home..

I sure do love my ma and pa!

I was home this past 4th of July and got some solid time with the family.... the time included
-leff lucky town visit
-summer shandy
-pool time
-making up a new pool game
-getting bruises from said pool game
- life chats
-tie dying t-shirts!!!!!!(get em while their hot)!
-gossiping with girlfriends

and many many more memories!

It was splendid.

congratulations to joe and hilary!

Congratulations to our friends who got married this past weekend!

the had their cake.

and ate it too!

 And you'll never guess what they used to eat it with.... Forks! I thought it would be fun to put my new metal stamping equipment to work for a special wedding day present for them!

I got out my trusty anvil (who doesn't want a 9 lb anvil for their 24th birthday).

Then my armadillo bank used the anvil as a magic carpet.

Tomas helped me clean up my supplies!

I found some trusty forks at an antique store.

AND I gave them a bath in this homemade cleaning solution.

recipe for jewelry cleaner found here: CLEAN!

I stamped away...

happy birthday, big brother!

the happiest of birthday wishes to my favorite big brother!

Keep on Smiling!

"support your local drive in theatre"

Good Old Drive in Movie Theatre!!!We went the Friday before last to one out in Tomball it was GREAT! We saw Brave AND Avengers.

check it out!

old movie projector

the ants go marching.

big wheels keep on (wood) turning.

That is a wrap on all those weekend DIY adventures. 

And now for something completely different

AND

incredibly awesome.

A few weeks ago I took a wood turning class. 

To learn more (Wikipedia) about wood turning click here.

The class was 9 hours (yikes). but don't worry the teacher took a lot of smoke breaks. 

We state with a block of huckberry wood. I didn't take starting picture BUT it basically was a stump of wood, bark and all. 

We affixed it to the lathe (gotta love using a drill) and got turning. The first goal was to make it a more even cylinder by taking off all the bark etc.

This is it when I had made some progress.

This is a lathe.

After a lot of turning, flipping the bowl and turning the inside, we had a finished product!

I just loved the whole experience. And I am trying to figure out how/if I can continue this potential hobby!

if you give kate a garden you will have to...

Add lawn furniture. So I have been REALLY craving some sort of bistro set for the outdoor area BUT everything seemed really expensive. Until I rolled into this... ONLY $29 for the chair and $8 for the table

This was one of my weekend projects and I was SO proud when I assembled it myself.

Looks comfy, eh?

Perfection.

So here are some before shots of our back rectangle.

view to the right (if looking out from my door)

garden that isn't really growing.

view to the left of our back rectangle.

And some AFTER shots!

Don't you just want to hang out!

Who wants to come and be the first person to sit and have a life chat with me?

my garden...

So with my new back yard (or what I like to refer to as our back rectangle) I was really excited at the potential of a garden.

OK to be honest the idea only came to me when I saw this "as seen on TV" item (Ive NEVER seen it on TV).

Roll it out?!!?

Looks very strange.

Add Gnome. (Not a required step)

It's been "growing" for about two weeks now... and nothing is happening but I am still excited about it!