5 Square

Two of our nieces are pregnant right now. One is due in late March and the other in late April. I am working on baby blankets for both of them.

These are the squares for the blanket I am making for the one that is due in March. The blanket I made for her first child was a different pattern, so I thought I would make her a granny square one this time. I wanted to do bright colors on a black field for two reasons. Bright colors and contrast are supposed to be good for baby brains, and then the black field is reminiscent of the old style granny square blankets you would see.

I tend to do solid colored squares because they are just faster and less complicated, although I have done a few blankets with variated yarn so the squares were multi-colored with no additional effort on my part...LOL.

When I have a multi-colored blanket, I like to stack the squares in order of the pattern so that when I start to connect them, I am able to keep track of the rows. At this point, I have 6 of the 8 rows connected (you can't see this in the pic because I hadn't started connecting them yet). Once I finish the 8 rows, I will start connecting the rows to each other and then finish off by bordering the whole thing.

I took this picture with my Fuji Finepix f50 in our dining room with no flash, but macro enabled. I edited it in GIMP 2.6 for light, color and adding of the fuzzy border.
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Three Years Ago on In My Words...Finished The Blanket (this one was for another niece)

POTD Day 2 Favorite

Oh my gosh...Norikane is one of my favorite artists, and I only discovered him a few years ago. I had gone to a fundraiser at a local gallery when we were in Japan and saw this piece and fell in love. For me, a lot of the time, art is about the story and when I saw this print, I just felt there was a story and I loved it.

We actually now own 5 or 6 of Norikane's prints and they all make me smile, each one with a story, which I think is kind of just his style. This one is called Miyajima-2 and I thought that the shrine torii with the water beneath just was so cool. I wanted immediately to know what the story was. This link explains part of it, if you are interested.

I took this picture in our office in our house in Japan with my Fuji Finepix f50. I edited it in GIMP 2.6 for color, light and added the fuzzy border.
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My other posts about Norikane's works that we have.

POTD Day 27 Something I Bought

This is the vanity that I bought for our downstairs bathroom. When we had the water damage last year, the vanity in the downstairs bathroom was one of the things that was ruined. I wasn't all that sad about it because it was this ugly 96 inch long particle board cabinet, but not having anything in there has made that bathroom a little less functional.

Right now 1/2 of the old vanity is sitting in the garage being used as a counter since we don't have any of our stuff here yet and it gives us some place to put things but I will be taking it apart soon, so that we can take it to Biomass. I will be excited to see it gone. I have to remove all the laminate and hardware from it, not to mention the sink that is still in it before they will take it.

The new vanity is not installed yet since we have to tile the floors before it can go in permanently. You can see that even the drawer knobs and the faucet are not on it. I plan to rough in the plumbing just to make sure it will all fit. Once I do that, I can recycle the boxes it came in (which are taking up space in our garage). I am keeping the boxes just in case the vanity isn't going to work and we need to return it.

The top is separate so I can actually plumb it while it is off and that will make reaching everything, much easier. The majority of the vanity itself is solid wood which is what we were looking for, which also means it is super heavy.

I took this picture with my Fuji Finepix f50 with the flash turned on.  I edited it in GIMP 2.6 for color and light and then added the fuzzy border.
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You can follow along on projects on our house at The Bamboo Lagoon blog.

POTD Day 21 On The Door

This is our front door wreath for this year. The bow, bells and hanger are reused each year but I like to do a fresh wreath. This one has done well so far, but that is because it has been super cold here. With the dark grey front door on the sunny side of the house, I was expecting this to dry out really fast but the weather prevailed.

In the second pic, you can see the garland with red balls we have along our front balcony. After New Year's Day, I'll put the red balls away, but leave the garland up through the winter because it looks pretty and smells great. You can see that the lights around the garage door are already on. I turn the lights on in the morning since they are LED lights so not only do they not get hot but they don't use as much energy. I have a timer for the garage door ones so they don't stay on at night, and I don't have to remember to go into the garage to turn them off each night.

I found a cute little metal bell that has a picture of Santa on it while I was at the Grange Co-op the other day and I have it hanging in one of the front windows. While I was there, I also found the new ornament for the year. I buy one for us each year and write the year on it, if it isn't already on it automatically.

