Coffee Break Time...

It is a busy day today and I will share tomorrow the condition of the state of the household of all that is occupying our time.  Have a good day out there!!!! Thanks for stopping by anyway.....

Friday the 13th of December......

 

Sitting on the edge is what life is like right now.  I know that we have a lot of things now done so we will probably make all our business deadlines.  I really hope that no one comes in now with last minute jobs as we are moving along well enough with our present projects.  We deliver three of Della's work tonight after school.  She has one more commission to finish up and I have three things still hanging over my head.  I do plan on getting our large tree up tonight.  We don't always decorate them right away but the main job is reassembling that tree and getting the lights on it. Other smaller trees that we put up may become be seen this weekend and the decorating will come sooner or later.

The heritage mug also reminds me of the movie I showed yesterday in history class.  The students were watching the movie 1776 about the American Revolution.  It is a complicated story and they tried to include everything in the musical.  John Henry Lee sings a very irritating song in the beginning but it is an interesting way to depict history.  Henry sings while riding a horse and then dismounts and sings and dances with Ben Franklin and John Adams.  That particular scene must be their comedy part of the movie.  Kids were suppose to catch all the clues from the movie including the daily weather report from Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin's gout.

Local tv, no cable at our house, tends to get really bad this time of the year.  So we watch some of our favorite movies.  Usually we do that during snowstorms when we can't get out.  It is December and we have already started the first movie of the Narnia series of three.  TV has had to be really bad as we have already finished off the three Lord of the Rings movie.  I think that was back in November. I am in a rut with the coffee mugs but I am pulling photos from archives today.

This bell was found in a box of things that I bought at a auction back when I was younger.  I think I was in college and I was at the auction of a farmer who was a brother to the John and Iva connection. John and Iva gave me a lot of antiques and his brother had a homestead that was older than theirs.

The box had many wonderful old things in it and I can still smell the powder box that was in the cluttered old box.  I , in later years,  decided that this is a brass bell that was use to be placed above a business door like the ones of the businesses in town.  It would be hit by a projection on the door as a customer would enter the store. It may have been a spring action set up but I just don't remember it.  I can still hear that ring from the old Lasalle store bell that was near us in Lasalle, Iowa.  It was a very small store and filling station run by an older lady who lived up stairs above the store in an attic apartment. Lasalle was a very small French settlement that never grew larger than a hundred people. My dad bought his cigars there and we got candy or ice cream bars. This happened whenever the King Edwards cigar box got to be close to empty.

I found this archived photo of the model of the Split Rock Lighthouse.  The real thing sits on the northern shoreline of Minnesota. It sits on a large rock formation overlooking Lake Superior.  I am finishing off with this lighthouse matching the first photo of the cup in a light house shape.

I am in the high school math room today. It is a work day for them and it should be a smooth day except for a couple of students in each class who can't even handle a free work day.   Thanks for stopping by today.

Thursday's Things......

 

I have too many mugs.  I can post mug pictures from the past for weeks.  As you know that I take a lot of pictures of them.  Anyone who follows me knows this mug pops into the blog every year at this time.  As a gift from one of my staff that I subbed for last week, she gave me another mug.  I don't like to accept gifts as I am paid to do my job.  She was so sick that she was grateful that she knew things would still be in one piece when she returned.  I also spent a lot of time getting her classes back on schedule content wise. The mug that I received is one of those supper large ones from Starbucks. I can fill it and have two cups of coffee without having to refill it.  I assume I could take it with me to Starbucks and get it filled with a mocha latte.  I usually don't buy that size as I could buy a can of coffee for the price of one of those.  I will share a photo later.

The angel tree has been set up.  I was able to squeeze that in while doing other framing jobs. Maybe we will get the ornaments on it this evening.  It usually is the first tree we put up each year.  I moved furniture around in the dinning room to help a heat vent to do a better job.  It meant moving two wooded pieces of furniture and the humidifier.  The humidifier messes with the thermostat in the dining room so I have to place it just right to keep it from changing the temp settings.

