Winches and Pulleys

" Hmmmm.....so what am I looking at?", you ask. If you follow the orange rope up into the tree, you can see the outline of an old pulley. The old pulley leads down to a boat winch attached to another tree. Hey, stay with me here.

This is Ron, the very handy guy who rigged all this up for me. Now exactly what is at the other end of the orange rope? My staghorn fern, of course! Doesn't everyone hang their staghorn this way? Well, maybe not, but that's how we do it at the river. I have three staghorn ferns at home and brought the medium sized one up here to hang amoung all the oak trees. Hope it's happy here.

The cool thing about this set up is that anytime I want to water or feed the staghorn, I just have to lower it using the boat winch. Love it, love it. Ron is the one who came up with this idea for his wife and I have been admiring it for a couple of years now. He agreed to hang my staghorn the same way and completed the task yesterday. Yippee!

River Rat,

Debbie

Meet Betsy

It's been a busy weekend for us up at the river. Joel and I bought a car to replace my Audi when the lease is finished in a few months. The man we bought the Tahoe from says that his wife and children name all their cars and that our car is named Betsy. So, I guess the name will stick with us.......at least for now.

It'll be so nice to be able to haul anything I need from now on since I'll have great cargo space in the back of the car. My Audi has been fun to drive, but the trunk isn't much bigger than a suitcase!

More later......

Deb

Have you ever....?

Have you ever seen "trailer" art like this? These Airstream trailers were placed next to I-4 as road art, I think, by someone with a great sense of humor. I just love seeing them glistening in the sunshine.

I have passed by these oddities many times as I drove east to Orlando from our house, and each time I pass them, I wish that my camera was with me. Well, last weekend my camera was in the car, so I took my life into my hands as I pulled over on the crazy stretch of road and quickly snapped some photos of the aluminum aliens.

Awww.......someone actually took a pic of mother and daughter when we both have makeup on! Amazing! Julie and I always joke that we are the photographers for our families and we're never in the pics ourselves. And on the rare occasion that we are in a picture, it is usually after a hectic day chasing kids and making meals for a large gathering and we're both tired, unkempt and out of focus. So, how nice that we were able to spend an entire weekend scrapbooking together with a lovely group of Julie's friends and have the leisure of finishing conversations uninterrupted........and have our picture taken by one of the girls.

Hope it's cooling off wherever you are,

Happy Fall everyone,

Debbie

Only At The River....

Only at the river...would I have to move my supplies so someone could load their boat onto the trailer as I was decorating the wedding arch.

Only at the river...would the guys dress up in drag for the bachelor party.

Only at the river...could you have the gorgeous St. John's as a backdrop for your wedding.

Only at the river...do you decorate the bride's birdfeeder for the "Big Day".

Only at the river...could the bride, Lori, be so pretty in 98 degree heat for an outside wedding.

Yup, only at the river...and we're so glad to be a part of it all,

Debbie

Grammy Camp 2010

What in the world is Grammy Camp, you ask? That's what we're calling the 4 days last week that I spent up at the "tin can cabin" with my two oldest grandkids. We really did have a ball and I will absolutely, positively recover from all the activity by Christmas, maybe sooner....just kidding. But I did go to sleep at 9pm when I tucked them into bed each night. We all needed the extra sleep. So, let's see, what exactly did we do at Grammy Camp? Jackson took full advantage of the paved roads in the camp to skateboard. We celebrated Sydney's birthday a few days early so she could open her present of skates and I don't think I saw her leave the cabin once without those things on her feet the entire 4 days.

I gained several more strands of grey hair while hanging on to the sides of the golf cart as "speed demon" Jackson learned to race....er, um.....as he learned to safely traverse the roads in the campground. We had several downpour thunderstorms which resulted in huge puddles. You can see where I'm going with this, can't you? Yes, he asked if he could "go fast" through a puddle and I said "of course". Holy cow! He floored it and water gushed up through the floorboard and flew out the sides of the cart spraying a good 6 feet on all sides as he gleefully aimed for another puddle. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. I think we'll keep that information to ourselves, ok?

