Gone Fishing

With Christmas fast approaching, I would like to share a few pics of the completed "West Wing" festively adorned with sparkly baubles, lush pine garland and of course a beautiful tree. 

  Unfortunately the camera fell in the fish tank and drowned.

 Whatever excuse you believe, something fishy is definitely going on here and it does not include construction pictures....just some pictures of fishy purses with a link to another website for the pattern

 Make It-Love It.

She includes an excellent tutorial too.

It's a Dog's Life!

Dog lovers are pretty easy nuts to crack when it comes to Christmas.

Anything for their furbaby and they are over the moon.

  I was cruising the internet looking for inspiration

and saw this cute idea on Hometalk.

An adorable sign

and so true too!

I created an assembly line and went to work.

I bought some 1x8 boards and cut them into

12' lengths. 

Painted each board with brown acrylic craft paint and let dry.

A Timeout Stool

The secret to great children is

"Always Eat Dessert First"!

If you don't

then you will probably need a time-out stool!

Cutting A Circle On A Table Saw

It was a day of planting trees and fighting off swarming bees. 

grow my little babies!

 After picking up never ending storm remains and fighting off more bees......

 I backed into this pile only to get a sliver in my butt!

  I also cut two circles on a table saw.....I really did.

(and fought off more bees)

and didn't cut my fingers off...

You can see how to do it on this YouTube video. 

 I don't think Mr. Circle guy invented the wheel but he

 showed me how to make one, so cheers to him.

I found this cool thing on Pinterest that involves circles, which I would show you,

 but then I would have to kill you and hide your body in my

 basement somewhere, and that might smell. 

 After all, I just finished cleaning it out. 

But do stay tuned to see what becomes of my tablesaw circles.

No harm will come to you!!!

I PROMISE.

Source

Now to find a mirror with ample magnification

for butt sliver removal.

Cheers.

Faux Candy Apples

BOO

I love to trick people and when I saw these faux candy apples at

  Stow and Tell U's post a few weeks ago, I nearly fell out of my shell!

 Amy found some great Halloween and fall ideas,

  I knew I had the supplies on hand to trick everyday

 folk into taking large bites of Styrofoam. 

 We could laugh together as they

 beat me down with the remaining apple stick. 

 I seem to have a thing for faux fruit. 

 You can see more apples here:

  Apple Christmas Tree

I started by drilling some pilot holes in the

 apples so that I didn't collapse the fruit when

 inserting the twig.

Glue and paint were mixed just like the instructions at

Tidy Moms Blog. 

 You should pop over and see her apples.  They are suweeeeet!

Glue paint was poured over the apples

and a few sprinkles were added! (one more step in my trickery)

After they were dry, I sprayed each apple with a few coats of satin clear coat spray paint.  Gloss paint would have been more suitable, because who doesn't like shiny things.  You gotta use what's on hand.

You guessed it!  It wouldn't be Feral Turtle if there weren't any spiders....

For permanent adhesion, I opted out of hot glue and used contact cement.  Worked like a charm.   

 I decided to use them at our Thanksgiving buffet for labeling food.  I was going to use them as name placement cards but being trapped at a table full of hungry peeps would have me  dodging flying sticks.

Somebody actually screamed and threw one of the apples on the ground shouting spider obscenities.  Poor Charlotte didn't know what hit her.

After straightening out her legs, she was fine,

 although hours later I found her swimming in the punchbowl

 singing old Irish folk songs. 

 Somebody spiked the punch! 

Cheers.

Sharing With Friends

@

Katherine's Corner

Giant Allium Chicken Wire Flowers

My daughter sent a link inspiring me to get outdoors and think of my flower beds!  But all it did was make me obsess over how I could fabricate these big A$$ purple flowers with chicken wire. 

With no instructions on the link, I was forced to create my own Giant Allium flowers with only this amazing picture to guide me. 

I scrounged some chicken wire from my Chicken Daycare Project.

I used this heavy ball statue for a jig,    I made a bigger one with a basketball and it worked great!

You could use anything round and hard,

 

This will be where the stem gets attached. 

I used some bamboo stakes that I stole from my greenhouse tomatoes.

  When I only had three of them to spare, I ended up using metal stretcher rods from an old car tent which were salvaged to build the Recycled Greenhouse Project.  I like the metal rods better as they can be forced  into the ground  very easily.

 Some duct tape was added to the stem to cover the poky wire ends.  If only  I would have had green duct tape to begin with.

Now you gotta pull it off the mold and twist the top closed while trying to keep it ball shaped.  I didn't get a picture of this step, but it looks like an open top flower at this point.  Twisting it closed will bend it out of shape but with patience and perhaps some gloves, you can coax it back to a round ball.   The excess wire was cut off with side cutters and  pushed down to keep a globe like shape.

It's hard to see in this photo, but I covered the stem in floral tape.  At this point I still need to pick up some purple spray paint so I might buy some green duct tape from the dollar store to cover the stems as I am pretty sure the floral tape won't hold up to the`great outdoors.

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And off to town I go.....

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Got the purple spray paint and green duct tape. I sprayed all ten of them, wrapped some of the stems and tried my best to get some half decent shots....I know you already went to the other site with better pictures.  That's okay.  I think I've been there at least ten times myself.

Speaking of garden art, guess what we finished.....

Our leaf plantation started here.

We will need one more leaf in this area to complete the trio.  But for this season, we will settle for twins!    They both light up at night and probably freak the moths out.

Okay....go and check out the original picture one last time!  Aren't they amazing......traitor!

Cheers!

A Stone Cottage Birdhouse With Dormers!

My sister was my inspiration for this birdhouse.  

 Her birdhouse is amazing and huge, and when I saw it, I knew I had to build one.   

   Mine is small and modest and I built it that way cuz

 I don't have a maid who can clean

 my birdhouse all day.... all those windows! 

Wood pieces here

Grey Silicone here

Rocks here

My window frames were made from salvaged barn board.

Grey exterior caulking was used as the adhesive and grout!

This was used around the windows to make it look like the lights are on.  I think my lights were off when I did this.  I can't say this is my favorite part of the birdhouse.

Now to add the perch and hole side.

I beefed it up with some 3/4 inch plywood so that I had some meat to attach the perch to.

Shingles were salvaged from an old shed here on the homestead.  I think it took two shingles cut into smaller pieces to cover the roof.

I bought this sheet metal from a liquidation place years ago.

and turned it into a ridge cap!

And three seasons later, here she is....

Still standing!

Cheers.