I hope to get some snowflakes cut out from white paper later and put on our front windows. I  have loved cutting out snowflakes since I was a kid. You always get something new and unique each time.  I leave these up through the winter too...nice to have some decorations after the holidays.
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Two Years Ago on In My Words...Week 20 MCP Project 52

POTD Day 16 Makes You Feel Merry

I enjoy getting cards and letters from friends and family through the holiday season. Usually I hang them along a door frame or on the edge of the tv stand...but this year, I decided to drape some twine above the fireplace to hang at least some of the cards as they came in. I will have to hang either another line of twine or tape some along the tv stand if we get more of them in as the current twine is almost full already.

I have a couple more cards to send out, and then I am done...I managed to get out the long distance ones at the beginning of the month so those few I have left are only local ones.

I brought the live tree in from the garage (where I had it climatizing for a day or so) and decorated it tonight. Now the only thing left is putting the garland on the front balcony rail (but I won't have it for a few more days). It is a bummer that we didn't get the garland when we were supposed to, but the fundraiser that they were purchased from didn't get them on time and then we had the snow storm that hindered everything else. I won't be getting them this way next year, that is for sure.

I took this image with my Fuji Finepix f50 with no flash and macro turned on. I edited it in GIMP 2.6 using auto correct for color and light and then added the fuzzy border.
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Two Years Ago on In My Words...Week 26 MCP Project 52

POTD Day 15 Lights

Decorating for Christmas this year has been a gradual process. I still don't have the garland for the front railing because of the crazy weather we have had the last week so that item is still left to be done. I also don't have the tree decorated yet, but that is because it is a live tree and it was on the front porch when we got the snow and ice and I didn't want to bring it in and have it go into shock and die on me. So I waited until the snow melted off and I put it in the garage for two days so it could climatize a bit before it comes into the house. So I will be decorating it in the next day or so.

I have put up our wreath on the front door, and I had lights in the two livingroom windows done, but I hadn't done the lights around the garage (because it was just so cold outside), and I hadn't done the ones in the office window because it required a bit more time than the other windows had needed. I put up the gel decorations on the sliding glass door in the livingroom the same day that I did the livingroom windows.

Well today, after tackling some yard work, I decided it was time to get the garage lights done. They really didn't take that long to do and I have them on a timer so I don't have to remember to go down and turn them off at night. Once I got back in, I decided to tackle the office lights too and now they are done as well. For the office lights, I had to remove a hanging plant and the blinds to put the lights in and then put the blinds and the plant back...I had really  just stalled on it because it was more time consuming but it really didn't require that much more effort.
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Two Years Ago on In My Words...Week 27 MCP Project 52

Mister Scary

Only carved one pumpkin for Halloween this year. Went out to the pumpkin patch with my cousins to pick it out with two more, but saved the two others I had to carve for "fall". This one was the biggest one so I knew it was going to be Mister Scary even before I had picked a design.

I went through the book I had of designs, but none of them really grabbed me so I went online and did a search and found one I liked and printed it.

Love to carve pumpkins in the living room while watching something seasonally appropriate. During this one, I was watching an episode of Walking Dead on On Demand, trying to catch up on the season. I washed the outside of the pumpkin and dried it off and then got to cutting out the top, so I could get the insides cleaned out. I am kind of texture sensitive on my hands so I decided to wear gloves during the cleaning portion.

I have done a lot of pumpkins with this kit now, and am pretty quick once I get the guy cleaned out, but I have also started to resort to less fancy designs due to time constraints and the fact that the more intricate it is, the faster it seems to rot and lose its shape. We had
had a particularly warm October and I wanted to make sure to have an intact pumpkin through the holiday at least.

Once the inside was cleaned out, I could get started with the design taped to the pumpkin and the little hole punch action. Then I removed the design and started sawing out the design.

Once he was all cut out and ready to go, I put him on the front porch and lit a tea light. I ended up getting some battery powered tealights from the dollar store for later but for the first night, it was the "real deal".

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Five Years Ago on In My Words...Halloween Decor

Snowflake 2012

This is my snowflake for 2012!! You can make your own on this site if you want...pretty fun! This is in addition to the ones I cut out of paper for our windows in front.

