Monday, December 31, 2007 by Angie.

I’m in love with this bed from Bombay Company. Unfortunately, they’ve sold out and Bombay is closing all of their US stores!

Soooo, I’ve been pondering making my own wingback bed for about a year or so. It would be a huge undertaking. I have a full size bed in our spare bedroom that doesn’t have a headboard or footboard, so if I make one it would be for that one.

I’ve seen a few sofa frames online, so I’ve got an idea of how to get started on the headboard. I just need to draw it all out in a CAD program and get it printed out on a plotter. I think I’d skip the tufting as shown in the picture to make it a little more casual.

I might be better off not even trying the “wingback” part and just making the headboard more or less like the back of a modern sofa, with arms that wrap around the bed as shown in the pictures.

Well, let me think about it more intently for a few days, and then I can decide to postpone the project like I always do.

UPDATE: I found a website called Winter Sewing that has a step by step tear down of a wing back with arms exactly like the ones on the bed.  I now have a VERY good idea of how to assemble everything.  It’s time to break out the ol’ engineering paper and draw up some plans. 

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Monday, December 31, 2007 by Angie.

I’ve been studying this subject since we’ve moved into the new place and the seeded lawn started to sprout.

In a nutshell, if you can successfully grow your lawn organically, you’ll see:

1) Less watering required since the lawn’s roots are strong and deep and find water for themselves

2) More disease resistance

3) Greener, thicker lawns. Lawns are denser and require fewer cuttings because the grass grows “out” rather than “up.”

What’s the major difference between organic gardening and traditional gardening? Instead of getting your essential nutrients (NPK) from fertilizer, the plants will work in a symbiotic relationship with beneficial fungi to obtain this from the soil. Instead of feeding the plants directly, you’ll feed the microbes, which in turn feed your plants. In the process of not using store bought fertilizers, you’ll never have to worry about excess salts building up in your soil. Instead, through composting and and applying and feeding beneficial microorganisms, your soil will become more and more fertile over time. Your plants will thrive.

When I read all of that it seemed like a pretty good game plan. Start the yard organically and I’ll have less work in the long run. I do have a couple of major hurdles to overcome in my lawn - these are hurdles regardless of the type of gardening.

They are:

1) Heavy clay soil. Since my house is new construction, either the top soil was scraped away during building, or they brought in heavy clay to level the yard. Either way, clay is hard stuff to work with. Compared to other soil types, the clay particles are very fine. As everyone knows, they tend to stick together and compact when wet. The drainage is very poor, and when it drys out it’s hard so roots have a hard time digging into it. That leaves a very small window - the ground has to be moist enough to allow the roots to penetrate, but no so moist that there is no drainage and the plants drown. This soil needs to be heavily amended with humus / compost to help aerate it and get the drainage much better. On the plus side, clay has lots of dissolved minerals and organic material in it, and it’s extremely fertile. Provided the roots can access those nutrients, very little fertilizer is needed.

2) Rocks! There are tons of small rocks and even gravel in our yard. That leaves lots of bare spots in the yard since roots can’t penetrate beyond the rock. We’ve probably removed 40 or more 20-30 lb rocks from the yard this spring and summer. It’s easy to spot where they are since there would be a patch of very dense grass with a perfectly bald spot in the middle!

3) Grass type. When our lawn was seeded by the builder, it was seeded with a 30% mix of rye along with a fescue blend. Initially the lawn was coming up great! It was the envy of the neighborhood. Little did we know at the time that the majority of what we were seeing was rye. When the heat of summer (along with the drought) came, all of the rye died and our lawn looked dead. We couldn’t keep it watered reasonably well enough to keep the clay soil moist, so even the stuff that wasn’t rye was having a hard time surviving. The only thing that was surviving was the Scott’s Heat Tolerant Blue Grass that we seeded the bare spots with early in the spring. Based on that experience, we’ve reseeded the entire front lawn with this seed and hope to get better results next spring.

