Thursday's Shared Things..........

We live on a hill.  It is a natural hill but a man made one for building homes. All houses in our neighborhood have different kinds of front and back yards. Our front yard and drive is uphill. I don't like it. A neighbor across the street literally mows a front yard that is a rounded uphill piece of land, at least mine is a flat incline. The backyard is down hill, so we are perched on the ridge.  The two story deck because of the walk out basement gives us panoramic views like this all day long.  It is our good tradeoff. Keeping water from going into our basements is important and what they have done is to make sure each house has the best drainage.

It is as panoramic as one could wish for and the views change in seconds. The pink sky I saw out the front door this morning while out with the dog, was gone by the time that I walked to the back deck. We both keep going out to see if we can find that perfect shot with camera in hand.

A new temporary display at the bottom of our stairs seems to be an open shore line theme. I have seen mallard ducks on Lake Superior but I doubt the drakes ever hit the ocean shore. I was given my first conch shell from a student where I taught my first four years.  I never forget her name as she was Sherry Berry. Where all the rest of them have come in my collection, I really don't know.  I do know that I am giving one away to my wife's friend who lived for awhile on the east coast.

It took a dishwasher with a steam setting to restore my mom's old glass dish. We had not ever used it and really probably was dirty for years of use.  The dishwasher took off grime that kept it from shining.

I have other pieces of glass that match this pattern. I do think that it is a flower pattern on this piece, different than the star burst pattern on lots of others.

The change of color and shine because of the chemical cleaning in the dishwasher is amazing. It could have been soaked for long periods of time but still not get this shine. I will stop blogging on this now unless there is some delicious salad sitting in it.

A lot of time was spent with a power sander on Wednesday. I lost my old larger sander as it burned out during the work session.  I had another smaller sander to replace it.   It changed its color taking it back close to the natural wood color. I have water spots on the shelves where my mom kept African violets under a grow light. I expect that I could put another couple of hours on it and they would be gone but I am not sure I want to do that. The spots seem to be pretty deep. The bottom space originally had sliding doors for storage. Our future use of it is yet to be decided. I am presently hoping my wife's doll collection could be displayed on it but glass doors would need to be added on the bottom half. The refinishing of this has been something I have wanted to get done for years so whatever the use will be, I am glad it has come this far.

I am headed back to the old place today. I have a couple of errands to do along the way but would like to get home before the really hot temperatures hit the area. I see that most of the country is having this same kind of heat.  I hope all my blog friends are finding cool places to be. Thanks for stopping by today.