My wife had three commissioned dog portrait paintings to do for Christmas.  Last night we matted two of them and have them ready for delivery.  Another commission that she had to do was a portrait of a man who was playing santa clause.  That was a first for her as the man's wife wanted to have him painted in costume.  I was really impressed with the results and maybe after Christmas I can share it with you.  We had to get a mat cut for it and we were successful in getting that done.  All will be delivered tomorrow.

I will be working on a wedding composite tonight and maybe squeeze in the walnut frame project.  I refused the Saturday school job so I can work all Saturday to get things finished.  I do need to mention a former student approached me about painting names and designs on a concrete garden bench.  I said that I would but it will have to take its place in line with everything else.

I will finish by sharing a past post of some of the faces of Christmas we will have in our house.  I do think the seven less days at Christmas time will create a crunch on a lot of things around here.  The down time for me will be the after Christmas time as the winter time off from school is larger this year. A Wednesday Christimas and New Year really messes with the school scheduling of classes. If I could have some of that down time before Christmas it would have been nice.

I am not in the Talented and Gifted room today.  I am in the high school and middle school social studies room today.  We will cover world religions, emperors of China and the 1776 time period in United States history.  It should be an interesting day. 

We are warming up a little but not really thawing out.  I hope you all have a good day and thanks for checking in today.

Wednesday's Wanderings........

Two of my wreaths were hung last night.  I did bring up one of the trees but it is still in the box. I worked on my sanding of the walnut frame.  It is about ready to be assembled and finished with a clear sealer. My attitude of moving through the projects is to make a mark on their progress every single day even if it is a minimal amount. 

Snow is really not the problem for us as much as the cold is very difficult to deal with on such a continual time period.  Our temperatures are cold right now and it is to be colder by this afternoon.  We had a light snow again last night but it wasn't really that measurable. I am grateful that the wind has not picked up too much as it makes it very uncomfortable no matter how many layers of clothes that you are wearing.

I am really getting anxious to get started on the Christmas trees.  I have an early out today so I might see more time to get started on them.  The ornaments are still in the basement in the boxes ready for me to bring them out into the light. I again am subbing in the Talented and Gifted room today.  It is like a resource room for the more successful student to get work completed.  In the old days we called them honor study halls because we behaved well and worked hard.  This group is sort of like this but it is more like they just don't want to be stuck in study hall.

There is a project going on where they created a robot from erector set-like materials.  That is going slow as they need stronger leadership and direction.  I am going to insist that they draw out some sketches and to check out their requirements. I don't think they know what really is the problem that they have to deal with.Before Christmas break the students also tend to go into a sluggish gear.

Thanks for stopping by today.  I hope all is well where you are.

Tuesday's Tidbits......

It is an old train.  I found it in the toy bucket at the house of John and Iva Horton.  Those who follow me know that I have many things from the John and Iva connection. I have always valued it mostly because of the connection but I  also thought it was rare. It is an old cast iron toy.  I destroyed its value as an antique because I painted it some 30 years ago.

It has always been special to me and then the hardware owner, who has a store up town full of antiques on display, put in his window this engine and all of the cars with caboose.  Then another friend of mine said she had the entire set with windup key and its original box and track. She had received it for Christmas as a child.

I guess it still is very special too me but it isn't one of a kind. I need to thoroughly clean this engine and it may show up on Photo a Day some of these days in a more precise pose. If you ever have read the Little Prince story, the Prince thought he had the one and only rose in all the world and then he ran across a whole garden full of roses, his rose seemed less personal and special. The little Prince had to reevaluate his feelings and reassure himself that he was going to be ok with the one rose in his life.

The snow rocks are most all completely covered with very fluffy snow.  We had a light scattering of snow this morning but it was more like a salt shaker of snow that didn't require any shoveling. We did wake up to 8 degrees F today.
I keep being puzzled as to how Des Moines is 14 degrees this morning, Ames north of us was 11 degrees F and my thermometer is at 8 degrees.  I don't see how any consistent  measuring of the temps in this country would be accurate as everyone in the city is always warmer than those of us on the prairie.  You could never average that out to make it accurate.  Most all measurements of the past were done by people who had weather boxes out in their back yards in a country setting.  I see people are predicting now we have global cooling, oh my!

