Thursday, March 31, 2011

Landures Design


For Deno & Sheri Landures:

Front yard
perennials in color

Edwards Design

Preliminary design for Cory & Kristin Edwards:

Front yard
Backyard

  Master plan:

Front yard

Backyard

Hinman Design

Preliminary design for Peter & Tiffany Hinman.

Chalkboard Fridge

Had a stroke of genius the other day. (At least, I think it was genius.) Painting your fridge w/ black chalkboard paint! Kiddies the world over would love it. Chalkboard paint is the coolest invention, ever. And if I had a large, blank wall, this is what I'd do w/ it.

Sorry, I don't remember where I got this picture from.

My parents were telling me about my cousin-in-law's remodel and how he painted the fridge white. "Have you ever heard of painting a fridge!?" they asked. No! And that's when the idea struck. :)

Later, I looked online for "chalkboard fridge". Apparently, I'm not the first to come up w/ this great idea. BUT the pictures I found were not what I was envisioning. Some used the old-school green chalkboard paint on their fridge... yuck. And another used the paint on the entire fridge, all the way around. No me gusta. I'd use it just on the front, I think. And in black chalkboard paint. And if my fridge were initially white (which it currently is), I'd do the other sides in plain black paint. Matte, I think, to match the matte finish of the chalkboard front.

Thursday, March 24, 2011

The Book of Mormon, The Broadway Musical

No joke. The two producers of South Park have made a Broadway musical comedy titled The Book of Mormon.
Heard it on NPR today.
Neither of them are or ever were LDS, but they think Mormons are a great source of material - the "American Religion", naively optimistic, unusually friendly, etc, etc. The musical is NOT a retelling of the stories w/in the BoM through song, but it sounds more like a non-LDS, R-rated version of The RM or Other Side of Heaven. It's about two missionaries in Uganda - one straightlaced, the other not so much. I don't know much detail other than that and that there are lots of f-bombs and LOTS of offensive, sacrilegious things. The producers haven't released ANY pieces of the music because they think it would be "too vulgar out of context". And if they think it's vulgar, I can't imagine what most Mormons would think.
The Church has released this statement: "The production may attempt to entertain audiences for an evening, but the Book of Mormon, as a volume of scripture, will change people's lives forever by bringing them closer to Christ."
The producers called the Church's statement "BRILLIANT!" And said it just made them like Mormons even more. :) Aah, I love this Church. :D

p.s. One LDS New Yorker comedian said she thought it was funny and that even though it has all that low humor and makes light of spiritual things, in the end, it has a good moral to the story. (I paraphrased, liberally.)
Isn't that how Satan works? Makes something bad seem ok?  My favorite quote from an EFY speaker, refering to a plate of spaghetti: "There's only just a little bit of poop in it!" Why not! Dig right in. :/

Tuesday, March 22, 2011

I KNOW these people!

So exciting!! Mormon.org is featuring people I know from my mission!!!! Helmut Wondra and Jetta Lersch! They're from the Wien (Vienna) ward I served in for 6 months! (I think Helmut is from that ward. He and his wife look familiar, but all the Wondra's look alike, so I could be wrong on that account... but I don't think so.) I even have a picture of Jetta and I think I have one of her sister (who you can see w/ her husband, a great photographer, in one scene, but you wouldn't know it unless you knew them). So cool! And I loved seeing all my old places! SIGH! How I miss living there. Visiting just isn't the same.

p.s. If you're reading this, without watching mormon.org, Jetta is pronounced with a 'y' - like Yetta.

My Secret Weapon


This is one of my favorite kitchen tools. I use it to spray paper towels to wrap up cilantro and lettuce, to spray my knife and fingers when chopping garlic (so the garlic doesn't stick), to spray the cats when they jump up on the counters, and to spray rice or pasta before reheating them in the microwave.


Thursday, March 17, 2011

Miracle Cleaning solution!!!!!!