The kids visited several times a day with Roxie and Jessica, the beautiful resident parrot and cockatiel. Both of them speak and whistle and Sydney was convinced they spoke short sentences to her. Also, all our friends at the campground now know the kids and they had a great time visiting with everyone and their various pets, including a brand new puppy named Peaches that Sydney fell in love with. One of the women baked us chocolate chip cookies to celebrate Syd's birthday. Another buddy dropped off firewood for our campfire. Such good people.

We did a craft each day: first they painted flip flops as an unusual "letter home" and we mailed them to mom and dad like kids used to do when I went to summer camp(except we used to mail post cards); then we made bouncey balls from a kit; we put together an adorable puzzle entitled "100 elephants and a mouse"; we made roll out cookies in the shape of construction tools for Jackson and palm trees for Sydney; we made our own popsicles from strawberries; we made our own pizzas; and finally, as the temps soared to 102 we had a small campfire to roast marshmallows because I had promised them we'd make s'mores. Hey, a promise to grandkids is a promise.

I hope Grammy Camp can be repeated each year and that it will create lasting memories for these funny, energetic, well behaved, adorable,(should I stop now?) creative kids. Think I'll go take a nap.

Grey haired Grammy signing off,

Debbie

TA-DA!!

Yes, it's finally done....the "tin can cabin" officially has a new functioning bathroom. Yippee! Joel and I spent several weekends tiling and installing and tweaking, but it was worth it. We have a system when it comes to remodeling, we decide what "look" we're going for, then I research ideas and come up with a design concept and present them to Joel. He counters with his ideas and we compromise somewhere in the middle. It usually involves me showing him a lot of pictures of what I thought would work in our decorating scheme. He hesitates (mainly because he has a hard time visualizing what I'm describing), we compromise some more and then we purchase our materials.

Then when the project is complete, he says something along the lines of "Now I see what you were talking about. You were right, it does look better this way." Hmmmmmm.....and it only took us 24 years of marriage to work out this little dance we do.....each and every project.

I really wanted some log cabin feel in the bath so we found some smooth river rock and used it as an accent on the shower head wall and the shower floor. That did the trick. And, yes, we do our own tiling. Joel wants me to measure and install and he mans the wet saw and does all the cuts for me. Together we work pretty smoothly until it's time to grout. Can I just say it like I feel it? I hate to grout. No, really, I detest applying grout. After an hour of working on this project's grout, I called in recruits and drafted Billy, our helper dude, to take my place. I had just run out of steam.

Oh, yeah, and how do you like the fishy toilet paper holder? The original bathroom had the toilet paper holder, 2 matching towel bars, tissue holder and wastebasket all done in logs. Who knows how old these things are but I couldn't resist reusing them in our new bath. I think they add just the cabin-y feel we were going for.

Like I said at the beginning, ta-da! Whew! I think we're going to take a few months off now. Thank you, very much,

Debbie

Shell Art

Isn't this cool art? The shell is painted on an old ceiling tile from the early 1900's...right up my alley, a little bit shabby, a little bit chic. I fell in love with it this past weekend while having breakfast with the G.A.B.S. (girls at the beach scrapbooking) on Anna Maria Island. We got together to scrapbook for the weekend and they took us out for breakfast at an old IGA grocery store that has been converted to a bakery/restaurant filled with antiques, paintings and beach paraphernalia. What a great place...I'm definitely going back.

So, I bought the painting and this is what it looks in its new home on my kitchen wall. Happy, happy! Below the painting are some of my collection of dried herbs, veggies and things from my garden that I use to make my own teas. Peppermint, lemon balm and raspberry leaves are just a few of the things I've dried in the dehydrator for tea.

Ball jars and a label maker......voila! Instant kitchen art and function all rolled into one.

I just love the way the dried pineapple rings turned out. They can be broken into smaller pieces and added to my own concoction of dried herbs to create a unique blend of tea. It's official, I'm having way too much fun.

Have a happy day,

Debbie