Parking Area Project – Phase II

Finally it is time for Phase II of the project.  All of these damn camping trips keep getting in my way of progress!!  I found ‘Backhoe Mike’ on Craigslist (found out he was right around the corner from our house) and he came over this morning to dig out the trenches for the drainage from the backyard and the ‘footers’ for the retaining block wall.  If  you’re looking for a guy with a small backhoe in the Frederick area drop me a line and I’ll forward on his information.  I was also able to get 5 ton of gravel delivered this afternoon to start working on backfilling my drainage trenches.  Here are a couple of pics of the progress..

Pic looking from the back yard over to the neighbor's house

In this picture you can see the 12×12 drainage catch basin’s that will be installed in the ground.  I will be incorporating the gutter on the left of the picture into the first basin and then the second will be at the back center of the parking area. 

The 'footer' for the retaining wall...

 Mike and I were very surprised that we didn’t hit any large tree roots being so close to the 80 foot trees around the parking area.  Good thing we didn’t because I was sick and tired of changing my plan up to this point!

Shot from the bottom of the driveway

 Here is a good picture looking up the driveway from the road.  Shows the ‘new’ fence location and another massive tree that we had to ‘build’ around for the parking area. 

Bottom side of the retaining wall 'footer'.. The rounded area

 For people that know me, I can’t do anything ‘easy’ so I had to incorporate an arced section to the retaining wall.  At the farthest edge of the wall I’m going to be putting in a 30amp plug for our trailer and a lamp post to give general light to the area. 

The main trench for the drainage from the back yard

 This will be the ‘evacuation route’ for all of the water from the back yard that is currently running into the neighbor’s yard and creating a massive river (and erosion) when we get downpours.  I also had a ‘leach bed’ (for lack of better terms) dug right where I was standing when I took this picture to make sure that we didn’t have a massive erosion issue now in our own yard. 

Mini Pancakes, Trans-Fat, Crisco, Kidney Fat — NEW PROJECT!

Try to keep up.  I know that this conglomerate of words above really don’t mold together..  Or ..  do they??

So..  Picture it..  Sicily 1923..  (Wait.. wrong program) 

So.. Picture it..  I’m downstairs thinking about the promise I made to the girls to make them a new batch of mini pancakes for their breakfasts when I decide that I really need to get this done.  No problem..  It’s only 10:30 on a Thursday and I can whip out a batch (which consists of about 6 dozen mini pancakes) within an hour or so.  So I run upstairs and head for the pantry to pull out the Bisquick. 

Oh crap..  First problem..  No Bisquick. 

Hmm, then I remember my mom talking about a ‘homemade bisquick’ that she used to make for us.  Soo.  I run back downstairs to the computer  (Google to the rescue) .  With a recipe in hand and more confidence and Aunt Jemima,  I head back upstairs to start my own version of Bisquick.  As I’m finishing the recipe and start to cut in the shortening, I am cringing at the fact of all of the trans-fat that I’m ‘incorporating’ into my daughters’ diets.  At this point I think that there has to be a better way.  So I think ‘old school’ …  LARD. 

As I’m finishing up the 6th dozen of mini pancakes on the griddle my mind is in a constant flurry of  ‘Where can I get some Lard?  Do they sell in the grocery store?  WWGD?  (What would grandma do?) ‘  Once Hamlet and I have tested way too many pancakes and I eagerly finish the last batch; I’m ready to head back down to the computer to find some good lard outlets..  As I find out doing my quick google searches, the lard that you find in a common grocery store has been homogenized so it’s a no brainer that I don’t want this. 

My next thought is to search for ‘organic lard’.  My results?  Only 4 pages on google.  (For google, this is really pathetic..)  K.  Fine.  I continue my research..  Can I render my own lard?  How do I do this?  Can I buy/ship it? 

The end all is that I need to find a local meat locker / farmer that I can get ‘leaf lard’ or pork kidney fat from.  This is the best and ‘purest’ lard that you can cook with it.  Well, come to find out, that I may be a locational lucky human cause I was able to track down some un-rendered leaf lard from a local butcher shop. 

What does this mean?  This means that next week, I’ll be in my back yard with my turkey deep fryer rendering down some good ‘ole fashioned lard. 

I’m SUPER excited for the new project!  I’ll keep everyone posted on the results!

Tags: lard, leaf lard, organic lard

Great room update..

Okay,

So it’s been quite a while since I updated on how the great room is turning out upstairs..  Here are a couple of pictures..  Still need some baseboard and the room will need to wait for new furniture, but it’s getting there.  I’m very excited on how the floor turned out.  It only has one coat of polyurethane on it..  Needs two more at least…  Enjoy…

Great room picture from back hallway

Great room picture from dining room corner

Great room picture looking into the kitchen

The floor... The dreaded floor...

Tags: Floor, removed wall

Grab the miracle grow, the yearly garden is in process…

There is nothing better than rolling up your sleeves and getting down and dirty with mother earth.  The Charles family garden is in full swing and at full capacity.  This year we added an additional planting box to the side of the hill to incorporate some new plants, and have scaled back the amount of similiar plants from last year.