A couple of important resources I’ve used are:

http://www.tandjenterprises.com - supplier of organic gardening supplies

Teaming With Microbes: A Gardener’s Guide to the Soil Food Web

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Thursday, December 27, 2007 by Angie.

In case you were wondering, that’s Jerry’s mom.  She has deadly ninja skills; men, make sure you wear a cup around her.   Here is a picture of her poor abused husband.

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Thursday, December 27, 2007 by Angie.

Look what this squirrel will do for some nuts!

http://www.maniacworld.com/squirrel-obstacle-course.html 

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Tuesday, December 25, 2007 by Angie.

Firstly, let me say the Jerry’s parent’s dog, Harley (the Yorkie), is infatuated with Gixxer.  Here he is following Gixxer around like, well, a puppy dog.

Too bad I haven’t taken a picture of it, but they’ve been taking turns humping each other. Gixxer gets a few good humps in, Harley breaks free, and then mounts Gixxer. Gixxer won’t stand for it though; he knocks Harley off and goes at Harley again. Hump. Repeat. I’m sure you get the picture. Gixxer’s technique is a bit better than Harley’s. This is to be expected though, since Gixxer has had lots of practice on Jill, and this is all quite new to Harley.

I got a few car parts from Jerry. I have some gauges that will require the whole dash to come out of the Stealth. I also got a test pipe (replaces the catalytic converter) and an open element K&N air filter (replaces the big black box that that factory air filter sits in). Those are already on the car thanks to Jerry. The air filter and the test pipe make the air flow into and out of the engine less restrictive, which means more power. Jerry drove it down the street and says he can feel a bit of difference. I don’t drive the car hard much so I really don’t know if anything changed or not.

Jerry’s parents gave me a very nice kitchen knife set along with a bread warmer from Williams Sonoma and a griddle that matches my pots and pans. My mom gave us both gift cards, and along with the gift cards Jerry got we have plenty of cash to finish the ceiling and attic insulation in the second garage!

I made a turkey for the first time tonight. My friend Kelly told me how to use the roasting bags - I followed her instructions and the turkey came out great. My dogs thought it was great too. They are passed out beside me with BIG bellies after feasting on the left overs. I don’t normally let them eat too many scraps, but hey, it’s Christmas. They should be treated too.

It was nice to relax at home on Christmas morning for a change. It’s the first time I’ve been able to do that in ten years - since I’ve been out of my mom’s house. If I could get away with doing that every year I would!

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Friday, December 21, 2007 by Angie.

Jerry installed an AEM in the car a couple of weekends ago, and due to the cold weather and other factors the car wasn’t starting.  He enlisted the help of a DSM AEM guru last night, and the Laser is running!  This guy is amazing - he used gotomypc.com to control Jerry’s laptop to tweak the calibration file.

It seems that the intake temperature sensor was partly at fault for the start up problems;  it was reading something like -50°.  Hopefully a new sensor will take care of that.

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Thursday, December 20, 2007 by Angie.

Here he is, checking out his stocking.  I’ve really got to get a new camera.  I think the flash is going out on mine.

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Wednesday, December 19, 2007 by Angie.

http://www.vipproducts.com/retail/files/index.php?cPath=200_282

I’ve really seen it all now.  The write up for the product is hilarious (or disturbing, depending on how you look at it).

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Wednesday, December 19, 2007 by Angie.

Jerry just told me if he gets the BMW I can’t go with him to pick it up.  No plane ticket for me.

Asshole.

I’m suddenly not in the mood to get another car.

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Tuesday, December 18, 2007 by Angie.

Pottery Barn was having a sale on their “pet” stockings, so I bought some for my doggies. It turns out that these stockings are almost the same size as the stockings I made! The cuff is too small to fit in my embroidery machine without tearing the stocking apart, so I purchased some iron-on embroidery letters. Harley’s (my in-law’s Yorkie) stocking will be arriving tomorrow or Thursday; once his gets here everyone will have their stockings hanging for Christmas!

On another note, Jerry’s gift was on the porch and undisturbed by Jerry. It’s now under the Christmas tree.

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