Finished Cheap Frame

I finally finished it. I had to do some more problem solving along the way, but overall, I'm pretty pleased.

The frame ended up looking pretty decent. Certainly not sleek, but I think that adds to the character of it. It looks homemade but I like it!

 Honestly the hardest part for me was figuring out how to work with the shoe polish. At first it would wipe off too easily, so I waited. But think I waited too long and I had to really scrub to get it off. The idea was to put black shoe polish all over it, and then wipe it off to get the desired "antique" look. In the end I was happy with it though.

 After I glued the background to the frame, I had some issues. This is a terrible picture, but it is the best my phone could do. I had to use hot glue so it would set quickly, but by the time I got the glue all the way around, it had started to solidify on the other side. I had already started with a somewhat crooked frame from the warping of the poster board and texture of the plaster. So adding the hot glue issue meant that my background was not exactly sealed around the edges and you could see daylight between the frame and the background.

 

To solve the problem, I taped around the edges on the back with clear tape. Then I spray painted it black to make sure that if anything was showing around the edges, it was black. I thought that was actually pretty smart of me ;-)

 

Here is the finished product. I need to mount a hanger on the back somehow and then I'll be able to add it to our decor at our house...until I need to take it down and bring it back as an example the next time I do this project with kids.

Car Sickness Therapy

We did a lot of traveling over the holiday. While in Lincoln, my body had apparently had enough of being in the car and I got really carsick on the way to visit some relatives. It took a while to get my stomach calmed down, but I had some great nurses.

There were three little kittens at their house that accompanied me on my short walk while trying to get some cool/fresh air to calm my stomach. After about half an hour of nausea, I finally decided just to lay outside on the porch and these little guys made sure they kept my belly warm. All three of them were on there, but one jumped off when I disturbed his seat while trying to get my cell phone out of my pocket to take a picture.

Apparently they were great nurses, because after they laid on my stomach for a while, I finally felt better ;-)

Shortage of $$ = Creativity

What do you do when you find out last-minute that a vital piece of material for a project is not an option because it costs too much? You get creative (like any good farmer/teacher knows).

I was planning on starting a project with my 8th graders today and went into the school office this morning to see if the cheap black frames I had ordered had come in yet. To my surprise they weren't even ordered because they apparently went up in price sometime between when I requisitioned them and when they were about to be ordered. Never good.

I had to scramble to come up with a solution but I'm pretty proud of what I accomplished with the materials I had available in my art room.

 

Step 1: Cut a frame out of poster board that is the desired size.

Step 2: Wrap that frame with plaster strips to reinforce and harden it.

 Step 3: Since I also don't have the money to purchase fancy letters, I printed the font I liked at the desired size, traced it onto poster board and then wrapped it with plaster as well.

 This is just a quick indication of what the goal is for the project.

 Step 4: To provide the frame with additional structure, I hot glued craft sticks around the edges of it.

 Step 5: Then I taped another frame of the same size to the back side of the original frame.

Step 6: I will wrap the entire frame with plaster strips and they will dry to hopefully give me a hollow, but somewhat hard, frame.

Step 7: I will spray paint it a gloss black and then continue working on what will be displayed inside of the frame.

So, for now, I think I have the problem solved. I'm sure another set of problems will come up tomorrow though. Gotta roll with the punches ;-)

"Logged in" and ready

People are predicting that this will be a bad winter weather-wise. Dad and I spent some time this morning getting a workout. He ran the chainsaw and I lugged or rolled the firewood to the final destination.

Our piles might not be pretty, but they are functional. This stove at the shop takes some pretty big logs, so I was sweating pretty bad after moving them. Some of the big round ones were a bit too big for my arms and back, so they got rolled over there ;-) My dad and my husband should stay warm for at least a few weeks with this load of logs!

What?

So this isn't farm-related, but it does relate to my art teaching career. I was sitting in the doctor's office yesterday admiring the artwork while I waited to see the doctor. My husband and I both really like the artwork in this particular room.

However, yesterday I noticed something that made me laugh. There is a set of four paintings obviously done by the same artist. I love the colors and elegance of them. But I think the artist must have gotten tired on this one. All of them except for one have beautiful faces. Either the artist got tired of faces or they got mad at their model ;-)

 This is an example of the others. It actually is probably my least favorite, but I wanted you to see the typical detail of the faces the artist painted.

 

Here's the other one.

See what I mean? No face. My back is usually to it, so I hadn't noticed it until yesterday. It made me laugh because it is so contrary to the other three paintings. Typically I would say the artist is making some sort of statement with it, but considering it was one of a set of four and the others all have faces, it just kind of makes ya wonder. Silly moody artists ;-)

Innovation At Its Roots

Innovation in today's world is something that is talked about so much. Coming up with an original idea to solve a problem is something that farmers have done for longer than anyone can probably figure out.

All you need to do is look around a farmer's property to find ingenious ways to solve simple problems. An example of one of those problems might be keeping the milk bucket full of fresh milk from the milk cow away from hungry barn cats while finishing chores. This is how our family solved that problem years ago. It was actually probably used for something before that, but that's what I remember my dad using it for when I was a kid.

We no longer use the hanger/antler for milk buckets (we haven't had a milk cow since I was in junior high), but now we can use it to hook the egg bucket on when it is full of eggs. I don't even know how many years I have used this to hang a bucket on, and I just take it for granted. But for some reason the other day I looked at it with fresh eyes and though, "What a cool idea."

After living and being around our farm all my life, it is still neat to see how four generations of our family have used common sense and the resources at hand to solve problems along the way.

This is how a farmer babysits

 

We watched our little niece and nephew this weekend. I got to chase them around the majority of time. My husband used a more effective method...confine them to a combine cab and lure them to sleep ;-) I have to admit, I fall asleep in the combine too, but I don't fit in there quite as comfortably.

