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Author: October

  • Vonage

    About 2 years ago we decided to do away with AT&T Uverse (and just kept the internet). We replaced our land line with Vonage, which is VoIP. Having a newer house, all of the phone lines are actually cat 5 cabling. (Funny thing when we moved in…I complained that we did not have any traditional phone wiring. Duh.)

    Since Vonage is done through the mail, I hooked it up like it said in the directions. I just plugged it into my router. Well…that limits the phone to 1 line. We have those expandable phones where only the base has to be plugged in, but we only have 3 additional ones and we have more placed we like to have a phone.

    Not sure why now that I am typing this because in all reality, we use our cell phones for everything. But anyway…

    About a year ago we had to have AT&T out for something and the guy was REALLY nice and told me how to hook up the Vonage box so i worked throughout the whole house. Another duh moment for me. I could have figured it out had I thought about it.

    Basically you take the Vonage box, and hook it directly into the cable box for the house. After 2 years, I know have a working phone next to my bed again. 🙂

  • The BEST Shower Cleaner in the WORLD!

    Yes, I am that excited about this, that I used caps!

    I hate cleaning the shower.  I always have.  We went with a solid marble shower when we built the house in hopes that would be easier to clean.  It is.  But I still hate doing it!  My cleaning routine is as follows:

    • Mold builds up in the caulk lines
    • The floor turns a weird orange color
    • Time to clean
    • Spray the caulk with the strongest mold and mildew cleaner
    • Sprinkle with Comet, let it sit for an hour
    • Scrub off the chunks (or until my elbows fall off)
    • Forget the soap scum on the walls, it is white like the marble

    I know…it is gross.  Just keeping it real.

    Pinterest is FILLED with cleaning “miracles” most of which I am skeptical about.  I made the laundry detergent which I have been really happy with.  The few other things I have tried…not so happy with.  When I stumbled across this shower cleaner and people swore up and down that it worked, well I had to try it out myself.

    The main ingredients are extra strength vinegar (pickling vinegar), dawn dish soap and a spray bottle.  The vinegar is what does the trick.  The dish soap just adds thickness to it.  Some suggested using cornstarch or flour to thicken it up…I tried it and it does not work as well.  Stick with the Dawn.

    Heat up the vinegar until it is almost boiling (about 4 minutes in my microwave for 3 cups). CAUTION: The smell is STRONG! Don’t inhale it or you will burn your nose/lungs! Mix in about 2T of dawn, or just enough to thicken it up. Put it in the spray bottle and spray on the shower. I let it sit for about 15 minutes.

    OH.MY.WORD.

    It worked!

    The 1 inch thick layer of soap scum wiped off fairly easily! I was so giddy with excitement, I got out the scrub brush and with a few strokes, the shower was clean! This picture does not do it justice. (And since I did not believe it would really work I did not take a before picture.)  You can see the window reflection on the wall and the water drops.  That WAS a layer of soap scum!

    *This will not do anything about the mold and mildew though.  I guess I will have to keep bleach on hand for that.

  • Record Bowls

    For Mother’s Day this year, I had the girls in my Girl Scout troop make record bowls. These were some VERY old Reader’s Digest records that were going in the trash, so I snagged them. The girls each had to design the front and back of the record.

    Then I put it in the oven at 200F for about 3 minutes on a small bowl. The sides will slowly melt down and just before they touch the bottom, I grab them out of the oven. The records are pretty warm, but not hot enough to need oven mitts, I just use my hands. If you wait to take it out, they will get VERY HOT and you will need mitts.

    I center the record up on a larger bowl and push it down to make the form. You can actually use any shape and even shape it with your hands.

    The final product. The moms loved them…not to mention kind of a unique gift.

  • Mother’s Day 2012

    This year for mother’s day I wanted to give my mom something she could not buy anywhere else.  I found this awesome sign on Pinterest from House of Hempworths and I just had to make it!  I wish I could say that I bought the template she offers and cut the vinyl out with my Silhouette Cameo…but I have yet to get a Cameo for my birthday, or Mother’s Day, or Christmas.  Someday.  {{{sigh}}}

    I had to improvise with what I have.  I used the projector that is in the art room to throw up the image onto a large piece of butcher paper and I traced it.  Then it took me an HOUR to cut it all out.  My template was ready so then I started on the sign.

