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

My Sunday Picture....on Monday....

Lobster equipment at the ready in Portland harbor yesterday.

There were lots of folks walking around town yesterday and quite a bit of lobster activity going on because:

1. There was a Flower Show. (There is a God.)

2. There was a Boat Show. (People have told me there are two great days when you own a boat:

the day you buy it and the day you sell it. I wouldn't know.)

3. It was WARM! (Fifties, for you out of staters.)

4. The St. Patrick's Day Parade just happened on Commercial Street.      ( Someone tell someone St. Patty's Day is  on Tuesday.)

5. Some St. Patty's day parties going on at Ri Ra's and Brian Borus, two Irish pubs.

We were at Ri Ra's after going to see Gran Torino at the Nickelodeon.  We were paying our check when a bagpipe band came into the room where we were and proceeded to make some god awful noises. I can't imagine any sound more irritating than a bag pipe. screech. squeal.

and more screech. Gives me the heebie jeebies.

A Lobster Story 

In a small fishing village, a Newfoundlander was walking Up the wharf carrying two - at least three-pound live lobsters - one in each hand.

It was three weeks after the season closed! Whom should he meet at the end of the wharf but the Federal Fisheries Officer who, upon viewing the live and wiggling lobsters, says: "Well me Laddie I got you this time - with two live lobsters three weeks after the season Closed!"

The Newfie says, "No - My Son you are wrong! These are two trained lobsters that I caught two weeks before the season ended."

The Fisheries Officer says, " Trained like how?"

"Well my son, each day I takes these two from my house down to the wharf and puts them in the water for a swim. While they swim I sits on the wharf and has me a smoke, or two. After about 15 minutes I whistles and up comes me two lobsters, and I takes them home!"

"Likely story", the Fisheries Officer says! "Lets take them on down the wharf and see if it's true."

So, the Newfie goes ahead of the Fisheries Officer to the end of the wharf where, under supervision, he gently lowers both lobsters into the water.

The Newfie sits on a wharf piling and lights up a smoke, then another! After about 15 minutes the Fisheries Officer says to the Newfie, "How about whistling?"

The Newfie says " What For?"

The Fisheries Officer says, " To call in the Lobsters"

The Newfie says, " What Lobsters?"

I took this photo from my car while we were driving around Portland yesterday....(yes, there's a real person in there!)

Can we eliminate MARCH ?

WATCH OUT ! Here it comes...the ugly month.

Now, it may not be ugly where you live, but here in Maine it's hideous. You start to see it along the side of the roads. That's the worst.

We're starting to have temperatures hovering around 32.7 º for about 5 minutes everyday, which is starting the BIG MELT. All the nice looking snow disintegrates, exposing the crap underneath.

The crap is black and ugly; the antithesis of what snow should be. And it'll be here all of March and even into April. Oh yes, we will get more snow-maybe lots of it-but it'll start to melt again rather quickly and expose the dark underbelly, the sewer of the snow world, the crap.

 

But not to worry. After the snow is almost gone, we have THIS to look forward to...

 MUD  SEASON !!

In the words of Rosanne Rosannadanna:

HAPPY  MARCH :-(

Designer Clothes Pins...sometimes I wonder...about me!

  Sometimes I wonder, while I'm Downeast Doing Stuff, while I'm making, doing, sewing, designing something...WHY I'm even doing it? Sometimes I have no good answer other than, "I just like it."

  I guess that's good enough.

  I found this idea on a wonderful blog. If you like doing stuff, especially crafty things like I do, check out LISA'S blog. It's a wealth of information.

  http://lisatutmanoglesby.typepad.com/my_weblog/

  On her February 1st post, she made fancy clothespins. I thought that was so cool, so I tried it.

You can go and see how she did it. This is how I did it......

 

I had a collection of tissue paper that I've been saving. Anytime I got a gift from someone with unusual tissue paper, I saved it.

 

Then I took the clothes pins apart. SAVE  THE  METAL  SPRING!@*%   Mine disappeared while I was decorating  and I had to dismember  another poor clothes pin !

  

Here are the supplies I used.

I tore the tissue paper up into small random pieces. I applied Mod Podge to the wood and put pieces of tissue paper into the wet Mod Podge, smoothing it out as I went along, wrapping the tissue paper all around the wood willy nilly. I even used my fingers to smooth it out.

 

Cover all the wood surfaces. Let dry on something plastic, metal or glass. (If you place it on paper to dry, it's going to stick.)

  DRY really well. (like overnight) (or here)

 Put the spring clips back on. THAT  WAS  THE  HARDEST  PART !! REMEMBER what it looked like before you took it off. You might have to find the groove in the wood with your fingernail for the wire to sit in. I'M TELLING YOU, IT WAS REALLY HARD. YOU HAVE SOME TRICK FOR THIS, LISA ??

  Well, that's it.

  I like my plaid one the best.

Now, what would I use these for? Certainly NOT for hanging clothes, God forbid. I will use mine to close chip and pretzel bags...you know...the important stuff !

other things you can do with clothespins:

Put them on your face. (click)

Make a gigantic outdoor sculpture. (click)

Stop smelling something. (click)

Hang up your underwear. (click)

Put your quadruplets in a basket and then put some clothespins around them. (click)

My Sunday Picture....

Today I had to post a  picture of a 'someone' as my Sunday picture. Because today is my awesome sister-in-laws birthday. 