Older Farmer Tricks

How many older farmers does it take to change a tire? None. They just watch the younger farmers do it ;-) Actually, my dad still changes all his tires, but walking out and seeing this after church while my husband changed my Tahoe tire did  make me laugh.

However, a day later, the tire had the last laugh. Turns out that if you are opening the back of your Tahoe to unload the flat tire to get it fixed, it might fall out on top of your leg. And when it slides down your khakis that you are wearing for school, it might leave tread marks down the front of your legs. Sigh. Another pair of teaching pants bites the dust.

Fall Cleaning

We have an old shed in our backyard and it has needed cleaned for quite some time. The problem is...it has spiders in it. So, this weekend seemed like a safer weekend to clean it out. In my head, spiders aren't as dangerous when it is colder weather. Although, at one point, I thought I noticed something on my back and sure enough, it was a granddaddy long-leg spider...still gives me the willies thinking about it now.

As you can see, the shed is pretty old. The wood shingles on the side are in bad shape and we need to get it covered with something else. It's never a good thing when you can see daylight through the side of the building like you can in this picture.

 

It is kind of neat to look through the items in the shed and think about how my grandpa might have used them. Of course, most of the items are no longer useful and just need to be thrown out. But it is still neat to see the history.

 

Can't help but wonder what my grandpa used this little shelf for throughout the years.

 

These are just some of the "treasures" I found. A lot of it got thrown out, but the old wooden baskets are definitely keepers.

 

These two metal cabinets, according to my dad, were smokers that they used to smoke meat years before he was alive. Kind of neat to think of that type of living and how self-reliant they were in those days.

It's always interesting moving into a house that someone else use to occupy and having to sort through their things. It has been a huge process every since I moved into the house 4 or 5 years ago, but at least it is family. It makes me feel like I get to know my grandparents a little better each time I find a little item I haven't seen before.

 

The first freeze

The first freeze is always something farmers watch with great interest. If it comes early, it has the possibility of hurting crops. We know that it is something that has to happen and it is also something that is planned for.

In terms of our garden, we are more or less sick of tending a garden by the time the first freeze comes along. So we don't mind too much if it freezes our vegetables and kills them. One item that my dad has to keep a close eye on is his beloved sweet potatoes. I don't care for them, and neither does my husband...but for the sake of my dad, we help out with them.

Once the tops of them freeze, you need to cut off the tops so it doesn't affect the potato in the ground. Dad was gone for the first freeze, so I got the honors of cutting off the tops Saturday morning.

As you can see, the tops are clearly wilted.

So I took my trusty pair of scissors, cut off the tops about 2 or 3 inches from the ground, and we will dig them up at a later date.

 

The trick is that you have to leave enough showing that you can find them later! It can be tricky finding them after the vines and leaves are all dead and blend in with the surrounding dirt color.

Being fed well

This is a picture of my uncle's feed this year. Thanks to the rain we had this summer, in some places the feed is ridiculously tall. We swath, then bale the feed to feed to the cattle throughout the winter months when grass is hard to come by.

Every time I drove by his feed field, I was amazed at how tall it was in spots. Because of how the water settles/runs off the field, it isn't this tall everywhere. Curiosity finally got the best of me yesterday and I had to stop and see how tall it was compared to me.

 

I'm probably about 5'8" and I'm sure my reach is well over six foot. My guess before I stopped was that it might be 10 feet tall. I don't think it is that tall, but it is probably some of the tallest feed I have ever seen in this area. Kinda crazy.

Fair moments

These are a couple of pics I took with my phone during the fair.

 These kids were pretty fun to work with. They volunteered to wear the GoPro cameras on rides during the carnival one night. The sisters that helped me were fighting over who got to wear the camera. The oldest one was walking around very loudly declaring, "I'm a guinea pig!" to anyone that even remotely looked her way. It was pretty entertaining.

 

The helmet had some issues, but it was pretty funny to watch the kids deal with it. The helmet was pretty big and the weight of the camera on the front caused it to constantly slide down over their eyes while wearing it. Annoying for them...entertaining for me ;-)

 

This is one that just makes me feel at home. A lot of kids, myself included, in 4-H in our county are able to pay their way through college from the proceeds they make at the fair livestock auction. I took it for granted and didn't realize that in most other counties the 4-Her's are only allowed to sell a certain number of their animals. 

Not in our county. If you have 6 or 8 animals you are allowed to sell all 6 or8. The other thing is that our livestock buyers are extremely generous. They go above and beyond the expected price, knowing full well that they are paying too much. My husband was baffled at how much money the kids were making. He would sit there and figure up the total on the calculator on his phone. My husband doesn't get excited about a whole lot, but it was fun to hear the excitement in his voice when he reported to me later how much kids were making. However, I think his favorite moment was when the auctioneer paid one tiny, little 4-Her twenty dollars to ride her pig in the show ring. She had been doing it in the pig pens all week and it was fun for her to demonstrate her skills to the buyers ;-) 

It's all just part of the fun and down-home touches that make me love our county fair so much.

Country Folk Humor

This is what our Sheriff has on the back of one of the pickups they drive around in our county. It makes me laugh every time.

In case you can't read it, here is what it says.
"Vehicle belonged to a drug dealer. He went to jail. Now we drive his pickup."

Storm a Brewin'

Not too much to report around here. I returned to school this week so I don't always know what is actually going on around the farm on a daily basis. But we found some time for golf as a family this past week. Got some pretty cool photos of the clouds moving in. Mom and I were more interested in taking photos than the actual golfing ;-)

Wall Cloud

Wall cloud? What wall cloud? I took pics with my regular camera...but the GoPro always makes things look cooler ;-)