Name Signs

What do you get someone who has enough money to get what they want when they want it, are a bachelor and just bought a house a year ago?

Well, I came up with the bright idea of a last name sign made out of wood.

This is how Adam and I work: I come up with an idea, he thinks, taps his finger to his lips, does some math and measurements, edits, then I edit and so on and so forth until we come up with something we like - whether he creates the end product or I do, this is how we work.

My initial idea was for him to sort of cut out some letters. He then wanted to router some out of a piece of wood. Which didn't really work so he wanted a template to use the router around. I had some craft letters in my craft room that I told him to try which worked pretty well. Once those letters were in the picture we then decided - well, why don't we just use boughten wood letters?

Here's the final results which turned out very nice and were very easy.


Slab of walnut, boughten letters, glue and danish oil.


Ta Da!

Successful Christmas presents #2.

Cinnamon Roll Recipe

Here is the recipe!

There are two parts to the recipe. The first part is the basic roll recipe that you can make for just dinner rolls.

Basic Roll Recipe
2 cups milk
1/2 c. margarine
4 eggs
1/2 c. sugar
2 t. salt
8 c. flour
3 pkg. yeast
1/2 c. warm water

Scald milk. Add margarine to milk while scalding. Cool.

Beat eggs with sugar and salt.
Add this to margarine and milk mixture.

Add yeast to warm water. Set aside.

With mixer add 4 c. flour to egg mixture and yeast mixture. Mix well.

By hand add the rest of the flour. Mix well.

Put in greased bowl and let raise 1 hour. Punch down and let raise again. Make into rolls. (About a small handful of dough)

To make the rolls into cinnamon rolls you will need:
1/2 c. butter
1/3 c. brown sugar
1 c. sugar
1 T. cinnamon


Melt 1/4 c. butter. Add brown sugar and spread into bottom of pan. I used my metal Wilton cake pans and had to make more of this mixture to cover the bottoms.

Mix sugar and cinnamon. Melt other 1/4 c. of butter in separate bowl.

Take a roll and roll it until its about 5 inches long and dip into the butter. Dip into cinnamon and sugar until it is covered. Tie roll into a knot. (I know this would have been easier to understand with pictures but my hands were a little dirty.)

Put the rolls into a pan not too close but not too far apart :)

Let rise.

Bake 13-15 minutes or until slightly brown on top at 375 degrees.

Train Table

One of the Christmas presents Adam made this year is a train table for our nephew. It's just the perfect height for 2 year olds to play with stuff on it and it fits this perfectly on the top.


The white stuff you see on it is just dust from sanding the poly so disregard that.

We were at Adam's sisters house this weekend and Trey just loved playing on the table. Anything that was on the table, he played with it. If you knelt by the table, he'd look at you and then kneel too because he thought that was what you are supposed to do.

The table is 48" x 32" and about 14" high. He made the base out of walnut and the top is birch plywood stained and finished with poly so all the little spills I'm sure are going to happen don't hurt the table.

Homemade present #1 a success!

P.S. If you want one Adam can make you one :)

Happy Christmas Eve Day!!!!!!

Yesterday I had planned on making cinnamon rolls all evening. But, it was Adams brothers birthday and he is leaving for Florida for 5 months so his mom had supper for him. So I rushed home and mixed up some dough and then we went to supper while it rose.

After supper I came home and made some cinnamon rolls! These are the best ever. They are my great grandmas recipe and she was famous in our little town for them. I dare you to find a better cinnamon roll!


She has been with me a lot this week as I made a present for my cousin that reminded me a lot of her and then of course making her cinnamon rolls.

Good thing I snuck one last night because I shut my alarm off this morning instead of hitting snooze and only woke up when Adam got a rescue call so I didn't even get one for breakfast :(

I was going to share the recipe with you but I didn't have time to grab it this morning.

Tonight is church, then Adam's moms side of the family. Then we wake up, open presents at Adams parents house then off to my family.

Have a great Christmas everyone!

Busy Busy Christmas Time

I've been busy working on Christmas presents lately so my blog has been neglected :( I always forget to upload pics at night and what is a blog post w/o pics?!

I took pictures of the stuff we've been up to but since they are Christmas presents and all I won't post them just in case someone sees them!

I did get away last week to go to the final four! So much fun!

Here's the team. They did an awesome introduction this year with the lights all the down/spotlights/loud music.


Here's part of the crowd.

Husker fans are the best. It's so much fun to be a Husker at a Husker sporting event. Even if you don't like volleyball it's great just to be a part of that atmosphere. Every time the final four is here we break attendance records and this year was no exception. Over 17,000 fans there and that was even in the horrible horrible rain/slush/snow storm we were having. We went about 25 mph on the way home. Got home at 1:30 - up at 6 to go to work. It was worth it!

Oh and I couldn't not show you this:


The two sets the Huskers took from Penn State!!!!!!!!! Oh yeah!

I went to the championship game too but it wasn't quite as exciting. Penn State won in 3 - guess that makes us look better though!

