So We Got A Dog

And here he is…names Diesel…because of his black spots.  The previous owner named him.  He was a good dog…until he ran away….

One day later at 3am!

We are currently on the hunt for him to see if we can bring him home.  Looking all over town was the special of the morning.  He is an Australian Shepherd.  This picture does him no justice because was handsome as all get out.

One of our friends said that their dog found it’s way back to it’s old home just by smelling the air and it’s good sense of direction and it wasn’t even an Aussie whose breed is known to be really smart.

I hope craigslist comes through for us on this one.  The kids are pretty sad.  Us parents are pretty sad.  Right now all the memories we have was one glorious dog filled day with him and that’s it.

Sigh…..

Diesel where are ya man?

UPDATE: We found him!!!! That afternoon the previous owner whom I had called up and told her the predicament drove down to our place and drove her truck up and down our streets, then she went home and came back with a bowl of his food to jangle out the window so he would hear it and cone.  Before she got to the end of our street, coming from the woods out trots Diesel panting like an elephant (they pant, right?) and then just hops up right into the truck and she brought him right back.  Since then he has run away 2 more times so we have renamed him Deen – as in James Dean, cause he’s a rebel.  And as in Hou-dini, because I have no idea how he could wriggle out of two choker chains to escape the way he did.  Thanks for everyones help on Facebook and craigslist and all your kind, kind words. 

FAIL

My FL State Real Estate Exam actually said that.

No lie.  FAIL.

Yes that is the current torn floral wallpaper in the kitchen right now.  This thumbs down can be for that too! Haha!

I’m going to allow myself 24 hours to mourn that test and then I am back on that test horse for the weekend and hopefully I can take it again as soon as possible.  The lady from the test company said I can take it as soon as they have their next available space and I’m comfortable taking it again.  What? Did someone say Tuesday of next week?  That’s my plan y’alls.  I’m determined to get the mastery over this thing.

BONUS MATERIAL: Phone call with Michael after I got out of the test…

*ring. ring. ring.*

Me: Hey….

Him: Heeeeey baaaaabe…..

Me: You got my message huh? (The 1st call went to voicemail so I left him a message.)

Him: Yeeeeeeaaaaaahhh……don’t worry, you’ll pass it next time.  Everyone fails tests sometimes.

Me: Not you.  I bet you never failed a test in your entire life!

Him: Ummm….I’m sure I have.  Maybe once.  But I can’t remember it right now….I mean……….nevermind.  Yay you’ll pass next time!

Me: —_—……thanks babe.  Hanging up now.

Is anyone else out there a two time test taker now that they are getting up in years? (I turned 30 this summer so I’m going to try and get away with blaming that for as long as I can get away with it.)

This Is My Brain…

This is my brain on coffee…

In these past two days I have accomplished many great things.  And all thanks to the mighty powers of Java the Cup.  I tackled one major project on my “Get-it-Together-Before-School-Starts-and-you-Have-a-whole-new-slew-of-Projects-to-Tackle” list.

#1!  Get all of our Little Beanettes hair clips in order in one central area so our morning routine seems more like a graceful ballet rather than some herky jerky rave concert from the 90’s.  (Do people even do those things anymore?  No.  Seriously I wanna know…)

#2!  Get the lounging chairs sanded completely and prepped for their new stain.

Now out of these 2 projects I actually was able to completely tackle the 1st one of organizing my daughters hair clips and barrettes into something I can easily maneuver every morning before school like a boss.  So how do you go from this…

To this…?

Read on and I will let you in on my madness turned genius.

