Wind Repairs, Babies Drinking Beer & Andi's Results

Finally convinced Lea that I could get on the roof, stay on the roof and get off the roof safely so she let me buy an extension ladder. It was extremely windy a few days ago and the big round cap to our chimney blew off. I was lucky to find it since it was like a giant flying saucer but putting it back on wasn't going to be so easy. Trying to reuse the holes for sheet metal screws just wasn't going to work so Lea gathered up some heavy wire and I was able to wire the thing back on more securely than it's probably been in the last 20 years. I did the repairs in 23 degree temps so it made it even harder than it should have been but there was a storm approaching and we really needed hot burning logs in the fireplace ..... not a bucket ..... so it had to be done. I did this self portrait after getting the darn thing reattached .....

Nice view huh?

Lea waited in the freezing cold for me to do the job ..... guess she wouldn't have felt right about being toasty warm inside .... sure was nice to have her holding the ladder since for some reason it's always harder to get down that it is to get up ... it's just that first step off the roof


My parents were very liberal and they passed that onto their children so when my nephew grabbed this frame off of some old family home movies I wasn't surprised that they let me drink beer as a baby ..... things really were different in the 50's .....

Now I know why I've always been keen on Pabst Blue Ribbon :)

So .... the test results came in for Andi and after over 3 years her titers test is negative so she can stop taking the medication!!!!!! We were sooooooo happy with that news that we felt inspired to make this Holiday Video in celebration ..... Enjoy!

Yes It Is Cold Enough For Us :)

First off is this mornings deck view ....


Yesterday it snowed a little and was really really windy .... in fact it blew the cap off our chimney. It was like 7 degrees outside and colder when the wind blew even harder so we stayed inside and I baked more bread.

Backing up a bit ..... Friday Andi got to go meet her new doctor. He really wants to try and cure her Valley Fever and he really studied up on it. He drew blood and was able to check on a lot of things himself such as the condition of her liver which gets damaged by the Valley Fever meds but we have her on Sam-e which is really helping. So her liver has really improved and we won't know about the Valley Fever for several days because he had to send it off to the state for testing. Here's a shot of Andi and Lea at the vets office just before going in ....


This morning I cracked the bathroom windows (there's 2 layers) just a little bit to let out the steam from my shower .... I closed them up .... walked out and within a few minutes here's what it looked like ....


I really needed to drag up a bunch of timber from down the hill today so I could get it cut up while the weather was clear. I've discovered that even at 17 degrees (don't know what the real temp was with the wind chill), as long as you're dressed in the right type of cold weather gear ..... you really don't get cold and can do just about anything .... except maybe go tubing down the river :)

Self portrait .....


And yes .... I did get a bunch of wood cut!

bittlebox.com

I'm still working on the aesthetics of our website .... not being a webmaster I have to learn as I go along. The learning process of a new software program has been slowing me from getting this online (I've been trying to make the site iPad friendly) but now I'm just putting it up anyway along with it's size issues. It is fully functional with a PayPal shopping cart and checkout system.

I just added some silk scarves today after spending several hours yesterday scratching my head on how to best photograph them. So I opted with this approach of 1 full length photo and some detail insets.


The website is here ..... http://www.bittlebox.com/
If you can help promote the site by letting your email buddies know .... we'd sure appreciate it. It has a long way to go but we had to start somewhere :) and this is a start :) Thanks!

Pretty Birds & Firewood

Lea shot these beautiful birds in our yard this afternoon and I thought I'd share ....




Meanwhile .... I was digging out firewood through the slash piles

The Bald Eagle

From now on I'm going to keep a good camera .... a real camera .... by the window. I just looked up from addressing Holiday cards and was able to get this shot off through the window .... she was moving fast and circled behind the tree in the blink of an eye. Earlier she was soooooo close and I didn't have any camera by me. So I'm posting this not very good shot but I have set a goal to get a really good Bald Eagle shot.

I'm thinking .....

that I met my challenge of doing a post a day for the past several weeks and now it's time to go back to posting a few times a week. It's hard to post every day .... really. So I'll finish this week off with our girl Sydny eating a meal of Chopped Worm & Zucchini Salad with Freeze Dried Shrimp ..... yum!

Milk, Wood, Lyndas Place, Swithplates & Lights

In case y'all were wonderin .... Memory Lane is a small dairy farm just outside of Fordland, Missouri. I love cows.


Ok ... now that that's out of the way ..... Lea and I have been working on our commercial website a little at a time .... there's just been so much fun stuff to do that getting down to "business" has been sort of on the back burner, but .... we are starting to put more time into it now. Lea has pretty much got her shop in order and she is back to woodturning again. Her inventory was depleted so she's starting from scratch to build it back up. She has enough done to open shop up on our website early this week. We have our site now set up with a PayPal Shopping Cart and Checkout so that will help a lot. I'll put this link to the site here as soon as it's ready, but for now here's the photo that will be used on the woodturnings page .....


Me on the other hand dabble in many odd things, as you well know ..... here's one of the finished switchplates on the "blue bathroom" wall ....


We were over at Lynny's today .... it's been 2 weeks since we unloaded the U-Haul .... I think she and John are doing better than we did at 2 weeks ....

Her bedroom is almost finished being painted ..... laundry room remodeled and painted (awaiting washer and dryer delivery on Mon.) and many trips to Lowes (over an hour away) have been made in the past 2 weeks with a whole lot of stuff in the garage awaiting for the planned home improvements. I think winter is the perfect time for this since you don't have the rivers and lakes teasing you to come out and play.

I haven't done anything else with the outside Holiday lights .... it's been too cold, so my outside time is spent hauling and cutting firewood. Now I'm starting to think about the inside decorating .... I have started with this string of 7 bubble lights ..... you can't see them other than some blurry lights but take my word for it .... they're really cool.

The Quest For The Perfect Beer Glass

So this is the stuff I left out of yesterday's video .... I'm sorry about not including a more detailed look at the shell trailer but I promise to that the next time we go by there .... if it's not too cold :) .... it was really really really cold.

The Monthly Booze Run Video :)

This morning the light was hitting the top of the mountain ridge across the river and this photo doesn't even come close to how beautiful it really was but here it is ....


Now here's 9 minutes you can spend watching this when you could have been doing something constructive ...

Banana Nut Muffins

22 degrees this morning when I took this deckvision photo ....


Cold weather makes me hungry in the morning so I loaded up The Food Network website and picked Tyler Florence's recipe for Banana Nut Muffins .... I just happened to have 2 over-ripe bananas. The recipe called for 4 bananas so I just cut the recipe half. Once again .... holding my iPhone in one hand and a spoon in another .... I made the video ....


Don't you think I could take Rachael Ray's place on the Food Network?