In case you didn't know - Penn States mascot is the Nittany Lions. IDK what that means but the announcer kept saying it and i couldn't figure out what he was saying so I had to look it up. There's your random Tuesday fact. :)

Plowin snow

When Adam called me, I said I'd tag along because when I left home he was in bed and if I didn't go I'd be in bed when he got home so I figured I'd spend a couple minutes with my hubby.

Here he is plowin away

I don't really know how I thought it worked but guess what - there's a remote to work while driving, reversing, watching out for curbs....

Here's some snow flying up over the truck


and view from behind the plow for this unsung hero (I mean, how much more important can you get than the guy who removes of snow from your parking spot. Who wants to step out into deep snow and then have to have the bottoms of your pant legs soggy. They are out there early in the mornings and late at night ensuring that you don't have to endure snow tall enough to get up over the lip of your shoes and then you have wet socks and cold feet)



I took my camera along. I still don't know how to work it. I thought I'd get out and try and take a fancy or cool picture so I took a bunch of some steps

and then I got roped into helping. Why'd I think it was smart to get out of the truck? IDK. I suppose sprinkling salt isn't so hard.

Look at that nicely plowed parking lot


Brrrr, sure looks cold.

I didn't get home until 11 that night (11 is past my bedtime for those of you who can live w/o sleep and think 11 isn't bad), didn't get to sleep until after 11 last night and probably won't get to sleep until super late tonight. Then I'll be getting up super early tomorrow because a storm is heading our way and I sure wouldn't want to not predict everything I could possibly run into on my way to work and get here a little late so I'll be leaving home an hour early.

Cookies and goodies and treats oh my!

What could be better than baking all day with good friends?

Eating the goodies!


Peanut clusters....mmmmmm, my favorite.

Each year I get together with a couple friends and we each make two things and then we divide them up. This year we made:

Peanut Clusters
Peanut Butter Balls
Oreo Balls
Chocolate covered, peanut butter stuffed ritz crackers
Puppy Chow
Almond bark covered pretzels
Sugar cookies

We are set!

Continuing on with the bathroom

Here's the hole in our bathroom ceiling left over from moving a wall:


I don't really know what the proper procedure is on filling something like this in but I got tired of it so I just stuffed a bunch of drywall mud up there.


It's not done yet. It needs another coat and then textured.

There's also cracks around where the tile meets the ceiling


so I stuffed some mud up there too


Hopefully it all turns out ok in the end. :)

Wall O' Stars

Have I showed you my wall o' stars yet?


When I went shopping for the accessory holders for the bathroom (TP holder, Towel holders, etc.) I wasn't very happy with the every day ordinary items. Plus our bathroom is so skinny it makes things difficult.

This is part of what I came up with. A star with two hooks for the washrag and hand towel and a star with a hook for my blow drier and flat iron.

I think it works pretty well. It gets my stuff and cords out of the way and still looks kinda cute. And since it isn't overly cute, it hides behind the door.

Faucet!

We finally have a faucet. It's so incredibly nice. Hot water in the kitchen? What is that? Having a pullout faucet is something that I've missed since we moved and I'm so happy to have it back.

First thing I did? Give the kitty a bath.

We also got some baseboards put in this weekend. Just the bathroom but it's a start.
What we've been living with:


Now:

Mud on the tile

We sure have been lazy lately on working on the house. Hopefully we can kick it in here and at least get the bathroom completely finished before Christmas. Really all we have left to do is finishing stuff so it shouldn't be too hard. I started feeling guilty about not working on anything lately so I decided last night to get the drywall mud off of the tile.


And wouldn't you know, it only took me like 5-10 minutes.


Why didn't I do this earlier?

Adam bought the baseboards yesterday so maybe today he'll get them up.....since he doesn't have to work today and all!

Office

Because the economy sucks, Adam's company hasn't secured a second round of financing. In order to keep the company going until they get more financing, they have agreed to go part time and they gave up their office lease.

So he'll be working from home full time now.

You can still find him though.


Anyone want to sign up for Yotify now?

Table Feet

What do you do when you have brand new hardwood floors and a coffee table with hard plastic feet?

Make a template.


Cut out felt.


Glue felt to the feet.


Discard old towel scrap that is now covered in cat hair.


Worry no more.

Which way?

Every time I put out the nativity I wonder this.

Do you face the 3 wisemen and shepherd boy toward baby Jesus?


OR, do you face them out toward you since it is after all a decoration?


Is it just me or does anyone else ponder this?

Happy Turkey Day Tomorrow!

Getting back to normal

Thats right, I put up Christmas lights this weekend. It was way too nice out and way too close to the time to put them up to not do it.

The holidays are here!

Because we staged our house back in March when we were trying to sell it, we haven't had any pictures up in our house since then. This weekend I got out the boxes and unpacked those pictures!



Of course cutting the square footage of our living space in half leaves me wondering where to put them all but I think I have it figured out. Now I just need to take the time to do it.

You've got to be kidding me

There are two curtains needed for the living room in our house. After finishing the first one, I was short on material needed to finish the second one. No biggie, even though I had bought the material at Hancock Fabrics, I knew Hobby Lobby had the material and I had a 40% off coupon for there. I had gotten the material to make the office curtains there - same material.