First, I went to Pinterest to find some inspiration and I stumbled upon this beauty of a thing –

So with this in my head I set off on my own variation of the same thing.  Here’s the materials list:

• Scissors
• Poster board in any color that tickles your fancy
• Ribbon or material cut into strips
• Glue gun with glue sticks at the ready
• Measuring tape
• Pencil (I know you know, but you never know who doesn’t know!)
• Paint or markers or crayons
• All of your hair accessories

To start I measured my door space to see where I wanted my name board to call home.  It was pretty easy to settle on a space because earlier in the week Michael took down Little Beans towel bar off her door.  It was completely not functional because she is only 3 feet tall and the bar was installed about 7 feet above the ground and that spelled trouble for her towels drying ways.  Down it came and left this to remember it by:

I measured from about the middle of the top row of boxes to the top of the 2nd row of boxes for the name plate to rest. It came out to 24″x8″.  I cut out my first piece of poster board to the exact measurement and then made a second piece of fluorescent pink poster board to lay under it and measured it just a smidge larger to create a small border around the white piece.  Like so…

And then I just let my imagination run wild.  I hand drew about 9 different name options from cursive to block print to robot letters to lips for her i in her name on pieces of scrap paper and she finally settled on what I affectionately call “The Greek” font version of her name.  I painted in butterflies after Michael wrote a few sample ones for me.  I hot glued the 4 corners of each board together and they dried really quickly. Now since I didn’t glob the paint onto the board either that dried rather quickly as well and I was able to just keep moving onto the next step.  Which was finding the right ribbons.  So into my bags o’ fabrics I dove…or we dove because the kids helped too.  Along with playing some midday dressup!

And this is why I keep random pieces of fabric in bags in the corner of our room Michael.

I picked out 7 pieces of fabric and just cut them down to size and hot glued them to the back of the board.  She picked a few, I picked a few, and now looking back at it I think it would be fun to switch out a few of the colors one day.  Keep it fresh right?

Next attach the MacGyver of all tapes – Duct Tape – to the back of the board so you can stick it onto the door. I simply rolled it up into an oval like this and used about 5 of them across…

I pressed it against the door and then attached all the barrettes I could match and not match up onto the ribbons.  This is where you get to be all crazy creative and put them wherever you’d like.  In the end you will end up with something like this.

Now if only I can figure out what to do with all the rest of these headbands and other accessories…

Just kidding.  I’ve already got something brewing up there already.  I’ll let you know when that gets off the ground.

Anyone else working on something crafty in the kitchen?  Share and share alike y’all!

Pinterest photo from ourfifthhouse.blogspot.com

Don’t you just love the …

Don’t you just love the smell of sawdust first thing in the morning? It smells like progress to me!
– I’m preeeeetty sure Confucius said that…

Yeah…So Here’s How NOT to Use a Table Saw

We’re diving into finishing our office flooring situation.  We are laying down Brazilian Cherry laminate wood flooring.  It’s tremendously delicious!  It has this deep dark woodsy matte finish that we just died for when we saw it at our local flooring store.  Well, not so local – the place was 30 minutes away, but still so worth it because the flooring was on sale at .89 cents/sq. ft.! Whaaaaat???? Yes please and can I have some more?!

Here is a picture of it in all its glory after we fitted our living room with it…We were in the middle of painting that nooked wall gray.  It turned out nice.  We’ll share it one day with y’all. 

And so like I said we are laying this same exact flooring down in the office.  So we put our new Ryobi Table Saw up in the room to make our quick cuts in the office and cut down on sawdust traffic in the living room because originally it was in a room all the way across the house.  Now when we started it up, after a few cuts smoke was coming out of it and we were all like “What’s up with that?!” so we shut it down for the night and regrouped the following day.  Oh this all happened this last weekend by the way.  So Michael goes off to work and I go ahead and try to tackle the mystery box that is our table saw.  We bought a cute little meaty Ryobi Table Saw + Stand Model RTS10 in case you have the same one and come across this same issue or in case you are looking for a new one.

Here’s the rub.  I had to change the saw blade on the table because the one that was on there was from a previous friends project and we had lent the table to them to use.  So off I go with my handy dandy manual and my brains and my goggles and mask all ready to get this thing done when I realized that the manual can get kinda murky at times.  Like take for instance p. 19 of the owners manual…(read it below or scroll to p.19 in this link to the manual)

—————————————————————————–

TO CHANGE BETWEEN A SPREADER AND A RIVING KNIFE

See Figure 12.

This saw is shipped with the spreader/riving knife placed in the non-through cutting or “down” position (riving knife position).

NOTE: The spreader/riving knife must be placed in the through cutting, or “up” position (spreader position), for all other cutting operations.

 Unplug the saw.

