Quick and easy stickers for the ukulele (Silhouette project)

LMS loves her pink ukulele, but so do the other 3 girls in the class who have pink ukuleles. This can lead to some confusion as to whose uke is whose.

We could just write her name in sharpie on the back of the neck, but where's the fun in that?

So I decided to use my Silhouette to do some personalization.

I found a hibiscus flower in the Silhouette library and cut a couple different sizes.

LMS helped me put them on, and we were done!

I had originally envisioned a white sticker on the pink ukulele, but then realized I don't have any white vinyl, so we used some dark pink instead, and I think it turned out great.

Hee hee. This is what LMS does half the time during uke class- play with the grass and flowers :)

Happy Camper shirts

Several months ago I saw some cute shirts here, that I thought would be great for our camping trip this summer. Unfortunately, I dropped the ball and didn't get the vinyl ordered in time, so it arrived the day before we left. I was so busy trying to get everything else done, there was no way I had time to figure out how to use my Silhouette, which I still hadn't used yet at that point.

I ended up making them for our trip this past weekend, though I still think they would have been great for our trip this summer. Oh well.

It did take me awhile to figure out how to use the Silhouette and the software and what order to iron everything on the shirts, but I managed to do it all with only one mishap- I forgot to flip the first 'happy' and had to redo it so it would be legible after it was ironed on.

 As I ironed all the pieces on I realized I should have picked the colors a little better- the gray "happy" on my shirt blends into the lavender shirt (this was the one I messed up on and I didn't have any more white left- black would have been better than gray) and the purple trim on LMS' shirt blends right into the black trim.

  

Despite their imperfections, I'm happy with how the shirts turned out, and I like LMS' shirt the best. I'm glad I finally took the time to figure out how to use the Silhouette. Now that I've done that, I feel confident whipping out other projects. It really is quick and easy to use, once you figure out the details, which I just never had the time to do. Doing a challenging project right off the bat really helped me learn the ins and outs, even if it did increase the chances of a disaster :)

Our simple driveway fix that wasn't so simple

A couple weeks ago I was at Sams and saw a pile of ground up asphalt with a sign and a phone number on it. An asphalt company was ripping up the top layer in preperation for laying a new layer of blacktop, and they were selling what they didn't need.

Our driveway has suffered from the heavy rains we've received this year, and really needed more gravel, and the area where we park our vehicles is dirt, so we keep tracking in mud when it rains, so it could use some gravel as well.

Looking down the driveway

Looking up the driveway toward the circle

The circle at the top of the drive- note the boulders in the center

We park in that dirt area between the flagstone walkway and the woodpile

A week or so ago we finally called and made arrangements for them to deliver four truck loads of recycled asphalt. Late Thursday afternoon the first truck load was delivered and I realized we'd miscalculated. We'd planned on spreading it by hand (I've helped spread gravel in my parents' driveway, but that was with the gravel being pushed off a trailer as the trailer inched forward, and there was 5 or 6 of us helping), but the two of us spreading the gravel from the big pile next to the back door all the way down our 500 foot driveway by hand just wasn't going to be feasible.

One load of gravel

So I made some quick calls and we arranged for a Bobcat to be dropped off the next day. Shortly after that, the truck returned to drop the second load. I could tell he was having a hard time getting around the circle (it's a tight fit for anything bigger than a pickup truck), and I saw he was getting close to our well head, but I was sure he'd seen it and wouldn't hit it.

Um, yeah.

Not so much.

Next thing I know, the well head is shattering and pieces are flying all over. I ran out to inspect the damage, and that was the first the driver realized anything had happened "I didn't even see it there". I went back in and called Mr M, who was on his way home from work, then started searching online for local well drilling companies. They were all closed by then, of course, but we were able to talk to one who promised to come out first thing in the morning.

Our shattered well head.

We covered it with a blue bin to keep dirt and debris out and to increase visibility.

In the meantime, Mr M tried calling the asphalt company, but no one answered, so he drove down to the jobsite to see if he could catch anyone still there. The guy there tried to say that they weren't responsible for damage down to our property, and that we should have been out there directing the driver. (really??? like he'd have been able to see me???) After some back and forth (during which Mr M mentioned they should have their own spotter who's familiar with the driver and the vehicle), Mr M was able to get the price of the four loads halved, so we ended up with a really good deal on the gravel itself.

