Look MOM…No bugs!

In our den we have a large sliding glass door. When we first moved in, there was no screen on the door, so we added that to our long list of things we wanted to get for the house. About a week ago while Lan was crawling under the deck, he found the original screen. It had a huge tear in it, but the frame was in decent shape.

Lan got a Screen repair kit for $8.50 and we got to work.

*be prepared for some very non-technical explaining :)

First you take out the old screen and lay the new one over the frame. Cut the screen so that it is about 1/2 in to 1 in past the inner part of the door frame. Tape it in place so that it doesn’t move around when you push the screen and rubber thing into the groove.

Lay the rubber strip on top of the screen and use the wheel thing to push the rubber and screen into into the groove.

cut off the excess screen just above the rubber thing.

tada!!!

Then the next day, two different people ran into the screen during our house warming party :/ Don’t get me wrong, is still fine… it just isn’t as tight anymore.

Link Parties!

Please see my side bar to see who I am linking up with... lots more crafty ideas :)

Make your grass work for you

Awhile ago, we saw somewhere in blogland, the idea for growing grass as an indoor decoration. We loved it and decided that it would add a nice green pop around the house for our housewarming party. We were at home Depot, and I just couldn’t get over the $15 price tag for a bag of grass seed. Yeiks! Then I saw this idea somewhere else in blogland for using wheatgrass to decorate. Hmmm…. at least this grass you can eat and get some of your money back from it. Well, I couldn’t find the correct type of seed to grow wheatgrass (it is supposed to be Red Hard Winter Wheat)…. so I just bought some ordinary wheat…. and you want to know how much it cost me… a whopping $1.15 baby!

First you need to soak your wheat for about 24 hours. You should be able to see little white things at the end of your seeds, that is the root!

Rinse them and then lay them out evenly on some dirt with about an inch between the seeds and the top of the pot. You will need to cover them. I don’t know why this makes a difference, but we tried them covered and uncovered, and the covered ones did much better. Then you just spray the seeds with a spray bottle several times a day.

After another day or two you should see some green shooting up

Once the green reaches the top of the pot, you no longer need to keep them covered. In a week, your grass should be nice and tall :). Since these were for our housewarming, we taped some pictures to chopsticks and put them in the grass. We had these all through our house to show the before pictures.

Stump Planters

My stump planters have seriously become one of the things I am most proud of in our home. These were not exactly easy to make with palm tree stumps, because as we found out, palm trees are extremely dense.

Lan first used his reciprocating saw to cut out how large the hole is going to be. Then he used an Auger bit on his drill and drilled down as far as he could. He then took his reciprocating saw and continued to slowly cut away pieces until it was widened to his guide cut. When he was all done, he took his drill and drilled down once more. Since the stump can’t drain, we filled this hole with rocks so that excess water can collect there, away from roots.

We ended up planting Jalapeno, Sweet Basil, and Rosemary. I love these planters.. and the icing on the cake, is that it is free!

I kept telling Lan that he should make more and we could sell then for a really good price. He looked at me like I was crazy and responded “go for it babe, but I'm not doing it”

Linked to:

http://tearosehome.blogspot.com/2011/05/link-party-no-54.html

Stumps Stumps Everywhere

When we first bought our home, it had these two very tall palm trees in a planter right up against our house. These trees were huge, and continually dropped berries… lots of berries. Even though Lan swept them up every day there were always tons on our driveway, and of course that meant I was always slipping on them. We hated these trees. One day Lan stayed home from work sick, and when I got home at the end of the day, this is what I saw…

He finally had enough and hired someone to cut them down. Since they were going to charge a small fortune to take stumps away, we opted to keep them and find uses for as many as we could. Now around your house you will see stump stairs, end tables, benches,… and my personal favorite, stump planters.

Teacher Fail!

Friday, I was teaching my class about energy. We were learning about fuel, electrical, and food energy. While reading about food energy, I asked my class to stop and critically think about where our bodies store excess energy when we don’t burn it. Due to some unfortunate hand gesturing on my part (I was sitting in a chair, encouraging them to keep guessing with my hands... you know that motion), I accidentally lead my class to believe that it is stored in boobs. And guess who was the last one to catch on.. yep... me. I didn't get why my kids looked so confused and embarrassed until a little boy said he didn't want to say because it was inappropriate. “Inappropriate” I say in a loud voice. “What are you thinking of because I am no thinking of anything inappropriate...” immediately followed by “wait no don't tell me I don't want to know, I don't want to know.” All this while my previously embarrassed boys are now eager to share what they thought I was talking about. Yes... my class thought that I was talking about my boobs. teacher fail.