LaurenandLloyd.com

where our wasted time becomes your wasted time

Home 'Improvement'

Baby ‘Maters

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You’ve probably been wondering how the Con*Blo*Gar’s doing, huh? Well, my friends, it’s fine in some ways, not so fine in others.

Rabbits ate all the lettuce. I’m not too upset about it, because it wasn’t very good lettuce in the first place. If rabbits are satisfied with sub-par greens, more power to ’em, I say.

The cucumbers are growing profusely. Brad said that I had to decide if I wanted them to grow sideways and smother the flowers, or out into the lawn. I rejected both of his offers and chose …. up! I hastily made a cucumber ladder.

Leaning tower of usefulness.

A tenacious first hold.

It’s leaning against the window because we want to get new windows. One good break ought to put the fire under our behinds, right?

Timeout here for an explanation about the green boards. When we were in Missouri, Sam asked us what was the deal with our green cinder blocks. Well, when Lloyd and I were poor and living out in Maryland, we made some simple brick-and-board shelves to hold Lloyd’s giant library of books. When we moved to Seward and bought a house, we classed up our book storage by painting the components green. Spiffy, huh? Well, now that we have other shelves the blocks and boards are finding themselves reused in several ways. Don’t you feel edified now?

Back to the produce. I have two baby tomatoes!! Hooray!! That might be all I get from this experiment, but I’m calling it a success at this point.

A stitch in time….

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…. would have been a good idea.

It was a rather productive day ’round these parts. After a trip to Concordia bookstore this morning Kristi & Joanna left us. It was so nice to see them again, and Joanna drew a lovely Thank-You picture for us.

Such amazing writing for a post-kindergartener!

Then I began The Eradication of The Carpenter Ants. We’ve known for over a decade that we have carpenter ants in the trees out back, but – as Brad always says – laziness always wins. So save your scolding, because I know this should have been done before now. Phase One involved squirting Terro liquid into the two gaping holes in the buckeye tree and beginning to fill them with mortar. (I happen to have a heap of mortar powder in the basement from tuck-pointing some bricks in the basement back in the 90’s. Yes, yes – cement would have been better, but remember that we’re not scolding today.) I could only fill them partway because it would drip out.

After an afternoon of various projects, errands & meetings, I bit the bullet and sprinkled Terro powder around the trees and holes. This is the Big Guns kind of stuff – the poison you have to wash off your hands. The cats won’t be going outside for a while.

Then, more mortar went in the holes.

Action shot!

There was still the issue of it dripping out a bit, but we solved that with some plastic wrap.

Squish. Stay put.

Yes, I washed my hand afterward. That’s Big Gun Poison, y’know. Now we’ll always remember the Day We Waited Too Long To Save The Trees.

That's Lloyd's hand.

Home again, Home again,

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Jiggedy Jig.

Well, we left St. Louis today and it was sad saying good-bye to my parents, my sister and my nephews. We had a great time and it would have been fun to have it go on forever. *sigh*

When we left Aunt Ruth and Uncle David’s the night before, they called to say that we left Lloyd’s keys there. We stopped by this morning to get them, visited for a little bit, then stopped at TRADER JOE’S!!!! It is right by their house, can you believe it??? (It’s the store from the song, if you didn’t see that post.) We didn’t have much time, but we walked through and bought a couple of goodies while I sang the song….in my head….. mostly.

Thumbs up for cool stores.

Anyway, this post is not what you should be reading. Get yerself over to bradaptation.com to see the wonderous marvel that was waiting for us when we got home!! Our gardener Brad is AMAZING!!!!! Thank you, Brad! Thank you, Beth! Thank you, Harold!! You guys rock!

Brad’s Room – check

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Brad, your room is ready. Well, it’s not vacuumed yet but we’re pretty sure you won’t care if that doesn’t get done. Right?

The drawers from our old bed now have a home, too. Remember when they looked like this?

Back in the olden days. Like....Sunday.

Well, they live in Brad’s room now as a ‘dresser’. I stacked them, put on a top that has non-matching fake veneer, and tacked it all together. (First with tape, then with screws after I realized I was an idiot.)

Lloyd thinks these items look photoshopped.

The bottom drawers have sweaters and junk inside, but the top ones are ready to hold Royuk property. The cat night light on top is so you won’t be scared of the dark.

Suggestions welcome

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We’re not what you’d call ‘house proud’. In fact, usually things only get cleaned around here when they appear in a post picture and I realize how awful it looks (dirty countertops, hairball-ridden floors, grimy cupboards). Eh.

Just awful.

This area is someplace I’ve noticed on my own, though, and I’d like to do something about it. The trouble is that I get incapacitated by my ‘but then’s. “I should call somebody to replace this stoop! But then I’ll have to look up a local concrete place. I’m sure they’ll do that – right? Yeah, but then I have to find the phone book and talk to somebody. And what if they want to come over? Then I’ll have to be home. What if they DO replace it and they goof up the siding? I should just go watch t.v. and try to forget about this.”

I’m pretty ashamed of this, though. It has two areas of giant canyon-like cracks, and also two areas where avalanches have happened. Those flowers on the corner? They’re holding up two broken-off pieces. That big area with the chunk missing has a river of rust going down the side. (In fact, this picture is shaming me so much, I’m going to go out and WEED, for cryin’ out loud.) I’m such a slob.

So, what do you think? Is it repairable and repaintable, or do we just ask someone to come destroy it and build a new one? or what?

Bye-bye, bruised thigh.

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Done!

We went back to Omaha (after a very nice visit with the Kolliparas) to get the tabletop this afternoon. It went as smooth as silk. They loaded ‘er up, we brought it home, and then proceeded to argue about the best way to attach the new top to the old bottom. Luckily Annette and the Pesters stopped by before I got too angry. It’s not that Lloyd’s wrong – he just doesn’t think like I do. He’s all “Take your time and do it right” and I’m all “Just let me slap it together so I can watch t.v.” – and those don’t mix very well. Plus, I had already assembled this thing three times in my head during church, so it was practically a done deal.

As I said, it was a good thing we had company. We used our nice words from then on.

Good-bye, wicked corners. No more crashing into you once a week.

A good size, I think.

Lloyd helped with the centering of the two pieces. He seems to like math, so I said, “It’s all you.”

The tape was my idea. His was better.

When it was all attached, we took off the plastic around the edge. It has eight supports inside that slide out to hold the leaves – the marvelous leaves that hook around the edge! (Thank you, Harold, for helping.)

Like reverse Maypole dancing.

Without the leaves, it is 52″ in diameter. With the leaves on, it’s six feet. The old table was 5 feet square. So here’s the math problem for the day – which one has the larger area? How did you arrive at your answer? (Show your work.)

It's huge!

So, it’s done. It’s a pretty good match for the base, though the top is a tad darker. I’ll just have to dirty up the bottom, and all will be well. If you’d like to see what the real thing is supposed to look like, click here.

Who's that laser cat back there?