Why I Oughta...

Like a lot of you guys, we're fans of Mars Cheese Castle.  We make a trip there a few times a year and - of course - come away with a crock of the King of Clubs club cheese.   Turns out, there's a place that lives in the shadow of the Mars Cheese Castle that has decided to take a different tact towards succeeding:  Mars has gone big.  Bobby Nelson?  He's stayed small.  If you've listened to Steve Dahl for any period of time, you might have heard him talk about Bobby Nelson's.  I convinced Nat (and her folks...Dahl fans!) to make the 25 minute drive over to the cheese shop to check it out.  Above you see the sign:  Wisconsin Cheese!  Bobby Nelson is a former wrestler (wrassler) who had the move the "full nelson" named after him ?!?  Kinda awesome. Below is the shop.  If you look closely at the right side of the pic, you can make out one of the turrets of the Mars Cheese Castle.  They're like 300 yards apart.  Inside, this place is awesome

All the way back in April, I was given a Chicago-Hardy Fig Tree for my birthday by my sister Vic and Equation Boy/Man.  I somehow, failed to post about the tree all the way until I did this recent patio planter/container round up earlier this month .  In that post, I showed the first look at the Chicago-hardy fig tree that is in a yellow container . Today, you can see in the photo above the first fig that is coming to fruit.  There are three or four of these figs that are starting to grow, so maybe come late Summer, we'll have a little fig harvest. As the name implies, this fig tree is cold hardy for our zone.  The full description is here .  With this being in a container, I'm thinking that I can move it to the garage or screened porch to provide it a little bit of winter cover with the hope that it comes back to life next Spring after living through the hard frost.  Since this is in a container, I'm not counting it in the list of trees planted at Hornbeam Hill.  Th

Bench via WoodsmithPlans.com In March of this year, I posted a photo of a wall-hung workbench that I came across on Instagram .  The photo above is of that same bench, but comes from the source of the plans:  Woodsmith Plans .  They're offering a plan for sale for the bench plus the tool holder above and the little shelf for hand tools on the very top for $10 .  I think I've settled on going with this direction for both a bench in my shop in the basement, but also for a garden bench that I'm now planning in the garage. This whole thing started with this initial wall-hung workbench with curves that I found online at the WoodArchivis t.  But, in looking at the space constraints that I have in my shop, coupled with some concerns about the rigidity of the curved superstructure, I've kind of drifted away from my initial plan.  In the shop, my plan calls for hanging the bench on concrete walls, which requires cleats or ledgers (as in this design above).  For the othe

Unlike the 1986 Marshall Field's Christmas Mug and the vintage Disneyland tray , this Big Mac McDonald's glass from the 1980's ended up coming home with us.  After a quick run through the dishwasher, this Big Mac glass took it's rightful place next to the other vintage glasses in my everyday use collection including these Muppets McDonald's glasses , this Snoopy one , this Chipettes one , and this White Sox 'Winning Ugly' glass .   They're all things that I remember in from my childhood and are all bought for less than a buck a piece.  If you're about my age, you totally remember these, right?  This Big Mac one is from a set of five featuring : Mayor McCheese, Hamburgler, Ronald, Big Mac himself, Captain Crook (who's he??) and Grimace.   Of course, I'll be trying to complete the set.  

Yesterday, I posted a photo of the first Disney Pin Board that I hung in the garage .  Today, you can see the larger pin board that I hung above it in vertical orientation.  This one is about 2.5x the size of the original board and can hold A LOT of pins.  Two weeks ago, I picked up a couple of these large-scale cork boards at a garage sale for $0.50 a piece.  And they threw in another smaller one that I might or might not use (depends on how far we get with our current volume of pins).  I decided to put this one *above* the first pin board mostly because it is out of reach of the kids.  I contemplated putting it right next to the first, full board, but because of where our stairs are located, that would have put this second board right within reach of the kids.  The downside is that I hung this with screws.  I learned from hanging the first one that once full of pins, these boards get really heavy.  And that means that there's no way of hanging these things that will work -

After years of collecting, trading and buying Disney pins, it felt like finally time to begin to take them out of their various Ziplock bags and boxes and put them out in a place that we can enjoy them.  What you see above is the first Disney Pin Board that holds a variety of pins that the kids and I have collected over the years.  This board came from a garage sale and if you look closely, you can get a sense for where our collection is *going*.  Hint...look up.  More on that in a different post. If you care to investigate, you can click here to see the Google Photos version of this photo .  There, you can zoom all the way in and figure out what is what.  Try to find the "Pooh Bear Collection"!?!

One last item from our recent Antique Mall visit and this one, too, is Disney-related.  Unlike both the Disco record and the Disneyland tray , this WDW Mickey Mouse backscratcher was something that I couldn't live without. I never knew how much I had to scratch my back until this thing came into my life.  They're a dime a dozen (or more like $10 to $12) on Ebay, but this one was just a couple of bucks.  Thus, it came home with us. But, the other part of this that I was drawn to was what you see below:  The Globe Mickey. If you turn the backscratcher sideways, you'll see that there's a "Walt Disney Productions" printed on the backscratcher, which helps date it 1 . There's a hole on one end of the scratcher which is just screaming out for a nail to be used to hang this thing.  Maybe down in my shop?  Or maybe next to the pinboards in the garage? Also, it is clear that the Disney bug has struck me when it comes to vintage find hunting, rig