Dairy Queen Snow Drifts

Call me weird, but every time we have a good snow and it results in beautiful white snow drifts, I think of Dairy Queen soft serve ice cream.

We were very blessed to receive a few inches of snow over the Christmas/New Year's holidays. Most of it melted yesterday and we were pretty happy to have a muddy mess!

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.