    I bought some cheap fencing slats from HD and cut them to the desired length. I screwed on some support boards on the back. If I had more time I would have let this sit in the sun for several weeks to flatten out and weather a bit, but I was doing this at the last minute (no surprise there) so I did not have time to get the warping out.

    Since I did not have vinyl to paint over, I decided to paint the lettering onto the wood. First, I gave it a rough coat of some light grey that we had in the garage. I did not make it perfect and left several areas with the wood showing through.

    Next came the tracing around the letters. (I am telling you I was complaining the whole time that I could not just print this out!)

    And then came the black paint.

    Once the black paint was dry, I used a #0 steel pad to sand away some of the paint.

    The finished product.

  • The Weeds Take Over

    The weeds have officially taken over.  Who knew that when you tilled weeds, it is like giving them a reason to multiply???  Yes, I did not know that if you chop them up into little pieces, they just make more baby weeds…that grow into monster weeds and take over.  Like this:

    So I spent the entire day pulling weeds from the garden. I had to carefully remove the plants that had already been placed in the garden and they went in a bucket of water.

    To prevent weeds from happening again (at least as much as possible), I put down weed block. DUH! I am not sure why I did not think of that sooner, but after 16 years, I am getting smarter about those kind of things.

  • The Shoe Basket

    Since my family is from the north, I grew up taking off my shoes when I entered the house.  You wouldn’t want to track in snow and mud!  But I have lived in Texas my WHOLE life, so the snow is not really an issue.  Taking off your shoes when you enter the house is just a habit (unless you are Wade and then you don’t understand the point).  Either way, taking off your shoes helps keep the floors clean.

    We have always had 2 wicker baskets behind the couch right by the door.  The get filled with dirt, sand and dog hair, not to mention we usually have a pile of shoes outside of the baskets.  In an effort to make it look at tad bit nicer, I cut pieces for a shoe cabinet at the same time as the laundry room cabinets.  These I decided needed a door though to hide the innards.

    I had some scrap beadboard (wainscoting) left over from the girls desks that I decided to use on the inset of the door. I have never built frames or cabinets before so this was an experiment for me. I set up the table saw and made a small 1″ line through the frame pieces to insert the beadboard.

    I had to make 2 passes to get the track wide enough to fit the beadboard. Then I assembled the frame around it. Not too bad for my first time!

    For this project I opted to paint it before assembling it (since I did already have the pieces cut).  I used a metallic oil based paint that I just love!  I could have added 3 tracks and put in another basket…but that would mean more shoes would get put in here instead of the closets.

    We now have a nice place to hide our shoes!  (These are iPhone pics, so they are a bit grainy…just trying to get caught up on blog posts.)

  • Refrigerator Motherboard

    Who knew that the newer refrigerators have motherboards?

    Last summer, our fridge started making this weird revving noise about every 2 hours.  We did not think much of it and just ignored it.  Around Thanksgiving, the ice maker stopped dispensing ice.  It still made ice, but nothing would come out when you pushed the lever.  Fast forward to April…we had a storm come through on Friday evening and the power went out.  When it came back on, the fridge no longer worked…AT ALL.

    After doing some research, I found that refrigerators have motherboards in them.  And there just so happened to be a recall for ours.  The bad news was that we were over the 5 year mark and the recall was no longer valid.  It was going to cost $100 to have a repairman come out and look at the fridge, or there was a motherboard on Amazon for around $100.  With $100 gone either way…we took our chances.

    It was just like replacing the motherboard of a computer (which I am VERY familiar with since I have built my computer from scratch the last several years). Voila! A working fridge AND the ice dispenser worked again! Who knew???

  • Crown Molding

    There are two things that Wade and I swear we will never do again…but somehow we forget the pain of it (like child birth) and end up finding ourselves doing it again…over and over.  Laying tile and putting up crown molding.

    Way back in September of 2009, we decided to redo the floors, pulling up the carpet and adding laminate.  In the middle of undertaking this project, we decided to paint since the floor was up we would not have to put down drop cloths.  Of course when we went to paint, we decided to add a double crown molding to the entire entry/kitchen/living area.  We bought the molding, I primed and painted it and we went to put it up, we found out that our cheap little miter saw was not going to cut it (literally) for what we needed to do.  We painted the wall where the crown molding would go up and then left it.

