Retail Therapy

 I was in a pretty grumpy mood yesterday.   Annie's dialogue won't write itself.  She is a complex character for a five year old.  It takes a lot of curiosity, mirth and coffee to write Annie.  I had to shake the grumpy mood fast.

 

Home Depot did the trick.   I bought five boxes of star drive screws.  One of every length they had from 1 1/2 to 3 1/2".  

I don't think this is what my grandmother had in mind when she tried to teach me the finer points of retail therapy. But we do what works, don't we?

Kubbs for Monica

Yesterday was a lot of fun.  After officially becoming a dance mom, I took my daughter out to Mama's Coffee House to celebrate her performance.  We met up with the other dancers and their moms.

This gave me a chance to finally give my friend Monica her birthday present.

Even thought it was hard to come up with a theme for this kubb set it is definitely my favorite one so far and was tons of fun to paint.

What I value most about Monica is she cannot be summed up by a favorite team, color or animal.  There is just too much going on in her mind.  But she does love color, so that's where I started.

I chose ten fun recycled/rescued paints from the shelves for the base colors and only let them repeat four times throughout the set in the decorations.

This gift is green. Everything but the glue is recycled or rescued.

Paint and Valspar varnish from the paint shed at the recycling center.

Scraps of dowels and a slice of bamboo for stamping the circles.

Wood from the cull bin at Home Depot, a construction dumpster or two and the scraps bin from Black Hawk Hardware in Charlotte.

If you are interested in Kubb, here is a quick easy to follow video explanation of the rules:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgei5ImLXKo

Seed Starting

Starting seeds inside isn't really that hard.  Or so they say.  But I have yet to get it right.

Granted, there are external factors involved.  The first year I tried, there was a very helpful three year old picking the "flowers" to show mommy.  The next year I placed the pots in a higher more out of the way place then promptly forgot about them.  My third attempt moved away from prefab peat pots using home made recycled newspaper pots on old cookie sheets.  Unfortunately this was the year we got two kittens.  Most of this attempt ended up in the vacuum cleaner.

Last year I saved the giant sized costco salad boxes.  Placed upside down on a coffee table, each box held eight newspaper pots and served as a tiny little green house.  Even though a few seedlings survived and made it to the garden I still consider the effort a big old fail.

The table the boxes were on took up a lot of space in the living room.  The boxes them selves were too light and awkward.  Cats, happy doggy tails, clumsy grownups and vacuum cleaners knocked half the garden to the floor.  Then there were the mushrooms.  I forgot to poke some holes in the tops of the salad boxes.  They retained too much moisture.

At the risk of jinxing myself, I think I finally have it right this year.  This year's set up is less invasive than the others.  I clamped a 10" wide strip of ply wood to the window sill to make a base sturdy enough to with stand  a six kid playdate on a rainy day.

Two 10 gallon aquariums hold the pots.  The glass sides let the kids "see" without touching and are high enough to keep the cats out.

So far I am using recycled coffee cups from Mama's because they are abundant.  I will make some paper pots out of rough drafts when I run out (if I run out) of coffee cups.

The first round of tomato seeds are popping up.  Very exciting.  Hopefully this set up lets me get one step closer to my goal of a year round harvest.

  

This is not the Kubb you are looking for. . .

Yet another custom kubb set.  A good friend of ours with tendencies towards the Dark Side requested R2DKubbs so that the Force may knock them down.  

I promise to post the finished product, complete with Death Star King.  This set offered some new challenges and lead to some neat discoveries about Valspar cabinet gloss varnish, Killz primer and sharpie markers.  

More Custom Kubbs: Purple!

This set of kubbs went to my sister Catherine.  An artist friend of ours made a king for her so she requested some purple kubbs to match.  

My daughter was not satisfied with plain purple kubbs.  Too boring for her Auntie.  So I let her work in our artist friend's folk art pointilism style using different sized dowels dipped in paint.  This technique let a 7 year old turn out a pretty good looking end product.  

Once again, all the fun paint colors and clear top coat came from the recycling center.  If you live in the Fort Mill area, holler before you project.  I love finding the right home for stuff.  

Vi the supervisor. 

Custom Kubb Sets

This is the first in a series of custom kubb sets.  Catherine was going to visit a good friend of ours and requested a cow spot set.  

Here is where I get to brag a bit.  The clear coat varnish, primer and all the paints for this set were snatched from the jaws of the landfill at my local recycling center.   The king came from the cull bin at Home Depot.  So this set is tons of fun with a bit of good karma mixed in.  

My mistake or learning point in this project was using high gloss enamel latex paint for the base coat.  This meant that it took four coats of black high gloss to fill in the spots.