Funny Things #15

This one I find more sad than funny.  I kept waiting for a correction in the paper, but none ever came. Apparently this really is the poor girl's name.

An Inspired by Pinterest Win

We have a very large cold air return in our living room.  Seriously, it's close to 24" square!  You can see it almost immediately when you enter our house.  Several years ago I saw a Pin on Pinterest that linked to friendly-home.net, showing how to replace a standard ugly white grill with some trim and a piece of sheet metal from Lowes in a union jack pattern.  

I showed my ultra-handy and talented husband the link and begged for him to make a better cover.  While he was not enthralled with the idea, he agreed to make me a cover.  He did not use the directions provided on the website I showed him since their setup did not work for our situation.  We ended up with a pricy (the three foot by two foot piece of sheet metal runs close to $30) but attractive replacement cover that I absolutely love.  It's so much better than the standard cover the HVAC guys installed!

This is one Inspired by Pinterest project that totally worked.

It's Been a Month Already!? And a Plea for Help with Photos

I can't believe it's been over a month since I last posted.  I've been incredibly busy.  I did two weeks of twice-daily trips to day camps for the kids.  Then it was all the appointments.  Most recently I've been working on Instagram swap quilts (sorry, can't share photos yet), participating in an Instagram quilt-along, updating my back pattern catalog, and cleaning.  Oh, and making pickles.  

On the topic of pickles--this year we decided to make a self-watering veggie garden.  We joked that it would be a salad bar for the deer and rabbits.  Unfortunately, our jests became reality.  The rabbits can't reach it, but the deer ruined my lettuce and green beans.  At least we got to eat a lot of lettuce before they discovered it. They nibbled the cucumbers too, but those have recovered.  The photo below was taken about a month ago, just after the deer ruined things.  Since then, the lone tomato plant has grown up out of the hoop on the right and is starting to produce fruit.  The beans have not recovered.  The broccoli is huge, but not bearing.  The carrots aren't ready yet, we ripped out the remaining lettuce stumps, and the cucumbers are everywhere.  They've grown over the top of the climbing structure and are starting to grow onto everything else.  I think I should have thinned them.  So far we've picked probably 35 or 40 cukes.  We ate some, made refrigerator dill pickles with some, and I canned four pints of sweet pickles yesterday.



Updating my back patterns is something that has been taking far longer than I ever dreamed, mostly due to Apple's decision to dump iPhoto and replace it with Photos, which really sucks.  Photos does not play nicely with ANYTHING.  Why Apple, why?  When I upload my photos, they disappear into the Photos abyss and I'm unable to access them within any other program, even email.  I think I found a work around today, but it takes FOREVER.  Basically, if I want to edit a photo, I have to export it to the desktop and then open it in one of my editing programs and then save it back to the desktop.  What a pain.  If anyone out there knows a better way, PLEASE, PLEASE let me know.  

Additionally, Picasa has decided to make most of my photos into thumbnails.  This makes finding my photos challenging, to say the least.  Especially when some of them have become thumbnails of people I don't even know but were apparently in the background of a photo.  Again, if anyone knows how to undo this, PLEASE, PLEASE let me know.

These photo issues are making me a bit unhinged!

If you want to see small glimpses of my Instagram quilts, be sure to check out my Instagram button to the right.

I also listed a few more doll outfits, and those can be accessed by clicking the Etsy links to the right.