So I went and got some the other day.

And I got up Sunday morning and started working on the curtain. I had one panel I had already cut from the other material and so I cut my new material. I put them face together. Then I sewed.

Then I laid it out.



What the??? You've got to be kidding me right? They're two different colors. It's the same dang material only a slightly different color at different stores. I don't even know why I laid it out right side up. It should have been right side down because I was going to lay the backing on it. Good thing I did though.

Then I got angry and walked away for about 8 hours....and then I spent some fun fun time with my seam ripper.

Adam spent some time this weekend putting in a wood burning stove into the garage. My parents gave us this. They used to heat their house with this and only this stove. Cutting wood in the dead of winter to heat your house. Fun times. Let me tell you...
This garage sure is turning into the ultimate man cave.
Heat source? Check.
TV? Check.
Fridge? Check.
Tools? Check.
He'll never come inside now.


Oh and by the way, I still don't have a kitchen faucet.

Anyone disturbed by me washing dishes right next to the toilet? It's ok, you don't have to eat at my house this week. (I did this after you left Carol - no worries)

Kitchen Curtain

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Here is the kitchen curtain that I worked on last night.

A simple unlined cafe curtain right? Well....

Here is what I sort of intended it to be:


More traditional but yet I had planned on making it not quite so scrunched up.
So I created the bottom 1/2 and hung it up. Looks ok.

Hmmm, where to I hang the rod for the top 1/2? Do I hang I hang it high and cover up the top of the window frame? There are squares at each corner on the window and so I could hang the rod on the top of the window on the inside of the squares. That didn't look right. Or I could hang it on the inside of the frame. There is a blind hanging there right now and I could take that off but it might come in handy so I'd rather not. That left hanging it at the top of the corner squares on the outside.

The top 1/2 that I made isn't that wide though. It fits, but it isn't shirred at all then. Well, I have a pattern or two that also show the top not shirred. Like this top left corner one


This makes it look a little more contemporary but obviously with the material I've chosen, not too much so.

Here's the question. How does this look? Do I want to add some length to the top and make it more shirred or does it look good the way it is?

Additional info: I have something to add to the top to give it a little more color but that will wait until I have all the other curtains finished.

More curtains

More curtains done!







4 down, 4 more to go.

Mother: Click HERE. Then call me. I think I have an idea.

So much for saving....and cleaning

The faucet in our kitchen sink leaks. Add one more thing to the list to fix. I went online last week to see if I could find a good deal. I found one on Ebay. We bought it. It came on Friday and upon taking it out of the box we were relieved to find it to be a nice quality faucet. Yes! However, there was no brand on it. Who would manufacture something and not put a brand on it. Oh well, not a big deal.

So last night we proceeded to empty all the cleaning supplies from under the sink and attempt to take the old faucet off. We couldn't reach the nut. How in the heck did they get it on there?

Adam runs downstairs for some reason or another. He comes running back up. Guess what. Our fridge is leaking. Yes, our brand new fridge. So that gets pulled out into the middle of the room, more tools collected into the kitchen, towels to clean up the water and a shop vac.

Ok, he got the fridge fixed.

Next, his dad shows up with a long wrench to loosen the nut. So now there are all the old faucet pieces laying around. And then the new one and all it's pieces came out. His dad and him worked to get the new one set in place. Pretty soon he came to get me and said that he needed to go to Menards. He broke a part.

We ran to Menards. They don't have the part we need. Since the faucet is from who knows where and made by who know who. So much for buying on the internet and saving.

There is good news. The packing slip has a website on it and Adam thinks he can get a part off of there.

But now the kitchen is a mess. No sense in putting it all away. There is no faucet in the kitchen. At least for a week.

Gone Huntin'

My family hunts. Even many of my female family members. Not me though. I never wanted anything to do with it. It's not that I'm against the killing of animals for food. That isn't the case at all. Sitting outside for days on end in the freezing cold weather DOES NOT appeal to me. No thank you.

Adams family doesn't hunt. He has some uncles who do but it isn't a big thing with them. But this year, he decided he wanted to join my family. So my dad let him borrow his brand new gun and he went out into the cold and sat with my dad for hours and hours on end. Since it's his first time he sat with my dad in his blind. Since we have had so much rain lately, there is still a lot of corn in the fields and the deer are hanging out there instead of in the woods so they didn't really see a whole lot happening. After many hours of sitting there in the freezing cold I guess they decided it was time for Adam to go out on his own. After only 5 minutes of being on his own Adam got his first deer! I'm so proud. My dad got one at about the same time and Adams was much bigger :)

It's also a lot of work. We do our own butchering. The deer must go from this:


I won't show you all the pics I took this weekend but it goes through multiple steps until it looks like this:


Then we send this to the locker. They will be making us some jerky and grinding up the rest so I can make whatever I want to with that later. It'll probably get turned into more jerky in the dehydrator and some summer sausage. It was a successful weekend and Adam will be joining them again next year.