My cat says......

   A very happy Easter from a Downeaster ! Hope your day is wonderful.

Easter Egg

I am home sick today. Big time sniffles, sore throat and coughing.

My electric blanket is turned on to the highest setting, ready and waiting.

But first, I had to finish making this egg. First things first.

Here's how I made it, in case you're interested.

Buy a styrofoam egg in what ever size you want. (Not too small, it's harder to work with.) (and not the rock hard styrofoam you can find in the store.)

Cut up scraps of fabric at random. Make sure they are bigger than the final form it will take on the egg.

When I made one of these several years ago, I used a metal nail file as my working tool.

I couldn't find one this time, so I'm using this white doohickey I found on the floor near the washing machine. You know, it's one of those things that are in men's shirt collars. Every now and then, they fall out and appear at the foot of the washing machine...... and this was perfect timing. In fact, it works better than a nail file.

Take a scrap of fabric, lay it on the egg and using the shirt doohickey, push the edges into the styrofoam, all around all edges. You will be losing about 3/8 ths of an inch to push into the styrofoam. Any less and it might pop out.

Keep piecing the random fabric chunks all over the surface of the egg. I find a sort of sawing motion with the doohickey works the best to imbed the fabric into the egg, instead of pushing it in directly.

Another good thing about the shirt implement is that it is rounded at one end and pointy at the other. This comes in handy dependent upon what angle you're working with.

Voila.

Egg all done.

You can glue or pin on some little flowers here and there to hide any possible funky areas.

I think they're cute.

My Sunday Picture....

  This pond is about a 2 minute walk down the street. There was ice on it Friday.....today it's GONE!!!  

I LOVE my heated floor !!!!!!!!!

I am always cold.

I know that when I'm not cold, ain't nobody cold.

I do everything I can never to be cold. ( except for where I chose to live! Slight miscalculation in that department.)

We have a heated mattress pad that I LOVE !  I turn it on about 1 hour before I go to bed. Full Blast!!!!

So when we decided to remodel our bathroom last summer, we decided to splurge and have a heated floor put in.

See how it's done? Here are the heating wires that were installed.

   Then a layer of thinset gunk is poured on top of the wires. When that dries, the tiles are then installed.

   There also is a programmable  timer on the wall that you can program into 4 different settings each day.

  After enjoying the heated floor immensely for a few weeks, I had an unbelievable BRAINSTORM !

   And after watching my cat loll around on the aforementioned floor and feeling how gosh darned warm the area rug was in front of the sink,  I realized that if I put some of my clothes on the floor for about 5 to 10 minutes just before I get dressed in the morning, they will be warm when I put them on!!!!

I'm SO smart!

Upon doing some quick research, I found out that there are lots of other things that are heated.

For example:

You can warm up your tootsies with these heated sox.

You can warm your fingers with heated gloves. (I wouldn't get them wet while wearing, tho.)

Heated bras to warm your heart (area).

There are heated toilet seats to warm your buns.

If you have a dog that goes into heat a lot, you can buy him this toy. It's called a Hotdoll. Really.

And if you have a cow in heat, you can buy this. That should turn up the heat alright.

Ahem.....

Soooo...... anytime we can't find the Siamese cat, we look in the bathroom, 'cause that's where she is. Guaranteed.

Happy April Fool's Day !!

Lots of things can trick the eye. Here are a few sidewalk chalk artists....



Another trick for the eyes....

 

This is no trick, just sooooo cute! But you have to watch the translation below as well.


The very important translation...



Now, these videos, they are a riot! Bear through the beginning until they get to the prank. Make sure you see the last part of it, it's a little different. It just cracks me up.


Hope you all have a fun day !!

My Sunday Picture....

The cold, falling rain is keeping rhythm on the window at my back. All day. Hours and hours, it is damp, cold and grey. Yet the remaining snow is white and live against the bleakness. Trying its best to survive. It is spring, and it cannot remain. Its icy grip is in vain.

New Art

Lately, I've been taking photographs as I'm driving my car. Photos of the road have been intriguing me, and this is my second 'road' picture I've done. This one is 12" x 17", not very big.

I've switched to pastels as I love how sky colors can be blended with chalk. Also, for the first time, I did this one on black pastel paper. Not sure if I like it. My first road composition is much larger and done on gray pastel paper. (see end of post)

Here is the original sketch, which is just random lines to separate the major areas in the picture. The sky has been started. You can see the hard pastels I used to start the picture. I then switch to softer sticks as I progress, which blend easier.

Finishing the sky and working on the trees.

Starting the snow on the side of the road. More tree work.

Here I've started putting the sky reflection colors into the road. My CAT added the kitty footprints in the road. (That's what I get for leaving the picture on the coffee table overnight.)

Thanks, Molly.

Here I'm working on getting the road colors right.

This is the finished picture. (Unless I decide it's not.)

Below is the first in my 'road' series, completed this fall.

Making Maple Syrup or just a big sap for ice cream...

  Sunday was Maine Maple Sugar Sunday. It’s a day when many maple syrup making farms are open to the public. I stopped by two of them to check out how much free ice cream doused with Maple syrup I could get maple syrup is made.

The first place I stopped  was a small wooden shack stuck in the middle of a field. Being Maine in March, in order to get from my car (parked on the side of a country road at at 45 degree angle, 2 wheels on the tar and 2 wheels in the nonexistent shoulder, tilted precariously toward a madly running stream) I had to walk down a tractor worn farm path about 50 yards through, guess what, mud.