Let’s have roll call…

2 – Tomato plants

2 – Green Pepper plants

2 – Zucchini squash plants (very excited about these..  There’s nothing worse than having zucchini that grow to a massive size and you can’t slice them up and fry them.  Because let’s face it..  what else do you do with zucchini?  You can slice them up and mix them in a brownie mix, but seriously those damn things grow faster than dandelions and multiply quicker than rabbits…)

2 – Cucumber plants

1 – Cilantro  (yummy!  i can see some Baja Fresh Salsa in my future…)

1 – Sweet Basil

3 – Strawberry plants (not sure if we’ll get any fruit before the birds do)

1 row of scallions  (Getting ready to plant one more row as well)

and finally

2 – potato plants that we must have missed during our harvest last year  (lol!!)

Now, I must confess that I’m no master gardener but from the great results last year, we just needed to expand a little bit.  We also do not go crazy with the amount of plants.  It’s not like I’m trying to can and preserve an entire basement full of food for the winter…  It’s just a great feeling to have some fresh produce grown in your yard and not shipped in from South America.

When we were growing up we had a massive garden compared to what we have planted in our yard.  And my sister and I would both cringe to wake up on a summer day and find the line  ‘weed the garden’ on the chore list.  Ahh, are you kidding me??  Even a migrant worker would turn this job down.  To this day, mom and dad still say they never had this as a ‘to do’ on the master list, but we both beg to differ.  I guess it was one of those impossible tasks that we all put on our ‘lists’ that we know will never get accomplished, but maybe.. just maybe, by an act of God it’ll get done.

While Sara and I don’t do the ‘major harvest’ that included snapping green beans and/or canning tomatoes for hours on end in our kitchen growing up, it’s always wonderful to watch something grow and it gives the girls a little bit more appreciation on how much we take for granted just going to the grocery store and buying fresh produce.

Mia inspecting Dad’s work…

…Back from the nursery and Mia ready to plant the garden…

Flounder Cupcakes

Okay,

So it’s another daycare birthday and I just didn’t want to send in ‘normal’ cupcakes.

Hannah has been really into the little mermaid (and that’s her birthday theme) so I decided to create little flounders out of fondant for each of the cupcakes..

Take a look at the progression…

The Wonderful Magnetic Wall

This was a project that was inspired by the constant influx of projects flooding the inbox at the house from daycare.  I was unaware of how many special art projects that the girls where going to create, and now I can only imagine how many more are going to be coming down the pike once they hit elementary school.  With Sara being an avid scrapbooker, I new that I needed to have a place to store this stuff and yet I still wanted to be able to see the most special projects, but I also didn’t want to have to fight through the piles of papers when I was just trying to get something out of the fridge.  So, I relied on the good ‘ole internet and google to help me come up with what I call the wall gallery going down the stairs into our family room. 

 I started by buying what is called magnetic paint from a company in Pennsylvania called Lyt.  You can visit their website here http://www.lyt.com 

And actually, it’s not really magnetic paint at all, it is iron powder that you add to paint and then just roll it on the wall.  And as they say, after a couple of coats, you can hang magnets all over your walls.  Well, that’s true, but there’s just one little catch…  As usual, I couldn’t do things easily right??  I had to be painting the entire stairwell walls going down into our family room…

Wow, was this a chore..

 The project took a total of 5 months (off and on) from removing the old wallpaper (wait, let me rephrase this–  fiber wallpaper) and then sanding the walls and priming and then adding 4 coats of the magnetic wall paint primer and then two coats of white paint it was finally finished…

 Now, if I didn’t have the girls to tend with, I probably could have had this done in a couple of weeks, but I took the suggestion of the website and used an oil based primer.  Well, every time that I painted, it stunk up the house so bad that I didn’t want them around when I was doing it. 

 End all, I also added a nice set of track lighting on the ceiling so that the girls can now add their special art projects to the art gallery so we can see them everytime we go down to the family room.  Oh, and I have also bought some magnetic photo frames from Lyt and added some pictures to the walls as well.  Looks pretty baren right now, but eventually, I’m sure they’ll be so much stuff, that we’ll have to start removing projects…

I’ll add some pictures soon, once I can find them!

Playset Roof

This project started after our neighbors were deciding to throw out the playset that was in their back yard.  At the time (*grin*) they didn’t have any kids and didn’t have a need for it.  So, as cheap as I am, I brought it over to our house piece by piece.  Some of the pieces were extremely heavy!  It was constructed out of treated lumber.   Mostly 2×6′s and 4×4′s with deck planks as the flooring.  It was definately heavy, and especially heavy trying to manuver it back into place once I got it over to our house!

It was custom made by the old owners of the house and it had a real roof on it before I disassembled it.  Well, I couldn’t save the roof, but I did save almost everything else.  I needed to buy a couple of 2×4′s and some spindles to make it safe, but after a good two weekends of work, I got it back online and the girls love it!

Well, it sat outback for a good couple of months before we decided what we were going to do with adding a roof.  I had looked online to get a canvas roof but they were expensive!  Over $200 for a canvas roof, I just couldn’t part with the money, so here’s where the project comes in.

 I went out to JoAnn fabric and found some vinyl that was on clearance for $2 a yard, plastic thread, and some snaps to hold it into place.  End price…  about $30.  Couldn’t beat that savings.

Now, I will admit that I broke a needle when I was sewing it on the sewing machine and you had to work really slow, but after a couple of hours I had a sewed roof for the playset.  But Sara and I were really happy with the final product.  Take a look at the pictures below.