LaurenandLloyd.com

where our wasted time becomes your wasted time

Lauren

Uke Night 2

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Saturday night was our second ukulele gathering in Omaha, and again -it was fun.  We played some Christmas songs and learned how to play a tremolo.  (It’s where you play back and forth across the all the strings very quickly at the end of the song to make it sustained.  I prefer to do it while biting my lower lip – rock star style.)

Again, Lloyd was a trooper and played along.  There were fifteen of us this time – one more than last time.  Three people had just started to play that week, and for one lady, it was her first time to hold the ukulele ever. Sadly, the hot girls from last time were not present.  Instead, we had the addition of a 10-year-old boy who REALLY had the lip-biting down.

Rockin in his hot jacket.

Snowing in the basement

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One of the ideas for Kate and John’s wedding is to hang snowflakes all over the enormous cathedral ceiling. Off and on I’ve been working on spray-painting and glittering them. (They are mostly metal – some purchased from ebay and some were handmade by a kid at John’s school. They’re awesome. The less awesome ones are plastic ones from Mennards.)

So here’s a view of how I spend ten minutes a week, and also a glimpse of our dirty basement:

Boy, it's really drifting to the north.

Well.

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(By the way – Happy Birthday, Mark!) 

Darn elves.  I’m going to have to start leaving traps out. Lloyd and I came home from Lincoln tonight to find that a certain ‘bathroom elf’ had left some pretty towels for the bathroom.  Well, I had planned a perfectly good evening of sitting around and watching important television shows, but no – I had to do something to justify a new post.

May I present – the Holiday Bathroom, inspired by Sneaky Lady

The towels that started it all...

Yes, there’s a tree in my bathroom.  Funny story.  I put up our old tree in the living room a couple of days ago, and several times since have thought, “I really should buy a skinnier tree that fits in that room better.”  This evening when I was looking for other stuff in the basement, lo and behold – I found a box with the skinny tree I bought last year.  It’s fun being absent-minded.

A tree? In the loo?

 A tiny view of the window.  I don’t know what I’m doing with the camera.

A window view

Painfully slow

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I can’t believe how long this dumb bathroom project is taking.   Everyday I come home and think, “Eh.”  It’s a miracle if I get one thing done – like take the tools out of the room.  Anyway, over the course of a couple of weeks, the mirror is back up, a curved shower curtain rod is up, and the curtain is up.  Yippee.

Before

 

 After, but not all the way after

 

 

Favorite Vessel

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At first I titled this post ‘Favorite Pot’, but I knew you yahoos would make all the obvious jokes, so there – do something funny with ‘vessel’.

Anyway, this my enameled red cast iron dutch oven from Target that I love like a child. It’s so pretty, and makes anything cooked in it appear like I’ve really slaved, y’know?  You can’t dish something out of a dutch oven without thinking, “Boy, this food must have had some work done on it.”  It’s not fast and flashy like a frying pan, or quick-to-boil like a saucepan.  It takes minutes for this thing to heat, and even longer to cool down.  I love it.

Chili, or nectar of the gods?

Walking on water

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On Saturday, Annette, Melanie and I went to a conference about natural playground environments. It was at the Arbor Day Farm in Nebraska City – a very beautiful place. The first part of the day was inside, listening to presentations and discussing topics. The second half of the day was spent OUTSIDE in the FREEZING COLD going on WALKS in NATURE. BRRRRRRR!!!!! I whined pretty much the whole time, but there was one very cool part. Our second hike was a Silent Walk, where we walked without talking through the woods and down to a frozen creek. The ice was about an inch and a half thick, so it was cool to stand on it and see stuff moving underneath

It's always about my feet, isn't it?

By the way, the last part of our hikes was supposed to be finding a tree, getting to know it, and perhaps move our bodies in ways that represented the tree. We skipped out at that point.