This is a drawing I did of her in about the late 1970's or maybe the early 1980's. I don't remember because I am a couple of years older than she is. The thing about her is that she still looks the same as in this portrait. Maybe a little tanner 'cause she now lives in the tropics, but otherwise, yeah, pretty much the same.

'Happy Birthday'  Cornball!!

(click here) 

Chicken Divan...healthified !

So, I'm supposed to be on a salt restricted diet. Which means no more added salt. Which means no more picking up the salt granules from the bottom of the 'big salted pretzel' bag with a saliva wet finger and munching on every crunchy particle with delight.

Getting older sucks.

So (sigh) here is my Mom's recipe for Chicken Divan-made healthy.

I love this recipe.

This is how I do it.

Use 3 Cups (or a little more) shredded chicken. I cook mine at supersonic speed in the microwave in chunks and then I shred it by hand. You can chop it instead, but I like it shredded.

Cook one bunch of broccoli, and sorta chop it somewhat.

Place broccoli in bottom of greased 9" x 13" pan. I used PAM spray to grease.

Spread shredded chicken on top of the broccoli.

Put 2 cans of Cream of Mushroom soup into a small bowl. (I used the sodium restricted one.)

Stir in 1 Cup Mayo. (I used Smart Balance Omega Plus mayo) (It's not bad, really !)

Also mix in 2 tbsp. lemon juice, 1/2 tsp. curry powder and Mrs. Dash Table Blend to taste. (this is the salt substitute.)  :-(  (Although, Mrs. Dash has tons of other flavors which I use a lot. I carry one in my purse and use it on salads in restaurants along with Olive Oil and Vinegar that I put on by myself.) (From the restaurant.) (Yes, they have it.) (Just ask.)

Spread this mixture on top of the chicken and broccoli.

Shred 1/4 lb. of sharp cheddar cheese. I used Monteray Jack Cheese. Spread the shredded cheese over the top of the soup mixture.

Next, melt some butter. (I just eyeball it, probably around 2 tablespoons) I use Smart Balance 'butter'. Add some breadcrumbs to it until you get a nice crumbly texture with the 'butter' mixed in. (I make my own whole wheat bread crumbs from the heels of whole wheat bread that I keep in the toaster oven tray. It gets the residual heat from whenever I make toast.) Spread over the top of the Chicken Divan.

Bake at 350 º for 1/2 hour.

Serve over rice.

This is soooo good. I hope you enjoy it! (you can unhealthify it if you want.)

Portrait process...

I've decided to show you the process in doing a pastel chalk portrait. These usually average about 8 hours to do. I don't work on it 8 hours in a row, of course. I may work on it for 2 minutes or 1 hour in a work session. Sometimes I walk by it and see something that needs change and pick up a chalk and spend 20 seconds on something. This one was done over the course of 3 weeks, working on it off and on.

Here I've just started the eyes and applying some of the skin color around them. You can see (maybe...the photo is kinda dark)  the drawing part of it...that's half the battle!

I work from the top down because the chalk dust falls downward and can get stuck on finished areas below it. I often work turning the picture sideways or upside down to keep the dust going where I want it to go. The skin is a mixture of about probably 6 or 7 colors.

I've just started work on the shirt and jacket. The face is pretty much done. At the end I did lighten some of the shadows in the face.

Here I'm working on the clothing. Usually I have to mix colors to get the right color. The jacket was a mixture of 3 colors, and then the highlighting and shading.

_________________________________________________

Here is the final piece.***OOPS ! I forgot to photograph it before I put it in the frame with glass, so there are all kinds of REFLECTIONS the camera picked up,  that's what all those weird shapes are. I lugged this thing all over the house to find a place where there were no reflections...other that in pitch black... there were reflections everywhere. sorry.

So that's it. I never spray my portraits afterward with a fixative. I have never found one that I have liked. They always seem to darken the picture somewhat and there's invariably the blob of fixative that flies out of the spray can and lands right in the center of the person's forehead and never dries. They need to be put behind glass anyway, but there are some tense moments twixt the completion of the work and it's final home behind the glass. 

My Sunday Picture....

Ah, yes, ice fishing in Maine! What is the key word in that sentence that indicates loss of brain activity? I'll let you answer that.

(proof)

(more proof)

(even more proof)

Teeny pin-cushions !

These are a couple of pin cushions I made. The base of them is just a bottle cap! So, as you can see, they are quite small, but do the trick.

I found the directions for these at a site called craftstylish, wonderful directions posted by Jen Segrest. As she says, these are very addictive and make fabulous little gifts.

Here are the detailed directions: Click here.

Thank you, Jen !

I plan on making a few more in different sized caps, from different things. I even saved a Fancy Feast cat food can to try and make a bigger one, if I can figure it out.

Aren't these sweet ? Hey, we all need a cushion for our pins. We also need cushions for other things, but I don't know how to make those.

No school today!

why?  WHY?? ....because of THIS !!!!

Here we go again...more white stuff.

One foot of it and H-E-A-V-Y !!! Like cement.

Even the snowblower, the one my fingers never touch, was having an extremely difficult time of it. Snowblowers don't like blowing cement.  

But it was beautiful, nevertheless, as you can see.

But even the most beautiful rose has it's thorns. We lost power 17 hours ago and counting.

160,000 customers without power at the moment. (Update: 20 hours 14 minutes) (Another update: 29 1/2 hours and no power)

THIS:
is what's keeping us semi-sane. (Along with the wood stove and a BOTTLE of wine....)

God bless generators.