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This little tidbit is funny, but since everyone I know that checks this site is good with plants, it is going to hurt your heart. I am NOT good with plants. I do not care about plants one little bit. I am ok with everything being a weed fest, but I also recognize that that makes me a yard slob. You are going to see some of my slob yard. I throw vegetable scraps out my window to my ‘compost pile’, but they actually just go out in the ‘yard’ area. Have at it, squirrels.

When we were packing in all the cutting tools from the tree job and going inside, Lloyd was ahead of me. He pointed to the weeds and said, “There’s a tomato.” I looked at the swath of weeds and said, “What?”

Again, I said, “What??” He said, “A perfectly ripe, red tomato in the middle of the weeds.”

Well, I’ll be.

A tiny little tomato plant with one lone tomato on it. Looks like my throwing scraps out the window is working out pretty well for me!

What a feast!

Ok. Chainsaw story tomorrow.

It is a miracle that this house hasn’t fallen down around our ears. Lloyd and I are not stellar homeowners. We have holes in bathroom ceilings, a front door screen that needs to be replaced, and a big ol’ crack in the basement wall.

The crack is not actually our fault. I’m pretty sure we didn’t do the first repair there, but it definitely has opened up over the years. Part of the problem is that there has been a tree right by the foundation since we bought it. Over the years we have cut down the tree, but that dang thing just keeps growing back. This time, though? We took it out for good.

Lloyd got out his trusty chainsaw. The neighbors were right next to us and I reminded them that the emergency number to dial is 9-1-1. They got a chuckle out of that and then hurried inside. I wonder why….

Lloyd put in a valiant effort with the chainsaw, which we discovered was pretty dull. (Another post about that is coming.) He cut halfway through, then I finished it off with the sawz-all.

Once it was down, we painted some tree-killing poison on the cut edge. Bye, tree. It was nice knowing you.

Remember when I was so high and mighty about Nebraska Furniture Mart’s furniture – all plastic-veneer-covered particleboard? Well, hold on to your hats. Lauren’s doing a big ol’ 180.

So, now that the guest bed legs were stained and looked a little better, the glaring grey metal was so obvious. Yes, this is a guest room. Yes, the blankets usually cover the frames. Yes, the only people who ever use this room are our friends who don’t care one whit about what we have. But…….. the metal…… looked bad to me.

Well, it was probably time to Lauren this thing up. Bring on the duct tape.

That’s right – wood grain duct tape. Specifically, wood grain duct tape that DOESN’T MATCH ANY OF THE WOOD IN THIS ROOM.

Specifically, wood grain duct tape that doesn’t match any of the wood in the room that ran out before this project was finished. (The sunlight has been absent this week. Once I have good lighting I’ll take a good photo of the table in its new home.)

*sigh* Kathryn’s coming this weekend. I hope she doesn’t notice. More duct tape will arrive after she leaves.

Oh, here’s the table in the sunlight! So pretty!

(Who are we kidding? I am totally going to point out the troubles to Kathryn.)

If you are unfamiliar with the children’s story, let me sum up: If you give a mouse a cookie, he’ll ask for a glass of milk, then a straw, then ask whole bunch of other stuff that will make him tired thirsty and he’ll ask for a glass of milk, and the milk will remind him of cookies, and he’ll ask for one. Something similar is happening with this new table.

Sam and Gracen helped me get the beautiful, all-wood, new table into the house, and once it was in the guest room, suddenly the WHOLE ROOM looked like garbage. Ugh! What is a lazy cheapskate to do? I’m working with old college bed frames, supported by ‘legs’ that I made from scrap wood. Well, the first step was to stain the legs.

Slightly better, and it looks much nicer with the ‘wood’ of the end shelves and the actual wood of The Beautiful Table (which, no, I have not shown yet). What do do about that ugly metal frame, though?

That’s tomorrow’s story.

After I left my adorable little kabin, I went into Omaha to visit some of my stores. I went to a couple of thrift stores, Costco (of course), The Container Store (just to look around), and then Nebraska Furniture Mart. Lloyd and I have mused about getting an actual side table-type thing for the downstairs guest room, since this is what we’ve been working with: a plastic folding table. (Good enough, honestly.)

I walked all over Nebraska Furniture Mart and didn’t see anything I liked. If I did like the style, it was made of laminate-covered particle board (which I have a fair amount of, to be fair), but it just looked…… not great. Oh, well,

On the way back home, I stopped at a little Amish furniture store that sells very, very nice furniture made from actual wood. There was a coffee table that, while not exactly the right size, was awfully close, and it was also marked down. Sold!

The very nice Amish people (they dressed like normal people, so they must just be Amish dealers) loaded it up in my truck and I brought it home.

What does it looks like? That’s a story for another day.

Last weekend Lloyd needed to go to Missouri for a board meeting, and then he went to see his parents. I was a little miffed because I wouldn’t have a driver for my early morning fire, so I fixed it my own self: I rented a cabin.

Not a nice cabin, mind you, but a KOA Kabin. (It did have two rooms instead of just one, so I guess it was a mid-range kabin.) I was so excited! All week I planned what I would take and what I would need, and after work on Friday I skedaddled up to Gretna (just outside Omaha).

I would have been thrilled to have just done regular things, but as it turns out – they were having a Halloween Event for families! The whole campground was decorated, they had an outdoor movie, and there were all kinds of events on Saturday (that I didn’t stay for).

It was great. I liked the security of the cabin – it has a lock. The community of a campground is nice – all those people paid money to be there, so no dumb high school/college kids are going to come in and get drunk. I loved it!

And yet again, I made a video for my family. You can watch it, too!