Why I Oughta...

That's Elliott from Pete's Dragon on a Hidden Mickey Cast Member's lanyard pin that one of the girls traded for at Disney's Yacht Club with the greeter right in the lobby.  There are plenty of scrappers that we come across that are Hidden Mickeys but a close look at the back/edges of this one, makes me think that this one is the genuine article. Over on PinPics, it says that this one is part of a series that includes other dragons/lizards like Mushu, Malificent , Figment  (and Figment chaser, which we own and that I've posted a photo of on the blog ), and Madame Mim .  

The Babe traded for this Tinkerbell Disney Pin that has [June] on it and must be part of a monthly series of pins, right?  There's limited information that I can find on the pin.  I've turned to my usual source of eBay and while there's other J une birthstone-related Tinkerbell pins , this one just turns up some generic descriptions.   PinPics isn't any more help as they don't have this one in their archives . This pin is interesting for the big pearl on it - and the dimension that it adds.  The pearl is about 1/2" raised off the pin, so this is one of the larger pins that we've ever scored - and this one was traded for from the boat guys at the International Gateway outside the backdoor of Epcot .   There are a few pins that we've traded for over the years that stand out in terms of being 'good finds'.  This one ranks up there.  Along with this vintage Polynesian Christmas one (that I don't seem to have posted) or this Minnie Mous

I've pointed it out before, but one of the spots that I'd like to tackle first in our #newoldbackyard is t he 'entrance' or traffic path that we use to get from the front to the backyard.   I posted about a walkway, bridge and pond setup that I thought might work here on the blog back in July .  Recently, I had our landscape contractor come out to talk about some options and how we'd tackle them - and in what order. There's screening material needed (trees), hardscaping and maybe even some retaining walls involved.  And that is just to get us to the point of having a setup where we could think about something like a water feature/waterfall (which...I really want.) One of the ideas that came up in my conversations with landscape designer was the idea of decomposed granite walkways.  That's a photo of one up top.   It came from here .  I like the look of paths made out of the stuff and you see it in lots of places both formal and informal.  There are d

Now that we're based in Downers Grove, we're A LOT closer to The Bavarian Lodge in Lisle .  We've been a few times when we were out in Naperville with Nat's folks, but it was a hike all the way from Elmhurst.  We took the kids and had a pretty good meal (Schnitzels all around!) with some great pretzels.  The place has a strong reputation for a pretty amazing beer selection.  We're way, way, way out of our element when it comes to appreciating all of the greatness in the ever-changing beer menu. Doesn't mean we don't try things.  If there's a Solemn Oath Brewery offering on the menu, I think that Nat and I will usually go in that direction (Rooting for the home team and all, right??).  But this past time?  No Solemn Oath it seemed, so we had to go elsewhere. Being summer, I ended up with a Radler.  The Pfungstadter Weizen Radler to be exact.  It came in this tall, lean glass and was a delicious treat!  If you're there this summer, give it a sh

We installed exactly two items on the walls of our #NewOldFarmhouse .  The first was a television.  I mounted it on the wall in the first few days after we moved in.  The other?  Our cuckoo clock that you see above.    I posted about the clock before when I posted a photo from my sister Vic and described how we bought our clock in the Black Forest and then after receiving it, how it went right into storage. Ours is an eight-day version, so the big weights you see in the photo have a long way to go to reach the floor, but I keep yanking them up after just a day or two so we've never had them dangle close to the reach of the kids. There are three kids on the clock with the middle one not glued down, so we have to place her over to one side or the other.  With it striking just the cuckoo at the bottom of the hour and playing a song at the top of the hour, I've grown to really like hearing it around the house.  It was running a bit fast, so I moved the flower circle up the

It took us about a month, but we finally got the big screen doors working properly out back.  These are the larger doors that lead to the #newoldbackyard and little patio we have out there.  They have this self-closing mechanism that allows us to set them to self-close automatically.  It is pretty great - especially when you live with three little savages that don't EVER close any doors behind themselves.  Except, when it turns into a guillotine when one of said kids doesn't open them far enough when they try to sneak out. It *does*, however help incredibly well with keeping the house flies out of the, ahem, house.  They remain just flies for the most part now.

I mentioned in the post about our King Crimson Maple tree last month that we had planted nine trees including a Magnolia tree that we put in our front yard.  That's it above.  After I 'limbed it up' a bit by taking the leaves/shoots/small branches off the bottom few feet of the main trunks of this Saucer Magnolia.  We've never had a Magnolia of our own, but Equation Boy/Man and Vic had one at their house and Greg, our former neighbor had one.  Nat has long fancied them, so in working with Chris Paul at Green Grass Landscaping , we decided to put in a Saucer Magnolia in the front yard. In looking through the care and pruning advice in this piece , I decided to work on the tree to put more of the energy into the top range of the young tree to try to grow it up a bit.  Ours had leaves all the way to the ground, but if you look at photos of intermediate growth Saucers or larger, mature Saucer Magnolias , the successful ones have been 'limbed up' to get the f