Whew!

OK, cutting mat board is a lot harder than I remembered it being the last time I did it. Oh, well, it's done. Hubby's present is completed and another thing is off the tick list. Now Christmas cards. Of course I am doing all of this with the side of my computer hanging open, why? Because my Bios is somehow broken, so that I must pull the reset jumper every time I want to turn on my computer. I am not one of those people who leaves the computer on all the time, so this is a huge pain. I also have to reset the clock everytime too. Pain! So now I am trying to decide, build a new computer or buy a system and upgrade the lousy parts. If I build, I can use almost all the parts from my current computer, minus motherboard, power supply and chip. If I buy a complete system, I get a new keyboard, mouse, and LCD monitor, but have to add a new powersupply (they are almost always underpowered) and buy an operating system (I won't do OEM windows ever again). My husband is really wanting an LCD monitor, but I can get one cheaper alone. Decisions.

Ahh, only 14 days to go!

Ok, I do this to myself. No one says that all this stuff has to be done, except me. But I am a hard taskmaster and I can't help myself. The Christmas shopping is not yet done. I still have to make candy, finish decorating and oh, yeah paint the trim that has been up for 3 years unpainted. I can feel a panic attack coming on. Oh well, today I can relax, I just have to go and get new glasses, go to the bank, get boxes for the girl's necklaces, make a pinecone christmas tree, finish the family tree so I can send it to my husbands aunt, send out the cards, cook supper, and clean. I should be done by noon.

Transporter Technology and Never having to Dry your Hair Again

Ok, so I'm not your typical woman who likes to spend hours in front of the mirror. Or what the media would have us believe is typical anyways. I think the whole hygiene thing takes up way too much time. On top of that with advancing age, comes new routines. Cream for the rosacea, nose spray for the nose, hairs to pluck from where you don't want them, on and on. So then as is typical, my mind wandered off on a tangent and I started thinking about science fiction and the Jetson's cleaner, dresser thingy and I thought about Star Trek and then BOOM it hit me.

If the transporter could be used to track DNA, like when Giordi got turned into that invisible animal thingy, and it had a biological filter to keep out viruses and bacteria, why couldn't it clean you too? And do your hair and put on makeup, keep the weight down and a whole slew of other things. After all wasn't the replicator technology an extension of the transporter technology? If that were true (and I get this is all make-believe) would it not have the ability to store clothing, distinguish dead skin cells from livlier ones, remove cancer cells, remove placque from your teeth, kill head lice (I have kids), cure genetic and a multitude of degenerative diseases and probably stop or slow aging. You could program it to reduce or remove free radicals. And finally, the touted panacea of cleansing your body of toxins, could truly be possible. Just program the computer to remove the chemical compounds you don't want.

I really think that at least the writers of Star Trek should pursue this idea on the make believe, but makes logical sense based on the provided premises, sort of way.

Well, I said I would share some of my solutions to problems I’ve run up against so, here goes.

When we were doing our renovation, we bought our supplies as we went. We were actually doing
o
our renovation, not just signing the checks. As a result, our renovation moved along at a rather pedestrian pace. One of the first rooms we finished in the addition of our house was the ensuite bath. Our ensuite is a modest three piece washroom split into two areas. One is the sink and toilet and the other, at the end of our closet is the shower. The addition at this point is only 12 ft. wide so some very creative solutions to entries and hallways had to be devised.

As it turned out, we bought some 1” porcelain mosaic tile in white from Home Depot to trim out the top of the plain 6” square white ceramic tile in the sink area. Although, we have no intention of selling the house anytime in the near future, we tried to keep things neutral in the more permanent elements.

The shower area, though functional, didn’t get tiled until some 8 to 9 months later. When we went to get the same 1” tiles from Home Depot, lo and behold, they didn’t sell them anymore. We could have ordered them and waited 7 weeks, but I was ready to go. When you do this stuff yourself, you do it when you’ve gathered up the gumption to do it. Waiting was not an option. What to do?

Although they didn’t have the 1” tiles, they did have 2” tiles in the same colour and more or less same price. We still had a very small number of the 1” tiles left. I wanted a little bit of sparkle on the wall and went to a stained glass store and picked up some very heavily textured mirrored glass. I cut the glass into uniform squares using my Morton jig and voila, this is what I came up with.
Everyone always tells us how much they like the results.

It’s the perfect combination between neutral and a little bit of special.

I put in one band at about the half way point and one that runs at the level of the top of the shower stall. All the tiles were applied with white thinset.

Stained Glass Tiling

Well, I said I would share some of my solutions to problems I’ve run up against so, here goes.

When we were doing our renovation, we bought our supplies as we went. We were actually doing our renovation, not just signing the checks. As a result, our renovation moved along at a rather pedestrian pace. One of the first rooms we finished in the addition of our house was the ensuite bath. Our ensuite is a modest three piece washroom split into two areas. One is the sink and toilet and the other, at the end of our closet is the shower. The addition at this point is only 12 ft. wide so some very creative solutions to entries and hallways had to be devised.

As it turned out, we bought some 1” porcelain mosaic tile in white from Home Depot to trim out the top of the plain 6” square white ceramic tile in the sink area. Although, we have no intention of selling the house anytime in the near future, we tried to keep things neutral in the more permanent elements.

The shower area, though functional, didn’t get tiled until some 8 to 9 months later. When we went to get the same 1” tiles from Home Depot, lo and behold, they didn’t sell them anymore. We could have ordered them and waited 7 weeks, but I was ready to go. When you do this stuff yourself, you do it when you’ve gathered up the gumption to do it. Waiting was not an option. What to do?

Although they didn’t have the 1” tiles, they did have 2” tiles in the same colour and more or less same price. We still had a very small number of the 1” tiles left. I wanted a little bit of sparkle on the wall and went to a stained glass store and picked up some very heavily textured mirrored glass. I cut the glass into uniform squares using my Morton jig and voila, this is what I came up with.
Everyone always tells us how much they like the results.














It’s the perfect combination between neutral and a little bit of special.

I put in one band at about the half way point and one that runs at the level of the top of the shower stall. All the tiles were applied with white thinset.

The Love of all things Crappy (OOPS) CRAFTY.

I love all my crafts, and boy, I have more than a few. Not by way of bragging, but I swear I do more types of crafts than you can shake a stick at. I knit, crochet, sew (clothes, furnishings, dolls, animals, quilts), make stained glass, jewellery, do acrylic and watercolour painting, cross stitch, scrapbooking, photography, gardening and cake decorating. I have a room all to myself to do all this stuff in and I have all the tools and equipment to do them. The best thing about doing so many crafts is that there is so much cross pollination between them, but it leaves my projects somewhat schizophrenic.

Its really hard to stay on task when you're doing one project and you want to do seven or eight other things. Never mind housework. When we were doing our renovation I didn't get to do any crafts, that's when I worked on learning construction, tile laying (in which I used some of my stained glass know how to create some neat tile effects), plumbing (soldering with an iron and soldering with a torch are very similar) and the operation of many very scary power tools.

It was a real challenge getting all the house stuff done and keeping a family with 2 small children
on track. I am very proud of the fact that we redid our whole house while living in it the whole time. We even redid the entire kitchen and never had to be out of it for so much as a day.

I think that what I should do is share some of the things I've learned with other people. Maybe something I've done could help you.