To place in spreader position (or “up” position for all through cutting):  Remove the throat plate.

 Raise the saw blade by turning the height/bevel adjusting handwheel clockwise.

 Unlock the release lever by pulling it up.

 Grasp the spreader and pull it towards the right side of the saw to release the spreader from the spring-loaded riving clamp.

 Pull the spreader up until the internal pins are engaged and the spreader is above the saw blade.

 Lock the release lever by pushing the lever down.  Reinstall the throat plate.

To place in riving knife position (or “down” position for all non-through cutting):  Remove the throat plate.

 Raise the saw blade by turning the height/bevel adjusting handwheel clockwise.

 Unlock the release lever by pulling it up.  Push the riving knife down until it is below the saw blade.  Lock the release lever by pushing the lever down.  Reinstall the throat plate.

RELEASE LEVER (UNLOCKED)

IN “UP” POSITION FOR THROUGH CUTTING

RELEASE LEVER (LOCKED)

IN “DOWN” POSITION FOR NON-THROUGH CUTTING

Fig. 12

———————————————————————-

Now do you see the last 4 lines that are highlighted?  I did that myself and it doesn’t look like that in the manual.  The choicest words that I was scratching my head over was “IN “UP” POSITION FOR THROUGH CUTTING” and “IN “DOWN” POSITION FOR NON-THROUGH CUTTING”.  Now I thought that they were referring only to the release lever so I added the riving knife to the spreader however I didn’t lock the release lever by turning it into the down position because I thought “Hey I’m making through cuts with my wood and it says leave in the up position for through cuts right?”  (I know that sounds ditzy but I’m a super visual person and you have GOT to see the figure pictures on page 19 and then you will see that I am not completely crazy for thinking they were talking about the release lever – it’s veddy veddy tricky that manual)

I WAS WRONG!!!!!! OOOOOHH SOOOOOO WRONG!!!! (and you saw table experts know where this is heading right?)

I put the goggles on.  Check.  I put the mask down.  Check.  Plugged in the table.  Flipped on the switch.  Blade starts up.  I approach with my first board and the second it hit the blade would you believe it that the whole safety unit (blade guard, anti-kickback pawls AND the riving knife) went flying at me like a bullet!  Thankfully I played JV and Varsity tennis in high school and have reflexes like a cat because I had to move like lightning to get out of the way of the shrapnel that flew off that thing!  It all happened so quickly.  I ended up with little bits of blade shard stuck to my upper arm which did no damage really but other than that I came out unharmed. I thank God that I am on this side of that incident alive and well to tell this cautionary tale.  It could have been 100 times worse.  After I was able to take my wobbly finger and turn off the blade I unplugged the whole unit and sat on the floor shaking like a leaf.  And all I could think about was that touching episode from Extreme Makeover Home Edition of that young kid who liked to do home repair around the house for his single mom and one day he chopped his hand off with his table saw.  True story.  Poor kid.  Just trying to do something nice.  But my story has a different ending maybe because I wasn’t wearing a large leather coat while doing it?  Ay, ay, ay….

I immediately called the Ryobi hotline # that was on the manual and by then (call #3) I’m sure the 3 people answering the phone were whispering to each other like “If it sounds like a young woman with no clue just give her the runaround and hope she starts crying and hangs up in frustration.”  I got “Georgie” on the phone and between my bad reception and his thick syrupy southern drawl we got absolutely nowhere.  By the end he was just agreeing with me to get me off the phone I think.  “Mmmhhmm…yep…sounds like you got it….if not then call us back….yes ma’am…..” I hung up frustrated but sans tears and not completely defeated.  There was only one logical thing I could take away from that last phone call and it was 

“Do you have a Home Depot nearby?”

“Yes I do.”

“Well why don’t you go by there and look at their floor model and ask how they put theirs together.”

SOLD!  I got the kids in the van lickety split and straight to Home Depot we went.  Thankfully I had 2 guys that walked me through the process of putting the thing together – SAFELY – and in the end everything worked out.  The moral of this story?  ALWAYS LOCK THE YELLOW/ORANGEY COLORED RELEASE LEVER IN THE DOWN POSITION NO MATTER WHAT KIND OF CUTS YOU ARE MAKING!!!!! (was that too hard of a sentence to put in that there manual of yours Ryobi?)

