No Vacancy

For some reason, I only pictured the day some creature moved into the owl box as a joyfully happy one. I kinda thought we might have a party, maybe even invite some rats for dinner. I clearly did not fully imagine all the tenant possibilities.

Yep, those are what they look like. Now we have an apiary and, considering that I just recently wrote to Ben & Jerry's suggesting a honey-flavored ice cream called Save the Bees (with proceeds going to bee disease research), I don't see how I can have them exterminated. Rats!!

Anyone want any bees?

A Beautiful Pea-Green Boat

In our never-ending effort to reduce, reuse, blah blah blah, I've started a compost pile. It is conveniently located right next to our kitchen door. Obviously, I'm doing something wrong because instead of making awesome dirt, I'm feeding all the local rats plus some of their out-of-town relatives. They've been partying it up right next to our kitchen door.

Danceman very kindly offered to swiftly rid the yard of such vermin but I balked. "What about all the wildlife that might end up eating the poisoned rats??" I cried.

"We need more wildlife then." He said.

Hmmmm.


Then I wondered wheather I could entice a hungy family of barn owls to move into our backyard and I set out to buy or build the perfect owl home. I called Project Wildlife to find out how big the local owls are and they invited me to an owl box building workshop. Of course, I signed up immediately. Who could pass up an opportunity to use power tools in a safely controlled environment?


Did you know an average barn owl can eat two rat-sized piles of meat every day? Me neither.

Chicks in the workshop.

We learned valuable lessons such as 'Measure Twice. Cut Once.'

I drilled this hole, and many others all by myself!

Then I took it home and stained it.

Here is Danceman, climbing up a really tall ladder with powertools to properly place our new owl family's home. Because I'm a bit scared of heights and he's such a stud.

The front door, hidden amongst the evil elm tree. Its not really evil, it just drops a lot of leaves. In our neighbor's pool. Sorry, neighbors.

View of the back. Engineered by Danceman.

It's not really a pea-green boat and hopefully, no pussycats can get in, but we're still hoping for an owl...
A big thank you to Gavin, the instructor, and all the volunteers at Project Wildlife for their valuable time and expertise. Also, since I'm such a nuckle-head, special thanks to Trish for sending me the workshop photos.

Oh, Baby!

Raise your hands: who loves baby showers? I do! I do! I'm a nut when it comes to them. I love the stupid games, and the cute pink/blue/yellow decorations, and all the beautifully wrapped super-soft onesies. But I also love celebrating that new life (or two or three) that is about to join the party and isn't that a great reason to eat finger sandwiches and sip punch? I think so too.




Plus I'm not going to be the one waking up 5 times a night with the little dude, schlepping him around, teaching him to use his words, etc. Another reason for me to love celebrating other people's babies.

So when my childhood friend turned up pregnant recently, I jumped to it. I love throwing a great party - hopefully this one fell into that category!


I would love to say I made the cake but the credit actually goes to the ladies at Cake. Yes, it tasted as good as it looked.

Thank you to everyone who attended and made it a special day for the new mom-to-be!

What I Do When No One Else Is Home

Oh there are many things I love about our home addition. Too many to list here. You’ll have to trust me, it’s a great thing and worth every penny of our over-extended west coast mortgage.

But there is one particularly wonderful item we installed that I must talk about today.

If you’ve ever stayed in a first class hotel or had the extreme fortune to live in Europe, you too may have experienced the joys of the bidet.

True, it looks strange to the uninitiated or overly imaginative

but it is so simple and obviously necessary. I can’t believe it hasn’t caught on in the good ol’ USA. So what is a bidet, you ask? This might help dissolve the mystery.

I know, my boys thought it was for playing in as well.

When we planned for it, I thought it would be great for those scary poopy diaper blowouts but sadly, the little one was already three by the time we finished building. (Construction is fun, really.) Still, it helps a lot with similar mommy moments.

But here is what I really like to do with it.

Heaven.

Did I mention that the water is hot? Yeah, baby…