  Not only was there mud, but huge puddles of water, resultant of the melting snow. It was probably in the 40’s -- heatwave weather.

  This particular farm decided they would accomodate their visitors, if need be, using a golf cart. As I was arriving, the golf card was cascading down the mud road toward the tar road I was on, with an elderly lady hanging on for dear life. Hanging on for dear life because the teenager driving it, not old enough yet for a real drivers license, thought to himself, 'YEE HA' and tried to break the Guiness Book of World Records speed record for driving across yards of mud.

  Not being elderly, I walked to the sugar shack.

  Lazy smoke was drifting up into the partly cloudy blue sky and the rather sickly smell of something sugary wafted through the air.

  The mud was so bad at my destination that planks of wood were placed on the ground between the set up card tables selling hot dogs, to the shack. The planks barely wide enough for one foot, causing the pedestrian to use a trapeze artist’s type of walk, lest they lose their balance and end up in the muck..

  Inside the warm shack were about 5 or 6 other folks checking out the maple syrup production in progress.

You know how this is done?

  First you have to find a tree that has the correct sap used in maple syrup. I would guess that would be a maple tree. Then someone pounds some sort of spike into the side of the poor tree and hangs a bucket off of it. The spike is designed to drain the life giving sap out of the unsuspecting tree and into the metal bucket.

  Eventually the bucket gets filled and the sticky liquid gets dumped into something that would allow the sap to be boiled.  Like this thing.

Close-up of syrup evaporating.

  After constant boiling for about 4 million hours, 30 to 40 gallons of watery sap turns into 1 gallon of syrup. It has to be watched like a hawk near the end because it could rapidly burn and ruin the day of the maple syrup entrepeneur. 

  Boiling it over a wood fire imparts a little bit of a smokey flavor, I’m told, which enhances the flavor, I’m also told.

  The second place I stopped in had millions of people there. Cars were lined up both sides of the road for what seemed like miles. They had shacks with hamburgers and hot dogs, shacks with free ice cream with maple syrup on top, the boiling shack, souvenir shack and a big barn with animals in it. The lines were very long for everything, especially the free ice cream.

I didn’t stand in line for this free ice cream. It was too much for even me. 

Besides coffee ice cream, maple walnut is my favorite flavor. Who knows what tree that comes from.

THE END.

(funny)

My Sunday Picture....

My Sunday picture is of the Nonantum Lighthouse, perched on the edge of the property of the Nonantum Resort in Kennebunkport, Maine. It guards the Kennebunkport River as it enters the village.  Note it is still festooned in a now dried up Christmas wreath even as we enter spring. This is typical in Maine, as you ride around, to see these brown wreaths still hanging on for dear life in various places.

Here is the Kennebunkport River as it heads toward the sea, away from the lighthouse.

All the boats are still out of the cold water, covered in their own personal shrink wrap to protect them from the harsh Maine winters along the coast. 

Here is a shot of Walker's Point, the President George Bush compound off of Ocean Avenue.

Kennebunkport is gorgeous in the summer and really quaint during the Christmas season when all the shops are decorated in tiny white lights and greenery. But even during the ugly month of March, it still has it's charm.

Flowers in every pot...

Happy First Day of Spring !!

Take a seat...

I was in the gym the other day using the rest facilities. I noticed, having a keen eye, that the toilet seat chosen for the bathroom was a split seat. ***

Apparently, because there was nothing else on my mind at the time, I thought about how one never sees that style of seat in anyone's home. Why not?

I went home and asked Johnny Depp Mr. Downeast doing stuff what he thinks about this. After some rolling of the eyes, he said, "Probably for men."

I said, "huh?" "Don't men lift the seat?"

"He said, "not when they're sitting down."

After that comment, I decided I didn't want to know anymore.

But I was thinking about all the different types of toilet seats out there. I've only experienced a few:

1. Regular (hard seat)

2. Wooden (we had one, it eventually split itself. Needed duct tape to fix it. Unpleasant situation for a while.)

3. Soft seat. (Creepy)

4. The aforementioned split seat. (see***)

 

So I did some research for you because I know you don't have time. Here is what I've found.

You can get.....

Painted seats: Some people would like custom painted seats, you know, with a portrait of your sweetie, Cha Cha.

Or perhaps a guitar theme seat: Provides good acoustics for your music.

How about a Sponge Bob Square Pants seat?

Or a square seat: For Sponge Bob Square Pants and his ilk.

Maybe someLED lights seats: You can illuminate the job.

Or the face toilet: Bite my butt! Grrrr

This is the golfers toilet seat cover: (There must be a joke about a 'hole in one'  for this.)

The up and at 'em toilet seat: Guaranteed to wake you up in the morning.

This is a 24 carat gold toilet available in Hong Kong, for all of you receiving a stimulus package or a million dollar bonus. Estimated value: $10.000.00

Here is something your tax dollars paid for. A $19,000,000,000 Russian built space toilet. The new system will be able to produce drinking water for the astronauts.  :-0

(Looks like another Sponge Bob Square Pants toilet seat......)

After buying this for the astronauts, you may want this one...

The Serial Killer Seat. Always on the run.

As a result of my hard work, the consensus seems to be that there are split seats in public places for the lazy male that won't lift the seat and dribbles when he's done.

Geez, thank God that never happens at home. ;-p