Whew….I felt like I needed to write this post because when I was looking for information on this particular model I couldn’t find much weirdly enough out on the world wide web.  So hopefully here is a little help for my fellow Ryobi 10″ Table Saw with Stand Model RTS10 owners out there.  Holla if ya hear me! 

This whole shrapnel deal happened just yesterday and I have pretty much worked my nerve up again to get back on that table saw horse and get that room done, but now I think I will start that blade up after a well placed prayer.  And at lunch Michael begged me “Please don’t lose a limb I’m begging you!”  So here goes nothing…

Anyones else a semi-newbie as well that can swap shrapnel stories with me?  Any words of encouragement or caution that have still been left out of my owners manual?

Table saw pic source: www.cybuyguy.com

 

Here’s The Happs…

Sorry I’ve been gone for a spell.  Life.  It moveth so rapidly. Here’s a few things that have been going on since we last spoke…

I have slowly – and when I say slowly I mean slooooooowly – but surely been refurbishing our 2 antique chairs down to hopefully something I will want to live with for the rest of my life.  Here’s an “action” shot.

Those tiny hands are being put to good use on this intricate piece.  Her “What I Did This Summer” essay will win her absolutely nothing I’m sure.

We I actually mourned the passing away of Big Wicked aka “Bee Dubs”.  Yep he bit the dust finally.  And all through sheer accident actually.  After introducing him to you back in May and after weeks of playing hide and seek every time I had to do my laundry one day my child must have went in to get something from the dryer and came upon B.W. (we pieced this theory all together after the fact) and in a frightened state must have thrown one of my head scarves onto the beast and ran off.  The next day I go in to put a load in the washer and as I walk in out of the corner of my eye I catch a glimpse of my beautiful scarf on the floor tucked behind our massive 1982 water heater.  Now…I am at times known to be scared of my own shadow so something like this was definitely not something for my faint heart to tackle.  

MIIIIIICHAAAAEL!!!! (that’s Michael my husband in case you can’t decipher my yell spell)

I got him in the laundry room and just pointed to it and it was covered in a massive spiderweb which I thought must have happened when my son threw it back into the corner of B.W.s house.  So my husband picks it up and whoa and behold I hear a quick “Aaaahhh!!” aaaand STOMP! That was all she wrote.  Big Wicked died because he naively thought he was movin’ on up to that deluxe head scarf in the sky and in one night he set up shop in my scarf and when Michael moved it he freaked and ran which made my man drop the scarf and subsequently stomp him out.  I was sad for about 2 days because then I freaked out about who will kill all the bugs that meander into our house at 1:38 am with no invite now?  But then I remember the 5 other B.W. cousins that still live in that room and the mourning period ended.  

For the faint of heart like myself, I will spare you the death pic…just know he left quite an impression…

Now what else, what else is new……….

OH I KNOW!

We finally heard back from the insurance company and they ended up cutting us a measly little check for $200 to cover the roof leaks.  200 bucks.  When we got that in the mail I said “Ummm lets just go out for a fancy shmancy dinner because this won’t cover anything roofwise.”  But we didn’t.  We are trying to be all adult like and responsible.  So instead it now sits in our roof fund as our beginning amount.  I can’t complain cause it’s definitely more than 2 pennies.  Which is what I thought they would send us in the mail.  Attached to an index card with scotch tape. And a note scribbled onto it saying “Good try suckers!  And that’s our 2 cents on the matter!”

I should never get a job for an insurance company.  I can see all the lawsuits now…

Oh and this came in the mail today… 

Suddenly tonights school shopping extravaganza doesn’t seem so daunting.  I love shopping but not waiting in the waiting rooms for my kids to come out.  Now the Hubs and I will bring our 3rd friend along and browse the pages for inspiration.

So that’s what’s new with us…what’s new with yous guys?  Eh?  How is your summer going?  Anyone else in love with the back to school season?  I get so optimistic about life.  Maybe because I was the class of 2000.  Boy did they sell us a dream or what?  Where is my flying jetpack and personal robot?