    For 2.5 years.

    One fine March day in 2012, I woke up and decided I was tired of looking at this 1/2 way done paint/crown molding job.  (The picture above was taken after we had already started hanging the pieces.)  I went and bought a new miter saw and told Wade to put it on his calendar because the next weekend we were going to finish the project we had started over 2 years ago.

    And we did.

    Although we did not finish the ENTIRE project in one weekend, we were able to get the long pieces up.  Then over the next 2 weeks, I came back and cut the corners (having rounded corners meant a small one inch piece in each joint), caulked, and touched up the paint.

    FINALLY we finished!  I am so happy how well it turned out.  But I swear we will never do crown molding again…

  • Losing a cell phone

    In the 16 years I have had a cell phone, I have yet to lose one.

    When Wade and I got iPhones 4 years ago, they did not have insurance on them.  Fine.  We have never needed it before…so no big deal.  Well…that all changes when you drop your phone in a lake and can’t reach it.  I still have not *lost* a phone.

    Luckily I keep everything backed up or in the cloud so I was not too concerned, I would just call AT&T on Monday and get a new phone.

    WRONG!

    I was informed that since I did not have insurance (which is now offered) and my contract was not up until October 2013, I would have to pay retail for the phone…to a tune of $650!!!  After searching I found that iPhone 4s are in demand and you basically can’t find them unless you want to pay the $650.  Sorry, I just can’t stomach that.  If I had insurance (at $7 a month), then I would just have to pay for a new phone at the new contract price ($200).

    I started looking and found that to add a line it would only be $10 more dollars a month.  Wade and I have talked about having another phone for the girls if they go somewhere to take with them.  So…I ordered a refurbished iPhone 4s and when it came in, activated it to my number and bought a cheap phone from WalMart for the additional number.  Even at $10 a month for the next 2 years, plus the cost of a new phone, that $390 is still cheaper than $650!!!

    Is it cheating?  Yes.  But we have had our account since 1992…they have made some money on us in those 20 years.  I don’t feel so bad.

  • The garden adventure continues

    Since my new found love is Pinterest, I am THRILLED that there is a gardening section on there.  I have gotten so many good ideas for improving the black thumb I have.

    And btw…if the weeds in your garden are any indication of how much you have sinned, then forgive me Lord because I sinned A LOT last year.

    I decided not to grow louffa this year since it just takes over the back of the garage. If the world comes to an end and we have to survive on what we can grow…I KNOW I can grow louffa to eat! Instead we are going to try chayote (a green Mexican squash that is supposed to be easy to grow) and cucumbers in this area, along with onions like I did last year.

    We finally invested in a “tiller” that attaches to the weed-eater motor.  Let me just say…this is NOT the easiest thing in the world to use since you have to hold it and till.  I took the tiller to the weeks and it worked pretty well.  I did have to stop and untangle the AWFUL Bermuda grass that would get wound up in the blades.  Every once in a while I would take a break from tilling to work on the garden project I found on Pinterest.  Basically it involved building an a-frame and attaching PVC pipes to it to grow stuff.

    The a-frame kicked my butt since I did not want a 45 degree angle.  In the end, I did a 20 degree angle, but started in the middle so the cut was not as sharp. (I had to use a circle saw for the cut.)

    I used a metal plate on one side and a 6″ x 6″ block on the other side to attach the two pieces together.

    Next came the PVC pipe. I bought 10′ drainage pipes with holes in the bottom. I did not want root rot from the soil, so I thought this would allow the dirt to breath a little and drain. I cut those in 1/2 so they were roughly 5′ long.

     

    I made a 2″ hole every 8″ for the plants, using a doorknob drill.

    I permanently glued on 1 end, so that the dirt can be emptied and refilled. Painters tape covered the holes so that I could fill the pipes and I tapped the pipes every few scoops since I wanted as little settling as possible.

    The girls helped get our starters into the new pipes.

    This is the finished product. We have the lettuce and other small plants off the ground and room for viney stuff underneath (yellow squash). I planted radishes in the front and will also plant a row of carrots as well.

    Wade’s plan is to build an irrigation system for the garden! That would help so much!!!