I am glad there are some nice shots that can be taken of the snow but I think we should be done with it for a while. The Christmas season is coming like a tidal wave and all of a sudden I have a lot of things to do. Fortunately I have work lined up for the next two weeks with one guy gone as his wife had a baby.  Another teacher is going to be gone for surgery. I need the work but then I now need bursts of energy when I get home from school.  I need to get four frame jobs done and mats cut for my wife's commision work that go out before Christmas. All the other standard Christmas stuff has to be done along side of this. It is more than a tidal wave and I need to start swimming. 

Thanks for stopping by my blog today.  Stay calm, stay warm and stay safe. 

Cold and Snow.........and other stuff.

 Link to the cabinet story is here.

Having more time today I will share the original post about this oat sprouter. It was many years back that I first wrote about it.  I had to dig a long ways back to find the link to the story.  Back then I wrote hundreds of words to be sure everyone understood what I was talking about. Now I tend to abbreviate and just get to the facts. If you are faint in heart today stay away from the reading and just look at the pictures.  The cabinet sat in the dinning room and now it is in the living room as an accent piece holding a lamp next to a winged back chair. 

 I visited the old site about the sprouter and I was a really bad proof reader, really bad.  Sorry!!!! I guess I won't go back to edit it as I can't get there from here.

 

My wife said she saw two of these downy woodpeckers at the feeder on Friday.  I hope that I can attract another kind of woodpecker through the winter.  I noticed the nuthatch gave a taste of it the other day but it hasn't returned for a while.

 Looking out the window in my computer area one can see we are not brown with dead leaves and grass anymore. This is the first of the many hardy geraniums that I have in bloom.  I promised not to write about them for a month and I don't really know if the silent period is over now.  I may waste my time and go back and look to when I made the promise.  

This is my "looking out" window if you are a regular visitor. The view is ok out there but I did need to focus in on the color.  I can share the larger picture later.  We had about 4 to 5 inches of fluffy snow the past days and it is extremely cold. Going to church yesterday actually was quite dangerous but we did make it home in one piece.  I noticed it was a -2 degrees F. this morning and it will warm up to 11 degrees sometime today.  It will not feel like a warm up at all.

I am not ready for this but sometimes I guess I will like seeing it again.  I bet if it were not so very cold that I would be a little bit more positive in attitude about it.  I can be glad that I now have new things to photograph as the brown pictures were getting a little too much repetitive. 

I am in a teacher subbing for a Talented and Gifted teacher.  It is more like a resource room and yet we have a few people building a robot machine for a upcoming contest. They do work hard on it and they have a lot of the piece completed. I guess they keep tweaking it to make it the best.

Thanks for stopping by today.  Keep warm, stay safe and enjoy your day.

Looking for Sleigh Bells.......

Opening the door of my toy cupboard to straighten out the mess in there I realized that I hadn't been in there for a long time.  I haved dumped things in and really had not organized things as I put things back into the cupboard.

The cupboard is actually an antique sprouting cupboard for oat seeds.  The shelves were filled with trays of soil in which the farmer would spread oat seeds.  At the bottom was placed a light bulb to warm the insides with a moisture pan also at the bottom.  The door is a glass door to let in light and once the oats sprouted they were fed to the chickens.  They would do this during the winter.  Sears made this cupboard and it was sold commercially. The drawer was added by the original owner John Horton who live on a farm in southern Iowa as he converted it to a storage cupboard for canning jars.

Two sides of the piece have vent holes to keep the wood from rotting.  The cupboard is lined with a metal but they needed to have air vents to let out the heat and moisture.

I will let you snoop in my drawers and shelves. I didn't get the drawer stuff straighten as you can see.

This the reason that I was in the cupboard.  I have nine or more of these and I just found one of them.  I will have to spread out my search to the storeroom.

We are having light snow today with some wind.  It shouldn't keep us from going to church and teaching Sunday school.  We will grab a quick sandwich and come home quickly as it could snow heavier.  Two inches is all that is predicted so I don't think we will have anything looking like a blizzard.  Thanks for stopping by today.