2015 Wrapped in Warmth

While 2015 may be filled with hope and promise--right now it is filled with plenty of wind, ice, snow and frigid winter temperatures. So, with that thought in mind, I thought it would be fitting to complete a couple of quilts for cuddling up during those chilling nights of howling winter winds and abundant snow. Never mind that I had started these two t-shirt quilts over a year ago. Never mind that I had promised myself that I needed to finish these before I started on another custom crafting project.

It was cold outside and I wanted those blankets completed dang it! So I dug out all the needles, thread and the sewing machine to get started. Of course, once I had everything laid out and ready to sew, I realized I did not have the right needles or thread. So, one trip to Hobby Lobby (before the frigid winter storm hit) later and I completed my preparatory plans.

Two afternoons later, I am happy to say that I succeeded in finishing both quilts. The result: one quilt representing my collegiate years and one quilt reflecting fun family vacations and memories that span from kindergarten to high school.

My Collegiate Quilt: From team shirts to shirt "trophies" (shirts were often given to event champions instead of medals), this one would have definitely been appropriate for the many cold weather meets I can remember (i.e. the Concordia University Polar Dog Invite).

Now, I do not quilt in the same sense as traditional quilting. I don't know if I have the patience for that so I do the next best thing--I sew giant squares together and connect them to a blanket. This produces much faster results and avoids the pain-staking process of intricate patterns, batting and miles and miles of stitching. This method ensures a warm and cozy quilt in only an afternoon.

My "Vacation" Quilt: This one takes me way back to my early years--camp, summer vacations and even my very first swim team championship meet. Who doesn't remember those "I survived..." souvenir shirts?

As I stitched each square, I recalled a lot of special times and special people. It brought a smile to my face and I guess you could say warmth to my heart. So, as I enjoyed the season premiere of Downtown Abbey, I was able to wrap myself in something that makes me look forward to yet another year of good times and great memories.

Cycling 'round Norfolk

It has begun...my dive into the nerdy world of mapping out local cycling routes.

Click to download Norfolk cycling map

For anyone who hesitates to ride on anything other than established trails, I say you are missing out on so much glorious terrain! Beautiful open roads with no semis, cars or pedestrians in sight--urban dwellers would love to have such a thing.

This map is for anyone--not just the nerdy. I've made a goal for myself to make detailed and accurate maps available to anyone so that they can know where all these lovely paved tributaries exist. I want to help share the road and encourage other riders to get out there and take advantage. I have often been asked where I ride and when I try and explain it even to native locals, they seem perplexed as to what roads I am referring to.

The red lines indicate paved roads suitable for road bikes as well as others (road surfaces are subject to changes without notice). They allow a number of combinations to make your journey as short or as long as reasonably needed while simultaneously offering up scenic rural Nebraska beauty especially when the sky is blue and the sun is shining!

This map has no start or end points. I leave that to you to decide where you go and how you get there. This map simply provides some "officially" recommended roads around the city so you don't have to go unknowingly explore it all yourself...but by all means please do!

Stay tuned as I continue to add more to the map such as mileage and hopefully GPS equivalents for even more user-friendly options. Enjoy!

How to Make a Quick and Easy Card Display

This was a project that was inspired by my mother-in-law. Her previous house had wooden louvered doors throughout the home. One in particular was a closet door in the den near the kitchen.

This door became the place, especially during the Christmas season, where she hung all sorts of cards. The cards hung by slipping them in between each louver. When she moved into her new home, she commented, "I don't have anywhere I can hang my cards!"

Now it happened that her birthday and a scheduled visit was coming up, and since she lives so far away and I had the chance to easily give her a gift in person, I decided that a hand-crafted birthday gift was the way to go. So, I went to work on a cute and functional item that I hoped would give her a new place to display her cards.

To get started, I purchased an unfinished, pine bi-fold louvered door from a local home improvement store. The door was on clearance so I paid less than $30. I went ahead and had a guy in the lumber yard cut the door in half so I could fit it easily in my car.

One side of the door after being cut in half.

I removed the hinges, filled the holes with wood filler and then lightly hand-sanded the entire surface using 180 grit sandpaper.

Once I finished sanding, I wiped them down with a dry cloth and then got to painting. Spray paint was definitely the way to go since you cannot beat how easy it is to use. The red paint required primer, however, the teal paint was a handy paint plus primer in one (awesome!). I painted both sides of each section so that the color coverage would not be an issue when hanging on the wall.

