Why I Oughta...

About 10 days before Christmas, our amaryllis looked like this .  But on Christmas day?  It had bloomed!  All four ways.  It was a spectacular flower and as luck would have it, the final of the four buds opened on Christmas day.   That's a shot of the white/red beauty above.  There were four of these double petal stars for us to enjoy for a few weeks.   You'll recall that this is the bulb that we picked up at Wannemakers and it was far outperforming the cheap one from Menards .  I'm really so pleased with how this - the $14 version one - worked out for us.  The Menards one ($3 one!), is still chugging along, but it is all green shoots and no stem so far. Next year, the Babe already has plans to get after these things at scale.  And by 'scale', we're talking about 4 or 5 of them.  She's thinking that in addition to us trying a couple different ones, we can work on a project together and be in a position of gifting them already planted around St. Ni

Every year for the past eight years, I've been documenting our Christmas trees here on the blog and it has been fun to look back.  I'm not talking about the front yard trees , however.  Sure, I've been doing that , too, but this post is about the trees we're had in our house.    Here's the post showing our tree in 2016 - our last one in Equation Boy/Man's house .  Above you see something that I've labeled V1 of our tree, because this year, we had two trees.  This one, in the green room, is a Fraser Fir and is adorned with vintage glass ornaments that we've acquired over the years at garage sales and estate sales.  Also has an angel that we scored at a yard sale up in Michigan.  I'll post a photo of the other tree from our Family Room later this week. Here's our 2016 tree - our last one in Elmhurst . Here's our tiny tree from 2015 at Equation Boy/Man and Vic's house . Here's the tree in 2014 at our old house . Here's the post

Yesterday, I posted a photo of the set of legs that I had built that were the beginning of my new miter saw station .  Today, you can see the two frames that I built that will go on top/in the middle of those set-ups.  The leaner one on the left is the one that will go on the bottom and be the bottom 'shelf' and the wider one on the right will be the shelf that the bottom of the saw sits on top of.  There's another layer/level of platform that will sit at the very top that will be even with the table that is at the top of the saw.  Each of these were spec'd to be put together with pocket screws, so I went ahead and followed those directions.  You can see the pocket screw holes below: Let's call this step 2:  the bases are built out. 

This winter break, I've embarked on a few projects to get my shop up and running in the new house.  The first project is a mitre saw stand.  I figure that if I get my saw up off the floor onto a stand, I can then begin to make a few other tables/benches to host the other tools and what-have-yous that I've collected over the years.  I have two Christmas's worth of tools to unpack and set up and actually use. I'm using this plan from the Home Depot with a few modifications including the addition of this Kreg Precision Trak and Stop Kit , so that will require me to use a thicker fence than what is spec'd in the plans.  I also think I'm going to add a dust shroud and dust collection near the end.  But, the first few steps in the plans - which focus on the legs and the base pieces, I'm going straight by the plans.  In the photo above, you can see the four legs that I put together with 2x4's and a 2x6.  The plans call pocket screws, so that's what I

Starting the year out the right way:  celebrating vintage Walt Disney World with this Electrical Water Pageant Transportation Collector Card. I've posted about these in the past.  Here's one from the Friendship Boat that we received leaving the Yacht Club dock as we headed towards Hollywood Studios.  And here's a post from December of 2016 (can't say "last year" any more?!?!) showing a set we received from a captain on our way to the Wilderness Lodge . This one is kinda odd, isn't it?  I mean...it isn't exactly transportation, right?  You can't ride on it?  I guess it does move, but if that was the only requirement, they'd offer cards for things like horses that you can't ride or some of the other maintenance vehicles?  Maybe they do?!?!

Another year in the books and another set of 365 posts.  Hard to believe that we've put another year in the books.  It was quite a year for our family.  New home.  New town.  Same awesome crew.  This marks the 365th post of the year here on this blog.   Dozens of posts on the family blog, too. Here's to a great 2018.  Who knows...maybe we'll even update the wings list ?

I was gifted this leaf blower upgrade for Christmas this year and with the thin, light powder that came down this week, it was a perfect time to try blowing the snow away.  No back strain.  No work involved, actually.  Worked really well.  Won't do the trick when the heavy stuff comes down, but for now?  Loved it.