Nothing says summer better than cooling off with a frosty treat.  Well, unless that treat is homemade, healthy, and a cool way of spending time with the family.

A Real Fruit Popsicle is just that, and it just takes about 10-15 minutes.  

First, you take some of your favorite fruit and chop them up into small pieces.  You see I just used some blueberries, strawberries, and cherries:

Pour any kind of juice into the ice pop molds, and dump an even amount of fruit into each one.  For the juice, I used Minute Maid's Cherry Limeade, but you can use Capri Sun, or any other light juice.  

                   

Pop them in the freezer, wait until they're frozen through (about 4-5 hours), and enjoy!  

Tip #1: To get the popsicles out of the molds, run some warm water on the bottom, and gently pull them out. 

Tip #2:  Cold treat in summer heat makes a pregnant woman very happy.

    

Dozer's New Dog Feeding Station

Dozer was surprised to come in from the back yard to find his food and water bowl sitting on something other than overturned, orange Home Depot buckets.  Oh, yes.  Buckets.  In our kitchen.  For six months.  Well, finally, I braved the 99 degree heat to build my very large 8-year puppy a new feeding station.

I took some spare 6x1 pieces of timber left over from the deck and went to work.  

First, I cut 2 pieces of the same length to form the top and attached them together with mending plates on the bottom:

Then I cut two pieces to make the legs. (Of course, I chose a height that was good for Dozer.  One that allows him to eat/drink comfortably, without bending down.)  I attached the legs to the top with corner braces:

Coat with some polyurethane for a little drool protection, pour some kibble in the bowl, and you're good to go.

  

From Hardwood to Carpet

When first looked at this house, one of our favorite features of it were the hardwood floors throughout.  That's probably because were living in an apartment that had its fair share of carpet.  Fast forward a year and a half, and we were sick of hardwood.  Sick of the area rug sliding all over the living room.  Sick of floors being so cold.  Sick of the ottoman flipping the rug up whenever we moved it.  And after some discussion, we decided carpet would be nice.

So we stopped a few local stores, compared prices and quality of carpet, and settled on Albany Carpet Warehouse. The salesman there was the most helpful, and seemed the most honest.  Yeah, we know that's like saying, "Hey,  that hyena to the right of seems super nice compared to the other one!"  Pick your poison, I guess.  Don't get me started on salesmen. 

After deciding we definitely wanted the living room done, we liked the idea of having the master bedroom carpeted as well.

Here's the living room before:

And the living room after: 

Master Bedroom before:

Master bedroom after: 

What about you? Do you like the smooth, modern look of hardwood? Or the do you prefer the plush, comfortable feeling of carpet between your toes?

Our Feathery Neighbor

A Red-tailed Hawk.

Wine Cork Coat Rack

We love to drink wine.  I love anything sweet and white, and Kris prefers red and bitter.  But after we popped open a bottle, we usually threw the cork away.  Then we thought about saving them for something.  For what? We had no idea at the time, but we knew we’d think of something.

This summer, while building a small deck (you’ll see that later), I was easily persuaded into buying this miter saw, and I really wanted to use it.  So, I thought, why not build a coat rack with wine corks?  Besides, the only coat closet was on the opposite side of the house from the front door.  

So here's how to do it:

I set the miter saw to the 30 degrees, cut the edges from a small piece of wood that was left over from our deck, and stained it with Minwax.

After the stain dried, I choose 4 corks from our stash…Blue Newt wine corks to make it pop, and found 4 black screws that were long enough to make it through the the cork and the wood. I settled on 8x3 drywall screws. 

I drilled them into already-marked spots, and that’s it. I just screwed the base of the coat rack into a wall a bit closer to our front door. 

Of course, you can use any size wood, any type of cork, and any stain color that fits your house.  And below is how it looks on our wall.  Have fun!  And please share any suggestions and ideas you have in the comments. 

Welcome, non-existent readers!

My wife and I have muttered the phrase, “Stupid House,” dozens of times since moving in to our new home in May of last year.  Whether it was because I couldn’t plug in my flat screen TV in circa 1940 outlets, or because the only vent in the spare bedroom is in the closet, there were/are so many things wrong with this place. 

But being a bit ambitious (read: naive), we’re always willing to try new things to add style, functionality, or a bit of both to our home.  We can’t wait to share past and future projects with you, and look forward to hearing your ideas, and seeing what you’ve done with your places. 

This should be fun.  Painful, tiring, frustrating at times - but fun.