HOORAY!!! I discovered the miracle drug for cleaning!! You know how your stove and the areas above and around it get all greasy and oily and dusty and it's imPOSSible to clean? I'm sure most everyone's heard of using vinegar, which I tried, and it worked ok, but I still felt like I was making very little progress for the amount of work I was putting in. Then I remembered that the bottle of GooGone I've been using to clean labels off of glass jars says "Removes GREASE, Gum...". So I thought, 'Hmmm, what if I combine the two...?' And TA DA!!!!! That greasy oily mess came right off! So easy, too!! I was so excited that I stopped in the middle to take a picture and write this post :D.
Can you tell? Below knobs - grease. Above the knobs - no grease!

p.s. GooGone is flamable, I think. So be cautious and read the instructions. I washed my surfaces off afterwards w/ soapy water, then just plain water. Hopefully I won't start any fires...

Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Bird Graveyard & Other Cat Happenings

I would love to let Jason run free in our fenced-in backyard (much safer than the front yard), but Kitten & Elvis seem to have started a dead bird collection by the porch. A few days ago there was one. Today there's a fresh one. And when I went outside to show Jason something, Kitten pounced on another little bird. I ran after her to stop her, but the bird seemed to already be injured somehow. With Jason in one arm, I was able to keep our two cats at bay, grab Kitten by the nape of the neck, and put her inside. Then I set Jason down and went back out to get Elvis. The little bird was now hiding in a bush, and Elvis was batting at it. I was able to coax him away w/ cat treats and bring him inside, too. Hopefully the little thing will be able to get to a safer place and recover. But the cats are definitely staying inside for the rest of the day.

In other cat news, Elvis jumped onto our back neighbors roof this morning. He went from the porch railing to the roof in one giant leep. I wondered if he'd be able to get down w/o any assistance, but he did!
Can you spot him?



Just relaxing.

Now on the upper roof. Can you spot him this time?


Friday, March 11, 2011

Weird Dream

Warning: this may be a little sacrilegious, but it was just a crazy dream, so please don't be offended.

Last night I dreamed that Andy Bernard (aka Nard Dog) had been called by President Monson to be an apostle (one of the 12, I believe), and gave a "talk" in General Conference.
Yep, Andy, from The Office.
It seemed that he stood up to speak on a whim, not as one of the scheduled speakers. I guess the Spirit just got him so excited, that he had to stand up. He was wearing turquoise little kid gloves. And he started out by saying that he was shocked by the call to be an apostle (I think this part was his "testimony" part). He then paused for an emotional moment, then went over to the pulpit (because before he was just standing in front of his chair), and proceded, out of nervousness and a realization of what he had just gotten himself into by standing up, to tell jokes or little anecdotes.
It was all very strange to me, and I kept looking at President Monson, thinking, "I bet you're regretting calling him to be an apostle now!" and "Aren't you going to stop him? Make him sit down or something?" and "Are you sure that calling was through revelation?" But it all had something to do w/ a correlation between Andy being an apostle and Judas Iscariot being called as an apostle in Christ's time.

Last night (before bed and this dream) I was debating whether to watch an episode of The Office or to watch a GC talk. I watched a conference talk. Then I planned a little for my Primary lesson by reading in the NT - and at one point, thought about Judas Iscariot's calling as an apostle.
:)
THE END.

Friday, March 4, 2011

To Sleep or Not to Sleep...

A good friend of mine recently told me how her baby girl woke up when mama tried to put her down, but slept through the city's tornado sirens. Reminds me of my own child:
(For anyone who doesn't know, the bedrooms in our split-level house are downstairs, while the kitchen, living room, and laundry room are upstairs.)

Jason wakes up when I'm upstairs, texting. He wakes up when I open the fridge door, or when the bar stool I sit on creaks, or when I put on makeup and things make a tiny click noise.
On the other hand, he sleeps through our smoke alarm going off (dinner fiasco). Doesn't even stir when someone rings the doorbell, or when the appliance guy comes to take away our old washing machine and install the new one - loudly clunking the old one down and the new one up the stairs in his metal dolly (or hand truck, as they're apparently called now).

I'm quite certain that it all has to do with what STAGE of sleep they're in, rather than whether or not they're a heavy or light sleeper. When they're in that deep sleep stage - make as much noise as you darn well please. But when they're not in that sleep stage - be careful how you breathe.

Quote from The Jungle Book

Good blog title, I think:
"Fall apart in my backyard"
:)