Once they were completely dry for 24 hours I deemed them good to go. I then added 3 hooks to the bottom of one of the longer sections that I was making specifically for my mother-in-law. I thought she could hang keys and such from them. I then attached picture hanging hooks to the back for easy hanging on the wall. I made sure to place the wall hanging hooks so that the louvers pointed up since that would make the cards hang easier.

Once this step was finished, I placed some cards and they were ready to hang!

These are two that I made for my own.

I (as well as my mother-in-law) think they turned out great! We look forward to changing the cards up with the seasons!

Homemade Halloween at the House

So even though we have less then half-dozen trick or treaters every year, that's no reason not to enjoy the start to the holiday season with Halloween decorations! This year I crafted my way early and had some fun making a few holiday accents for our house. Take a look and see how easy they are. Maybe they will inspire you to make something fun, too!

So easy! 18 extra-large canning jar lids tied together in the center with twine, an old stick hot glued in the center for the stem and bits of wire curled into fun spirals. Spray painting orange optional : )

Inexpensive to make: $4 golden straw wreath from Hobby Lobby spray painted white, 1 1/2 rolls black ribbon wrapped and pinned at the ends, 1 scrap green ribbon for the bow and 2 plastic spiders for $1 at the Dollar store tied on with fishing line.

This one is also easy to make: brown stick wreath from Hobby Lobby spray painted black + assortment of black plastic creepy, crawly critters and a few selections off of a bouquet of artificial black roses hot glued or tied on by fishing line.

And to top it off, our furry and usually interactive Halloween decoration of the year keeps us company long past October 31st.

Happy Halloween!

How to Pour Our Driveway

This is more of a brief overview than a how-to that gives some visual ideas of how this process unfolded for my husband and I.

Step 1: Dig

First, make sure you have access to a skid-steer. If you have to make repairs to it while you work, know that it is always better to break the machine than to break your back. Our driveway began by getting rid of tons of river rock and dirt that lay in the path of a future 7" thick by 11' x 81' concrete driveway. The digging step also involved creating a huge pile of dirt and rock in our backyard. This required moving the dirt again by dumping it into a rented dump trailer and driving a few miles south of town to dump it at the quarry of a local sand and gravel company.

6 loads and 10 hours of dumping, driving, shoveling and fixing the skid-steer later, one tired husband and one relieved wife were happy to see the dirt gone. To say I am proud of his efforts--learning to drive and pull such heavy loads with a trailer, fixing a number of hydraulic hoses on the skid-steer, tediously transferring the dirt from the pile to the trailer without over-turning the machine--is an understatement.

Step 2: Apply Surewall to Foundation

This step was a day's worth of work and a job that needed to be done. Once we were able to remove the old cement coating that was supposedly helping keep the house foundation together we applied a product we call "Surewall". It is like concrete in that you mix it with water and it dries to a hard surface. The point is to give added support to our 100 year-old foundation bricks.

"Beach Hat Construction" CEO inspects the area.

Step 3: Place Sand

Again, another great time to have a skid-steer. The sand we needed had to get piled in our backyard, moved around the south side of our house and then dumped and spread evenly all along the north side of our house. A friend drove by and saw us working in our new "beach" and wondered when "Beach Hat Construction" was going to get this project finished. We encouraged him to come join the party. Funny thing is that he never stopped by...

Step 4: Install Forms and Rebar

This step took more brains than brawn, and I will have to say I claimed the "dumb end" of the tape measure quite frequently. A lot of calculating and recalculating was needed before we got the angle of the forms level and sloped just right to allow water to run off in the directions we needed.

Step 5: Pour (and Pump) Concrete

This is when the anticipation, excitement and nervousness set in. The night before the big day, we both felt a sort of impending doom that would either make or break us. You don't want to mess this up, otherwise, you have 21 cubic yards of very heavy, solid material to deal with.

Given the location of our driveway, the best solution to get the concrete in the right place was to hire a concrete pumper. This meant that the concrete got pumped from the truck through a long hose. This also meant that the person managing the hose had to use every ounce of strength they had to hang on to the handle-less hose as hundreds of pounds of concrete shot out the end.

Thankfully, we had a new device at our disposal--an electric power screed attachment for our screed board. This made pulling that board over the concrete so much easier. We vibrated the board from the west to the east end of the driveway smoothing out the concrete as we moved. 

Step 6: Finish Work

Once we were done with pumping and pouring all the concrete, it was time for bull floating, edging, brooming and other finish work. It was fairly manageable to complete except for the area between our house and our neighbor's to the north. 

Thanks to our neighbor's foreman efforts, we knew exactly where to go and what to do.

