Dear Crossing Finds

Here's some stuff we picked up yesterday at "The Dear Crossing" ....

Striped glasses .... we had 7 & 7's out of them last night and they worked real good :)



And they fit perfect into these plastic coasters .....





And we had to have these Tiki Salt and Pepper shakers to go with the striped glasses and coasters ....



And Mr. Dear Crossing wrapped everything up real nice in newspaper and them put them into this zippered vinyl bag ..... hmmmm ..... he must be very good at his recycle .... gotta love it!



3 of the 5 crates I got are now in place and holding quite a few books quite nicely ....



The other 2 had dividers in them making them perfect to table top storage. You might be able to spot them in this photo ....



So this room is getting close to being finished ..... at least for now. I should be able to post the "before and after" sometime this week.

Time For A Blog Design Change

I'm hoping that with this design I can embed videos so here's a test. I shot this last night with my iPhone, mostly I wanted to pick up the night sounds of tree frogs (not really sure if that's what we're hearing here) but I also caught a little flash of lightning.

Crates, Fireworks and Rain

So I decided I really needed some old wooden crates to put in this corner ....



I knew just the place to go where I was sure I would find some really old wooden soda pop crates .....



And sure enough I hit paydirt .... but at a price .... they came complete with 50 years of dirt, grime, mold and some recent spiders. So I scrubbed them down in the driveway and set them out to dry .... Lea followed me in the driveway to bleach out some old chairs that she got out of her mothers garage attic but she got caught in a storm ..... you can't tell in this photo but she's soaking wet and smiling :)



Maybe this shows how hard it was raining ....



So here's the crates before I moved them back outside after the rain stopped ..... they're kinda stinky when wet



On the way home from the "Dear Crossing" (that's the place where I got the crates) we went into Hardy to go the the grocery store and saw this kinda big top tent set up near the river and upon closer looking we saw the word "Fireworks" on a banner. I couldn't turn around fast enough .... I love it .... we get to have fireworks in our backyard! We're really excited. Remember these big kits that you used to droll over when you were a kid? ....



Well .... we're still just drooling. We're going to stick to the stuff that doesn't fly into the air .... we kinda like the forest next to us and the roof on our house so we'll play safe with the dangerous toys. There's also going to be a fireworks show on Lake Thunderbird which we can walk to so we will probably also be doing that. Maybe I'll even have some photos :)

The Boring Stuff

Not much fun stuff to post about the last few days ..... did the Lowes run for tons of baseboards & chair railings. The floor is in ....



And the baseboards are almost in .... we worked downstairs and upstairs today and by the time we got upstairs our backs were going down :)



I'm still "chipping" away at the blue bathroom shower .... today I finally repaired the area that had rotted out, and finished removing the remaining part of the shower door .... which was so glued and caulked on (probably because the screws holding the door were rusted to toothpicks) that it's taken me many hours to remove it but even still I had to duct tape on all the adjacent tiles to keep them from falling and breaking ..... so I have a whole bunch of tiling repair work ahead of me .... but I won't have any leaks or rotted wood :)



Ahhhhhh .... but our Popcicle Molds arrived!!!!! Yayyyyyyyyyy! We even got a book of awesome recipes so we'll be off to Walmart tomorrow.





This one's for Jean .... since we tore down the garden fencing that was here ... it really did look like a batting cage and we both hated it so until next year .... we're growing some stuff in rubbermaid storage containers (yes I did drill a bunch of drainage holes in the bottom) .... do you think an HOA would allow this? :)

Tubing In Our Backyard

Lea and I both recall when we lived on the beach in South. Calif., that the bathtub always seemed to have some sand and tar in it ..... now it's leaves and river moss. It's pretty hot here in the South right now and so about 1pm Lea and I grabbed our tubes and went down to river .... here's a little video ....



I started to load up this video shortly after we got done playing in the river but before it finished ..... the power went out. I'm not surprised since the south is having record breaking heat. The power is back on after being off for a about 2 hours .... during that time the temp in our house went from the air conditioned setting of 82 to 84 .... just 2 degrees .... I'm pretty happy with that. Had it been longer and gotten hotter then we would have retreated to the basement .... if that got too warm then we would have gone into the next room which is what we call "the dirt room" .... it is a true cellar ..... very cool in there ..... almost cold.

