Scattered Thoughts . . .

Laying out the tile and some dimensional lumber for the fireplace... A week or two ago I wrote about a new home renovation project... designing, building and installing a little fireplace. This fireplace will be a relatively simple gel-fuel fireplace which does not require any flue whatsoever. This project entails upgrading an entire wall of our living room so, as usual, this project is a bit more than my health would like to tackle... but I'm hoping to be successful with this project which entails getting it finished before Christmas. First, I started working on our primed steel front entry door.  It is a 15-lite door so calling it a 'steel' door can be misleading.  It is a nice door but isn't so nice looking with its factory gray primer.  I've been saying for a few years since I installed this door that I would like to finish it to appear as though it is stained wood.  Since this front entry door is part of this wall sharing the fireplace, I decided to tac

Although about six months have passed, I am going to go ahead and share a couple of photos from our garden this year.  Of course, our garden is now buried in snow but, for a few short months every summer, our stone paths are lined with very photogenic wildflower gardens. The variety of flowers we typically grow each summer is pretty colorful, lush and amazing.  Of course, these wildflowers attract all sorts of birds, grasshoppers, crickets and bees. If I am having a quiet, but slow morning, I tend to grab my camera and head to the gardens to find things to photograph.  Every now and then I get lucky and find a few flowers which aren't blowing in the wind or a cooperative insect or bird. Here are two photos I just recently found sitting in a folder on my computer which I thought would be nice to share...   Hope you enjoy!

Shot through our laundry room window... and through some frost on the window! Well, Christmas is upon us but we are so far behind in everything that I highly doubt the Christmas Spirit will catch up with us until sometime in January or February.   We did manage to get some Christmas lights strung up outside.  We don't have as many as anticipated, but we have enough.  Actually, very few of our neighbors have any Christmas lights this year... our street is unusually dark. Very strange... perhaps we are all in the same boat this year... Stringing up Christmas lights outdoors was a bit frustrating this year. First off, the weather was frigid. That always makes for a frustrating time. Next, approximately 1/2 of our Christmas lights went into the garbage this year because they were no longer lighting up. Frustrating, huh? We ended up using all of our indoor light sets just to fill some of the emptiness outside. So, now we need to get out to buy some Christmas lights for indo