Four loads of gravel, waiting to be spread

The next morning the bobcat got dropped off right before the well drilling guys came. They dug down a foot or two, cut the cracked pipe, and used a sleeve to connect a new length of pipe to the original pipe. After fixing the wires, they put a new cap on the well, and filled the dirt back in. Less than an hour after they started, they were done. They did say that if the crack had been any lower, they would have had to pull it all apart and it would have cost a lot more because it would have taken a lot longer to fix.

The bill ended up being exactly the amount we'd gotten the gravel bill reduced by, so we broke even on that at least.

The biggest expense was definitely the bobcat. Since Mr M was out there, he also dug out the huge boulders that were in the center of the circle at the top of our driveway. This opens up the circle a lot, so it's not nearly as tight as it used to be, and provided the rock for a protective barrier around our well head. If someone takes it out again, their axle is going with it!

The new well head

Digging the rocks out took longer than planned (some of them were buried pretty deep), and we needed an extra day to finish the spreading and smoothing that needed to be done, so we kept the bobcat an extra day and Mr M took some time off work to finish the job.

No boulders left in the center of the circle

Our neighbors have a chainsaw and they're going to help us take out that small tree on the left side of the center of the circle.

LMS running down the new driveway

Looking up the driveway toward the circle

Once Mr M was done with the driveway he cleared about a third of the path through our woods- we want to put a walking trail around the outer edge of our property, through the trees, and using the bobcat definitely made the job easier (we'll do the other two thirds in a year or so). It did make the path wider than a woodland trail really needs to be, but given how allergic I am to some of the plants out here, being able to walk down the middle of a trail without touching anything is definitely a good thing for me.

LMS on the trail. This end looks the roughest and I need to fix it up some more still. The boulders on the left are the ones surrounding the well head.

Part of the trail through the woods

We got the trail started just in time, too. Leaves are starting to fall and will leave a nice layer on our path. One weekend soon we'll be renting a wood chipper and chipping the downed wood on our property to use as mulch on the trail. Right now it's kind of ugly, but it should look pretty good by spring.

Keeping the bobcat an extra day did increase the cost, but it was still cheaper than renting it another weekend, since they charge for pickup and delivery and it's delivered on a flat bed semi (so our truck doesn't help us on this one).

Mr M did most of the work with the bobcat, though I did a little as well- mostly so I could see how it works. LMS insisted on a turn as well and had lots of fun driving it around and moving the shovel thing up and down.

LMS ready to do some work

So, our simple 'let's fix the driveway with some gravel' ended up being not-so-simple, and more expensive than we planned, mostly because of the bobcat rental.

On the other hand, our driveway looks a lot better, our parking area looks better, our circle is much more manageable (I'm sure the UPS guy will thank us!), and we got a start on our trails through the woods. All things that needed to be done, even if we hadn't planned on doing it *right now*.

Have you had any projects take on a life of their own?

Easy kitchen soap pump replacement

 See that green soap holder on the left side of the sink? 

It's always getting knocked over and dripping soap on the counter and getting in the way.

Which offends my OCD :)

So on a recent trip to Lowes I stopped in the kitchen/bath plumbing section and picked this up:

The good thing about this pump?

You can screw a bottle directly onto the pump, or run tubing into a bottle of soap that sits under the sink.

Since the pump is located behind the sink basin and the disposal I wasn't willing to mess with screwing a bottle directly onto it every time I needed to refill the soap, so the tubing was the obvious choice.

When  I got home, I unscrewed the plastic nut holding the hole cover down and removed the hole cover.

I inserted the plastic tubing into the bottom of the pump, then dropped the pump into the hole.

I screwed the nut on to hold it in place, and after inserting the plastic tubing into a bottle of dish soap I was done!

I did have to have Mr M hold the pump in place as I tightened the nut (my arms are too short to do both at the same time), but the other than that it was all me. 

Ignoring the dirty sink, doesn't the soap pump look great?

It's not making a soapy mess on the counter or getting bumped around, and it matches so much better than the green plastic pump. And it only took about 10 minutes to do. Love it!