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Five Years Ago on In My Words...Mum Lights

O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree

Here is a little look at the baby tree at our house. I just love this little guy...need to make sure I keep him watered so he doesn't dry out...am excited to put him in the ground in the spring!!

Isn't he just cute???

Full view

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 Seven Years Ago on In My Words...The Trees and Snowflakes

Is It Just Me

or does this gel shape light have a bulb that looks like a p3n1s? The middle part comes out completely and that is even worse. I left it in so that from afar the bulbs just look like bulbs.

I put a "string" of these faux lights along the top of our sliding glass door since putting lights up from the inside would limit the use of the door and there are no outlets on the front deck to use for powering lights on the outside of the door. If you want to see some of the other outdoor decor (except the lights), you can check out my post on The Bamboo Lagoon where I blog only about our house and the adventure it creates in itself.

Still have to get a small tree and carve some pumpkins (yes, that is what I said) to be finally done but it is coming along.
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Three Years Ago on In My Words...My Christmas

Waiting On Christmas

Along with lots of other people, I can't stand it when people jump from Halloween to Christmas. I was irritated by the idiot companies that decided to start their sales on Thanksgiving and also by all the stores and people that put up decorations for Christmas before Thanksgiving had passed. For me, Thanksgiving is an important American holiday and it shouldn't be "jumped over" just because it is not as commercial as some other holidays.

One of our neighbors had all their gaudy Christmas decorations lighting up the end of the block days before Thanksgiving, and every time I drove by, I just wanted to roll down the window and scream "It isn't even Thanksgiving yet!" You don't even need a flashlight if you walk by that house in the evening because it is so bright, I am sure you can see it from outerspace. Now, don't get me wrong, I am not a bah humbug, but I don't think that decorations need to be a competition.

So I have refrained from putting up our Christmas decorations yet. I am determined to wait until at least December 1st, which means I have a day or more left to enjoy my fall. We still have beautiful pumpkins on the porches that I don't want to throw away...I might even decide to carve them with Christmas or winter themes so we can leave them out a bit longer. I have gotten most of my decorations organized (minus the little potted tree I still need to buy) and ready to go but I am using my will power to refrain...LOL.

We have a fresh swag for the front door and 15 ft of cedar garland to put on the balcony rail when the time is right along with lights for some of the windows...nothing too crazy but enough to bring a smile to my face when I see it.
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Seven Years Ago on In My Words...Steve Terrill

Productive Day

Today was a decent day. Haven't had a lot of those lately so this was a nice surprise. Managed to knock a bunch of stuff out without finding out during the course of it that something else was wrong or broken.

Took the truck in to find out about getting the tires rotated and turns out since I bought the tires from the same company, rotations are free...I had them check the brakes since I have been hearing a squeal during a slow stop. Brakes are okay for now. Back ones will need to be done soon but not immediately (which is good since I don't really have the cash to do them right this minute). I am sure the backs are worse than the fronts because of the stupid ebrake issues I had with it last year. Anyhow, they said that even though I was over due on the rotation, the tires were wearing evenly and that the suspension looked good. They said the squeal is from the dry air and dust. It was nice to not have bad news.

Went to the paint store to recycle some old paint while I was waiting for the truck to get done, and found a few a sample cards to stare at for a bit, since we are not going to be painting anything anytime soon...lol. We do want to paint some things eventually but it isn't high on the priority list.

Stopped at the hardware store to recycle some alkaline batteries and got to talking with the electrician there and got a ton of great info. Found out I can still get the little clips for the pool pump timer so that task everyday will be minimized, which is nice since the pumps will need to run all winter. Managed to come home and figure out how to make the pool light come on, yeah!!! Then immediately took the switch apart since it needs to be replaced. You have no idea how excited I was to see that light come on though.

Potted three bamboos this morning and they all look great in their new pots and new locations. Also finally got two small lavendars put in a new pot for the front balcony. I'll post pics when I get them on the blog for the house.

Have a bit of running around tomorrow morning before an appt and of course still have a million more things on the To Do list (as usual), but at least there are a few less.
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Five Years Ago on In My Words...Coming Along