So I'm uploading the above video again to youtube (the quality sucks but it's easy to upload and link to) and keeping my fingers crossed that we don't lose power again which shuts down the modem .... meaning .... no internet. Uploading is always the worst ... it takes forever! Soooooo ..... you gotta let me know if you want more videos .... because I'll only do videos (short ones) if I know that you really enjoy them .... OK???? Now would be a good time to "follow" this blog .... I know of at least 167 of you who haven't clicked the "follow" button .... and I do want to thank the 6 of you who have ... and thanks to Bobbie, Pat and Jean for actually posting comments :)

I think Lea missed her calling in life .... she should have been a famous movie maker :)

From The Sunset To The Next Morning

The days always end peaceful and beautiful .... this was last night



And this was this morning .... and we're talking early morning .... like 8am .... we didn't even know any of these guys were coming .... they just kinda show up around here .... never late .... always early and usually a day or two ahead of time





This is POISON IVY .... I am making it my personal mission to find every one of these plants that lives within my reach and eliminate it. This one I found this afternoon while going down to the river .... of course I didn't notice it until after I rubbed against it .... so I did the only thing I knew how to do at the time .... take it's picture :)



I love the rock outcroppings in the trees. David and crew did a lot of clearing around and cleaning of some of the rock so we can now really see it and enjoy it's beauty.



So here's a picture of Lea's "Topsy Turvy" pepper plant .... she's also going to be adding a couple of tomato plants. I love these ... there just so .... hmmmm .... retro looking.



While the new flooring gets acclimated, the old .... incredibly icky carpet and 2 layers of decaying padding were removed. Lea and I had originally planned on doing this ourselves but opted to let the "pros" do it because we knew it would have taken us way too much longer than we were willing to wait on this sorta important room .... and ... because the amount of labor that they are charging us is ridiculously "fair". So here's a sneak peak at what it looks like



So while all this was going on we loaded the dogs into the van and made a booze run to Thayer Missouri .... home now and enjoying a "White Russian" and anticipating tomorrow :)

The Path To The River

4 strong guys, 2 chain saws, 2 weed eaters, 1 backpack weed killer, 1 high powered backpack blower (to clean the dirt off the rock terraces), and 3 burn piles. The work is about half completed .... enough so that ...... well ..... I'll just let the photos tell the story.

























The water felt really really really good!

The Wall Of Trees

With chain saws and gas cans in hand, David and another guy showed up this morning to begin work on our path to the river ..... here's what they're up against ......



The funny part is that they weren't supposed to start until the end of the week. I was on the upstairs deck planting herb seeds when I saw David below, he said they were here because they wanted someplace shady to work on this hot day but they were only working for about an hour when this came up .....



They got soaked and left. Don't know when they'll be back but they did get quite a lot of cutting done in that little time.

Here's a couple of photos I shot through the window this morning while I was having coffee ...





The woodpeckers and cardinals fly away the moment I pick up a camera but I'll keep trying :)

BTW .... most of you may already know this but for the few that don't .... you can look at the "bigger picture" of any of the photos I include in the blog by clicking on them .... on my Mac I just put the cursor on the picture and click it once but not sure about Windows .... anyway it will open up a new window with the big picture and then you just need to click your browsers back button to return.

Little by Little

Each day we work on something .... kinda chipping away. I spent a lot of time the last few days on my "studio" room. I have a very big closet which is full of photo gear (mostly stuff for lighting) and many boxes full of books that I need to build bookshelves for but ..... here's where I'm at now

A couple of weeks ago ....



Today ....



A couple of weeks ago .....



Today .....



Lea finished nailing up all the cedar yesterday and applied Watco clear on it today. We have do a trek to Lowes this week to get the chair railing and some corner moulding .... she already got the floor moulding but the wainscoting was a second thought and done without the forethought of the needed moulding for the top.



This morning Todd came over (he's a plumber but he's also helping us out with some electrical issues) and together the 3 of us replaced a very old ugly fan with this one .... but it wasn't easy .... I don't care what you say ..... ceiling fans seem to always have some sort of issue that keeps it from being the "easy" project it's supposed to be. But it's in now .....



We still don't have much in the way of furniture. It's pretty much just a couple of moon chairs, the bean bag, the blow up mattress in the living room and in our bedroom we have our bed and a chest of drawers with a TV on top of it ..... but we manage to share what little we have ......





Yesterday we went into Hardy and hit the antique stores ..... we ended up doing 3 trips to bring all our treasures home and one trip included removing the platform from our van to fit in our new solid walnut table. Sorry no pictures of the table but when it finds it's place I'll be sure to put a photo up. The other haulings included an apothecary for Lea and a couple of chest type tables for me ..... if you look closely you can see them in my studio photos above ..... hint .... one has a bunch of my silk scarfs hanging on it and the other has a cane plant sitting on it.