In Conclusion

We started at 7:00 a.m. on a Saturday morning and finished the entire project around noon. The afternoon ended with a well-deserved lunch and everyone heading their separate ways--myself, husband and in-laws to a 2-day, 150 mile cycling excursion in Iowa and my parents back to their home. Here's to a convenient (and typical) way to park and store our vehicles!

A "Labor" day of concrete

It's Labor Day weekend. The unofficial end to the summer and while that can create some melancholy, I am reminded of the episode of The Simpsons where Bart Simpson breaks his leg and Homer warns him of the reality of adulthood in the summer.

Bart: "Aw, I'm going to miss the whole summer."
Homer: "Don't worry boy. When you get a job like me you'll miss every summer."

Oh yeah, that isn't exactly comforting. Well, to be fair I am actually looking forward to fall--cooler weather, football season (even though I'm not a fan of any team), Halloween and the closer promise of snow and crackling fires.

The end of the summer causes me to reflect on some of the highlights and accomplishments over the last few months. One in particular being the completion of our front/north driveway to our house. Let me give a visual illustration to the transformation:

Before

After

The start of the project began in early May and concluded in late July. A series of weekends and weeknights kept us busy, with some other fun summer outings scheduled in between.

What began as a husband and wife beautifying and improving the functionality of their home, ended in a group effort involving both sets of parents and one willing neighbor. A deeper look inside this project involves more than the average do-it-yourselfer perspective. 

The paving team we dubbed "Rico" construction.

This back-breaking amount of work--after which we all left that day feeling very tired (but certainly satisfied) is what being a little out-of-the-ordinary will get you.

Runner's Tchotchkes

It's definitely running season around here. Not that we have thousands of people running here and there but you can catch at least one or two of them every day while "running" (i.e. driving) around town. Plus, as I am on the event committee for our town's only half-marathon race that culminates this Saturday (finally!), I am keenly aware of those people trucking down a street in pursuit of a finish line somewhere even if it's just returning back to their house or other point of origin.

I made the following running inspired items trying to find a classy or at least unique way to display the tokens that every runner who registered for some sort of race is bound to have and not know exactly what to do with other than throw away or stow in a box or drawer.

Bib Number Coasters

How They Are Made

This simple project in which I found one of my more generic bib numbers, probably from some high school or college track or cross country race or a smaller road race, and used Mod Podge Hard Coat to adhere it to basic glass tiles from a local home improvement store is an elegant solution to display this badge of honor.

I went to Hobby Lobby and picked out some fun scrapbook paper sheets and then cut my bib number with an exacto knife. I then traced the tiles onto the scrapbook paper so I had four squares that surrounds the bib on each tile. I then trace the bib piece onto the scrapbook paper to get the shape right and then cut our the portion where the bib would fill. I used a foam craft brush to apply the Mod Podge to the back of the bib and the scrapbook paper then placed it onto each tile. I let it dry as per the bottle's instructions and then put two layers of Mod Podge over the top of the whole tile to let dry and create the hard coaster surface.

I then got a roll of cork with a self-adhesive back and cut out squares to place on the backside. I think the coasters work perfectly for drinks and other items while giving me a fun way to display an old bib. I liked how this one turned out so much, I think I'll do another!

Race Bib and Medal Display Plaque

I saw this idea on Pinterest and had to see if I could duplicate it with a few revisions compared to the designs I saw. I made it for my husband for Christmas as a motivator as long winters in Nebraska and then the following spring can sometimes make it quite difficult to keep up a running routine. It is hung right next to our closet so he walks by it every day.

I bought a pre-routed piece of wood from Walmart to start as I didn't feel like messing with trying to route one myself although that would have been a little cheaper. I then just spray-painted it black and stenciled the text at the top. I used a silver sharpie and it worked perfectly!

I then got some hooks and pre-drilled the holes and placed them on the face and the bottom of the plaque for the medals to hang. I think I may need to add 2 more hooks--one on each end, to complete the look and allow for more room to hang but I wanted to see how three would look. I was a little unsure what distance to place the hooks for the bibs since not all bibs have standard sizes or even where the holes are placed. Since I didn't want to put more holes in the bib and ruin any other graphics on it, I thought why not use the same safety pins you use to pin it to your shirt? This has seemed to work great and adds a little more interest and nostalgia to the piece.

I think my husband will be able to fit quite a few bibs on there until he runs out of room. Now medals on the other hand, 3 hooks will not be enough! That's a good thing though. I can always make another wall hanging....or start using them as cat toys!